The Jester (hacktivist) force WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to set foot on UK soil and face potential extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. On October 21, 2016, the Jester took responsibility for defacing the official website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The "hack" was in retaliation for a series of DDOS attacks earlier in the week that targeted major DNS provider Dyn. In December 2011, T. J. O'Connor, a research analyst in the Information Technology and Operations Center (ITOC), produced a comprehensive report for the SANS Institute detailing the history of The Jester's hacking campaigns titled "The Jester Dynamic:
Julian Assange serious journalism as we know it." Critics of the lawsuit have pointed to potential damage that it could do to freedom of the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists questioned the legal basis for targeting Assange and compared the suit to attempts to suppress the Pentagon Papers. On 27 November 2018, The Guardian claimed that Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2013, 2015 and 2016. It said the last visit in March 2016 could be related to Wikileaks’ publication later in 2016 of DNC documents. It also claimed that in June 2016