According to the new indictment of the Justice Department announced on Wednesday, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, sought to hire hackers at conferences in Asia and Europe who may provide confidential information to his anti-secrecy website in collaboration with members of hacking organizations. The prevailing accusation doesn’t contain further charges beyond the eighteen counts the Justice Department revealed in 2019.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange conspired with hackers affiliated with the “Anonymous” and “LulzSec” groups, according to new indictment by the U.S. Justice Department. https://t.co/0cPVRALjeO

— Bloomberg Asia (@BloombergAsia) June 25, 2020

However, according to the prosecutors, it highlights the efforts of Assange to acquire and release secret information, accusations that form the root of criminal charges he faced previously. Along with employing hackers at conferences, the accusation alleges Assange of in collaboration with members of hacking groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec.

Prosecutors say that Assange also worked with a seventeen-year-old hacker who provides him information stolen from a bank and asks the teen to steal more information, including audial recordings of high-ranked governmental officials. Barry Pollack, the lawyer of Assange, stated that the persistent hunt of Julian Assange from the government poses a severe threat to journalists all over and to the right of the public to know.

Furthermore, he adds that the latest dominant accusation is so far another episode in the efforts of the United States Government to encourage the public that its chase of Julian Assange depends on something rather than his publication of interesting truthful information. The indictment continues to charge Assange with violating the Espionage Act built on the publications of WikiLeaks, revealing war crimes done by the Government of the U.S.

Rape and sexual assault allegations on Assange

Last year, the law enforcement agencies arrested Assange after dispossessed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom, where he sought asylum to avoid sending him to Sweden over accusations of sexual assault and rape. Besides, he is at the center of an arrest battle over whether he should send it to the U.S.

Assange was arrested last year after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and is at the center of an ongoing extradition tussle over whether he should be sent to the United States.https://t.co/sUGrjpSV56

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) June 25, 2020

The United States Justice Department already accused him of collaborating with Chelsea Manning, the former United States Army intelligence analyst in one of the major negotiations of confidential information in the American history by working together to crack a password to a computer of the government.

According to the prosecutors, the founder of WikiLeaks damaged state security by publishing a lot of secret documents such as military files and diplomatic cables on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that damaged the reputation of the United States and its allies as well as aided its opponents.

The WikiLeaks founder maintains he was acting as a journalist eligible to First Amendment protection. The lawyers of Assange created substantial attention during the U.S. 2016 presidential election, and in inquiries that followed, after WikiLeaks published publicly stolen emails of Democrats that the authorities of the United States say hacked by the military intelligence officials of Russia.

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