The Guardian: under Trump, the CIA made plans to assassinate Julian Assange

Senior CIA officials during the Trump presidency discussed the kidnapping and even murder of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, British The Guardian reports, citing former Trump administration officials.

Recall that in the summer, a court in Ecuador revoked Assange's citizenship, who had previously been hiding at the embassy of this republic in London.

He is also accused of spying and disclosing classified information on the WikiLeaks portal. In particular, one of the high-profile cases was material about torture in Guantanamo prison. The inmates were deprived of sleep, imitated by their drowning. If, under torture, they confessed that they could not even commit, they were executed. Another high-profile investigation was related to the election race in the United States. At the same time, Donald Trump promised to pardon Assange if he surrenders his source of information.

Assange himself is now in the Belmarsh maximum security prison, he was arrested for four years and two months for violating the rules of bail. The US demands his extradition of Assange, charging Assange with 17 counts of violations of the espionage and secret information disclosure laws. He faces up to 175 years in prison.

The use of the Espionage Act in this case has been sharply criticized by American and non-American human rights activists, who rightly fear the use of this law against investigative journalists, most of whose work is connected with obtaining and publishing information that governments would prefer to keep secret.

According to The Guardian, discussions of Assange's kidnapping or murder took place in 2017, when the fugitive was in the Ecuadorian embassy for the fifth year. Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other top officials were furious over the WikiLeaks publication of Vault 7, which lists the CIA's suite of hacking tools. The agency considered this publication to be the biggest data loss in its history.

Some senior officials in the CIA and the Trump administration went as far as asking for "plans" or "options" to assassinate Assange.

The CIA declined to comment on this information.