Julian Assange submission, the United States confirmed its "sensitive, ongoing law enforcement proceeding into the Wikileaks matter." On 13 April 2017, CIA Director Mike Pompeo called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia." On 20 April 2017, US officials told CNN that they were preparing to file formal charges against Assange. United States prosecutors accidentally revealed the existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in an unrelated ongoing sex crime case in the Eastern District of Virginia. Assange visited Sweden in August 2010. During his visit, he became the subject of sexual assault allegations
Julian Assange didn't think this was anything more than just distracting." Eventually, the plan was not pursued and, under Assange's advice, Snowden sought asylum in Russia. Paris newspaper "Le Monde", in its edition of 3 July 2015, published an open letter from Assange to French President François Hollande in which Assange urged the French government to grant him refugee status. Assange wrote that "only France now has the ability to offer me the necessary protection against, and exclusively against, the political persecution that I am currently the object of." In the letter Assange wrote, "By welcoming me, France would fulfill a humanitarian