William Hague to the Swedish authorities who had requested his extradition; thus Swedish prosecutors, unwilling to break diplomatic protocol, have deferred from interrogating Assange at the Embassy of Ecuador, London. Hague confirmed the British Government's position – that it is lawfully obliged to extradite Julian Assange. "We're disappointed by the statement by Ecuador's Foreign Minister today that Ecuador has offered political asylum to Julian Assange. Under our Laws, with Mr. Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, the British authorities are under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. We must carry out that obligation and of course we fully intend
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