Court filing submitted by US authorities in an unrelated case mentioned existence of criminal charges against someone named ‘Assange’

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whose disclosure of secret documents has angered American authorities for the past eight years, has been criminally charged in secret by the US justice department, a court filing has indicated.

The court filing, submitted apparently in error by US prosecutors in an unrelated case, mentioned criminal charges against someone named “Assange” even though that was not the name of the defendant.

Assange, who has been holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London since seeking asylum in 2012, has long been under investigation by US law enforcement agencies for publishing classified diplomatic cables and other secret government records.

Julian Assange launches legal action against Ecuador Read more

The 47-year-old Australian is also ensnared in the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election, due to his website’s publication of tens of thousands of emails stolen by Russian hackers from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and other Democrats.

One of Assange’s attorneys, Barry Pollack, said late on Thursday that it would be a “dangerous path for a democracy to take” for a government to bring criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information.

“The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed,” Pollack said in an email.

Earlier on Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US was making preparations to prosecute Assange and was confident of being able to detain him and make him stand trial.

The court filing, written by assistant US attorney Kellen Dwyer, did not specify the nature of any charges against Assange. It was submitted to the federal court in the eastern district of Virginia, which handles many cases involving national security.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has been investigating WikiLeaks for publishing the emails taken from Democrats in 2016, disrupting Clinton’s campaign. US intelligence agencies concluded the emails were taken by Russian government hackers as part of an operation aimed at helping the campaign of Donald Trump.

But the group has also been under scrutiny for years for its publication of troves of US government data, including hundreds of thousands of files taken by Chelsea Manning, the former soldier jailed for almost seven years.

The mistaken court filing was a motion asking the court to seal charges, meaning they are shielded from public view. It argued that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged”.

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It later said: “The complaint, supporting affidavit and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.”

Legal analysts said the error was likely to have been caused by prosecutors copying and pasting from sealed documents outlining charges against Assange. Prosecutors are known to copy text from past court filings to make similar arguments in new cases, typically changing names and other relevant details accordingly.

Assange and his supporters have frequently claimed US authorities were already prosecuting him in secret. WikiLeaks said on Twitter that the filing “reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange”.

A spokesman for the Justice Department in Virginia’s eastern district would not directly address the question of whether the document meant Assange had already been charged by the US.

“The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing,” the spokesman, Joshua Stueve, said in an email.

WikiLeaks published more than 50,000 Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, beginning with a batch taken from the party’s servers that was dumped online shortly before its national convention in July 2016. The leak prompted the resignation of the party’s chairwoman and disrupted Clinton’s campaign. WikiLeaks later published more emails taken from the account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Assange’s group featured in Mueller’s indictment in July of a group of Russian hackers accused of carrying out the email thefts but was not charged itself. Identified only as “organization 1”, it was accused of receiving the stolen emails from the Russian operatives after exchanging messages.

The July indictment said WikiLeaks urged the Russians to give them the first batch of stolen emails in the days before the Democratic convention so it could publish them in a way that would “have a much higher impact than what you are doing”. The filings did not, however, say whether Assange’s group knew it was dealing with Kremlin-backed operatives.

The mistaken court filing was first noticed on Thursday by Seamus Hughes, an academic at Georgetown University and former US government official. It was filed in the case of a man named Seitu Sulayman Kokayi. It was submitted to court in Kokayi’s case in August this year and was initially sealed. The reason for its unsealing was unclear.

Kokayi, 29, is charged with coercing a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him and to give him pornographic images, and with sending her a video of him masturbating.

But prosecutors told the court that investigators also collected “sensitive information relating to … national security” as part of the case. They told the court last week that they intend to use evidence gathered via electronic surveillance.

A handwritten note on a filing in the case said Kokayi’s father-in-law had been convicted of terrorism charges and accused Kokayi of having a “substantial interest in terrorist acts”.</s>Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at George Washington University who closely tracks court cases, uncovered the filing and posted it on Twitter.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to say on Thursday what led to the inadvertent disclosure. It was made in a recently unsealed filing in an apparently unrelated sex-crimes case charging a man named Seitu Sulayman Kokayi with coercing and enticing an underage person to engage in unlawful sexual activity. Mr. Kokayi was charged in early August, and on Aug. 22, prosecutors filed a three-page document laying out boilerplate arguments for why his case at that time needed to remain sealed.

While the filing started out referencing Mr. Kokayi, federal prosecutors abruptly switched on its second page to discussing the fact that someone named “Assange” had been secretly charged, and went on to make clear that this person was the subject of significant publicity, lived abroad and would need to be extradited — suggesting that prosecutors had inadvertently pasted text from a similar court filing into the wrong document and then filed it.

“Another procedure short of sealing will not adequately protect the needs of law enforcement at this time because, due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged,” prosecutors wrote.

They added, “The complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.”

The Justice Department has been studying how to charge Mr. Assange or WikiLeaks with some kind of criminal offense since the site began publishing its trove of secret military and diplomatic documents. Prosecutors, for example, toyed with the idea of charging Mr. Assange as a conspirator in Ms. Manning’s crime of unauthorized disclosure of secrets related to national defense. And it eventually became public that a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia was investigating people with links to WikiLeaks.

But even as the Obama administration brought criminal charges in an unprecedented number of leak-related cases, it apparently held back from charging Mr. Assange. Members of the Obama legal policy team from that era have said that they did not want to establish a precedent that could chill investigative reporting about national security matters by treating it as a crime.</s>The Justice Department inadvertently named Julian Assange in a court filing in an unrelated case, suggesting prosecutors have charged the WikiLeaks founder under seal.

Assange’s name appears twice in an August court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex.

Any charges against Assange could help illuminate the question of whether Russia coordinated with the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 presidential election. It would also suggest that, after years of internal wrangling within the Justice Department, prosecutors have decided to take a more aggressive tact against the secret-sharing website.

In one sentence, the prosecutor wrote that the charges and arrest warrant “would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.” In another sentence, the prosecutor said that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”

It was not immediately clear why Assange’s name was included in the document, though Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia — which had been investigating Assange — said, “The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.”

The Washington Post reported late Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Assange had indeed been charged. The Associated Press could not immediately confirm that.

It was not immediately clear what charges Assange, who has been holed up for years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, might face.

But recently-ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year declared the arrest of Assange a priority. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating whether Trump campaign associates had advance knowledge of Democratic emails that were published by WikiLeaks in the weeks before the 2016 election and that U.S. authorities have said were hacked by Russia. Any arrest could represent a significant development for Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election.

Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, told the AP earlier this week that he had no information about possible charges against Assange.

The filing was discovered by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who posted it on Twitter and said, “To be clear, seems Freudian, it’s for a different completely unrelated case, every other page is not related to him, EDVA just appears to have assange on the mind when filing motions to seal and used his name.”</s>Julian Assange, a major target of the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election, has been criminally charged in secret, an apparent mistake in a court filing has indicated.

The court filing, submitted by US authorities in an unrelated case, mentioned the existence of criminal charges against someone named “Assange” even though that was not the name of the defendant.

Assange, who has been holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London since seeking asylum in 2012, is considered a wanted man by US law enforcement agencies after his controversial publication of classified diplomatic cables and other secret US government documents.

One of Assange’s attorneys, Barry Pollack, said it was a “dangerous path for a democracy to take” for a government to bring criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information.

“The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed,” Pollack said in an email.

Earlier on Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US was making preparations to prosecute Assange and was confident of being able to detain him and make him stand trial.

The court filing, written by assistant US attorney Kellen Dwyer, did not specify the nature of any charges against Assange. It was submitted to the federal court in the eastern district of Virginia, which handles many cases involving national security.

WikiLeaks is under investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, for publishing tens of thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. US intelligence agencies concluded that the emails were taken by Russian government hackers as part of an operation aimed at helping the campaign of Donald Trump.

The filing was a motion asking the court to seal charges, meaning they are kept secret from public view. It argued that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged”.

It later said: “The complaint, supporting affidavit and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department in Virginia’s eastern district would not directly address the question of whether the document meant Assange had already been charged by the US.

“The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing,” the spokesman, Joshua Stueve, said in an email.

WikiLeaks said on Twitter that the filing “reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange”.

Legal analysts said the error was likely to have been caused by prosecutors copying and pasting from sealed documents outlining charges against Assange. Prosecutors are known to copy text from past court filings to make similar arguments in new cases, typically changing names and other relevant details accordingly.

WikiLeaks published more than 50,000 Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, beginning with a batch taken from the party’s servers that was dumped online shortly before its national convention in July 2016. The leak prompted the resignation of the party’s chairwoman and disrupted Clinton’s campaign. WikiLeaks later published more emails taken from the account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Assange’s group featured in Mueller’s indictment in July of a group of Russian hackers accused of carrying out the email thefts but was not charged itself. Identified only as “organization 1”, it was accused of receiving the stolen emails from the Russian operatives after exchanging messages.

The July indictment said WikiLeaks urged the Russians to give them the first batch of stolen emails in the days before the Democratic convention so it could publish them in a way that would “have a much higher impact than what you are doing”. The filings did not, however, say whether Assange’s group knew it was dealing with Kremlin-backed operatives.

The mistaken court filing was first noticed on Thursday by Seamus Hughes, an academic at Georgetown University and former US government official. It was filed in the case of a man named Seitu Sulayman Kokayi. It was submitted to court in Kokayi’s case in August this year and was initially sealed. The reason for its unsealing was unclear.

Kokayi, 29, is charged with coercing a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him and to give him pornographic images, and with sending her a video of him masturbating. However prosecutors told the court that investigators also collected “sensitive information relating to … national security” as part of the case. They told the court last week that they intend to use evidence gathered via electronic surveillance.</s>The disclosure came in a filing in a case unrelated to Julian Assange.

WASHINGTON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged under seal, prosecutors inadvertently revealed in a recently unsealed court filing – a development that could significantly advance the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and have major implications for those who publish government secrets.

The disclosure came in a filing in a case unrelated to Assange. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen Dwyer, urging a judge to keep the matter sealed, wrote “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Dwyer is also assigned to the WikiLeaks case. People familiar with the matter said what Dwyer was disclosing was true, but unintentional.

Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia said, “The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.”

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have long been investigating Assange, and in the Trump administration had begun taking a second look at whether to charge members of the WikiLeaks organization for the 2010 leak of diplomatic cables and military documents which the anti-secrecy group published. Investigators also had explored whether WikiLeaks could face criminal liability for the more recent revelation of sensitive CIA cyber-tools.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has also been exploring the publication by WikiLeaks of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the account of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Officials have alleged the emails were hacked by Russian spies and transferred to WikiLeaks.

Mueller has also been exploring, among other things, communications between the group and associates of President Donald Trump, including political operative Roger Stone and commentator and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.

In July, Mueller’s office charged 12 Russian military spies with conspiring to hack DNC computers, steal the organization’s data and publish the files in an effort to disrupt the election and referred in an indictment to WikiLeaks, described only as “Organization 1,” as the platform the Russians used to release the stolen emails.

A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

It was not immediately clear what charges Assange would face. In the past, prosecutors had contemplated pursuing a case involving conspiracy, theft of government property or violating the Espionage Act. But whether to charge the WikiLeaks founder was hardly a foregone conclusion. In the Obama administration, the Justice Department had concluded that pursuing Assange would be akin to prosecuting a news organization. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, though, had taken a more aggressive stance and vowed to crack down on all government leaks.

Barry Pollack, one of Assange’s attorneys, said, “The only thing more irresponsible than charging a person for publishing truthful information would be to put in a public filing information that clearly was not intended for the public and without any notice to Mr. Assange. Obviously, I have no idea if he has actually been charged or for what, but the notion that the federal criminal charges could be brought based on the publication of truthful information is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set.”

The filing in the Eastern District of Virginia came on Aug. 22 in a case that combines national security and sex trafficking. Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, 29, was charged with enticing a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him and send him pornographic images of herself. But he was detained in part, according to the court filing, because he “has a substantial interest in terrorist acts.”

His father-in-law, according to the filing, has been convicted of terrorist acts. The case involves previously classified information, according to government filings, and prosecutors plan to use information obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Kokayi was indicted last week and is set to be arraigned Friday morning.

The case had been sealed until early September, though by itself it attracted little notice. On Thursday evening, Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University who is known for scrubbing court filings, joked about the apparent error on Twitter – which first brought it to the attention of reporters.

Even if he is charged, Assange’s coming to the United States to face trial is no sure thing. Since June 2012, Assange has been living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, afraid that if he steps outside he will be arrested.

When he first sought asylum in the embassy, he was facing possible extradition to Sweden in a sex-crimes case. He has argued that case was a pretext for what he predicted would be his arrest and extradition to the United States.

In the years since, the Swedish case has been closed, but Assange has said he cannot risk leaving the embassy because the U.S. would attempt to have him arrested and extradited for disclosures of U.S. government secrets. Throughout that time, the U.S. has refused to say whether there are any sealed charges against Assange.

If Assange were to leave the embassy and be arrested by British authorities, he would likely still fight extradition in the British courts.

The Washington Post’s Rachel Weiner and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.</s>WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN Assange has been charged in the United States, the organisation said, in a development that could have implications for Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential election.

Prosecutors inadvertently disclosed the existence of a sealed indictment in a court filing in an unrelated case, WikiLeaks said yesterday.

The exact nature of the charges against Assange was not immediately known.

“SCOOP: US Department of Justice ‘accidentally’ reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia,” WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter.

The still-unsealed charges against Assange were revealed by Assistant US Attorney Kellen Dwyer as he made a filing in the unrelated case and urged a judge to keep that filing sealed.

Dwyer wrote: “Due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged,” according to The Washington Post.

The charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested”, Dwyer wrote.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating Assange over WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of a trove of US diplomatic cables that proved an acute embarrassment to Washington.

But the charging of Assange in the US could have implications for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into whether Donald Trump’s election campaign team colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential vote, and whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe into that.

In July, Mueller charged 12 Russian spies with conspiring to hack Democratic National Committee computers, stealing data from the organisation and publishing those files in an effort to sway the election.

One of the indictments referred to WikiLeaks, described as “Organization 1″, as the platform the Russians used to release the stolen emails.

US media were alerted late yesterday to the inadvertent disclosure, thanks to a tweet from Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He is known to follow court filings closely.

“The court filing was made in error,” said Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, US media reported. “That was not the intended name for this filing.”

The 47-year-old Assange has been holed up at Ecuador’s embassy in London since 2012, where he took refuge over fears of being extradited to the US over the 2010 WikiLeaks cable dump.

He was originally wanted in London after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to face allegations of sexual assault in Sweden.

The Swedish case has since been dropped, but Britain still wants him to face justice over breaching his bail conditions following his arrest on the sexual assault allegations.

Barry J Pollack, one of Assange’s attorneys, told the Post: “The only thing more irresponsible than charging a person for publishing truthful information would be to put in a public filing information that clearly was not intended for the public and without any notice to Mr. Assange.”

Pollack said he did not know if Assange has been charged.</s>In an accidental disclosure in two lines of an unrelated and recently unsealed court filing, the Justice Department revealed that it has prepared an indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The revelation came in a filing in a case in which 29-year-old Seitu Sulayman Kokayi was charged with sex crimes with a minor but also detained for interest in and connections to terrorism. Because the case contained previously classified information, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, who is also assigned to the WikiLeaks case, urged a judge in a filing to keep the matter sealed. He wrote, “[D]ue to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” He later added that the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Others familiar with the situation told the Washington Post that the disclosure, while accidental, was true. It appeared that prosecutors had accidentally added language from a similar filing into the document. “The court filing was made in error,” said a spokesman for the United State’s attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia. “That was not the intended name for this filing.”

The mistake was first discovered by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at George Washington University, who uncovered the filing and posted it to Twitter. It’s not clear if prosecutors have actually filed charges against Assange, and one of Assange’s attorneys told the press that he did not know of any charges.

Even if charges are filed, it’s possible Assange could continue living in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he first took shelter in 2012 from sex crime charges in Sweden, and where he has since stayed because of a professed fear that he would be extradited to the U.S. and punished for publishing government secrets. According to the Wall Street Journal, it’s possible prosecutors will publicly indict Assange in an attempt to convince Ecuadorian officials to turn him over. There have been reports that officials have tired of Assange’s presence in the embassy.

An indictment could have implications for press freedom and for those who publish government secrets obtained by a third party. The Department of Justice has been deliberating whether it could charge Assange since 2010, when Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department documents. There has been a public debate as to whether Assange’s actions amounted to journalism. But the Obama-era Justice Department decided against pushing a case that could set a precedent of criminalizing investigative reporting. The Trump administration is less friendly to leaks of any kind. President Trump himself, who has said he “loves” WikiLeaks for publishing the Democratic National Committee emails, has muddled the administration’s message.

An indictment could also indicate a development in the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference into the 2016 election. Russian intelligence officers hacked thousands of emails from Democrats before the race as part of their disruption campaign and handed them off to WikiLeaks, which published them. Robert Mueller has been looking into the communications between WikiLeaks and Trump associates, including political operative Roger Stone.</s>WASHINGTON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was behind a massive dump of classified US documents in 2010, has been charged in the United States, WikiLeaks said Thursday.

Prosecutors revealed the existence of the sealed indictment inadvertently in a court filing in an unrelated case, WikiLeaks said.

The exact nature of the charges against Assange was not immediately known.

"SCOOP: US Department of Justice 'accidentally' reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia," Wikileaks wrote on Twitter.

The still unsealed charges against Assange were disclosed by Assistant US Attorney Kellen Dwyer as she made a filing in the unrelated case and urged a judge to keep that filing sealed.

Dwyer wrote, "due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged," according to The Washington Post.

Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would "need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested."

US media were alerted late Thursday to the inadvertent disclosure thanks to a tweet from Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He is known to follow court filings closely.</s>WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors may be preparing criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to media reports.

A federal prosecutor in Virginia named Assange twice in a court filing in August for an unrelated case concerning a man accused of coercing a minor for sex. The prosecutor was attempting to keep the unrelated case under seal.

Noting the “sophistication of the defendant,” a prosecutor wrote a judge in the filing that “no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged,” The Washington Post reported.

The newspaper reported that Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer in the Eastern District of Virginia told the judge that the possible charges “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia said the court filing was made “ in error.”

On Twitter, WikiLeaks described the disclosure as “an apparent cut-and-paste error.”

Seamus Hughes, Deputy Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, found the filing and posted part of it on Twitter Thursday night.

“To be clear, seems Freudian, it’s for a different completely unrelated case, every other page is not related to him, EDVA just appears to have Assange on the mind when filing motions to seal and used his name," Hughes said in a tweet.

Assange, 47, currently lives in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning on rape allegations. The investigation was dropped last year, but Assange still faces charges in Britain for skipping bail.

The Australian national has decided to remain in the embassy out of fear that the United States would immediately seek his arrest and extradition over the leaking of classified documents to WikiLeaks by then-U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning.

WikiLeaks is also the focus of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections by distributing hacked materials.

Contributing: Doug Stanglin and the Associated Press.</s>Following an earlier report that the Justice Department was looking to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Washington Post has now reported that Assange may have been charged under seal in a revelation that appears to have stemmed from a mistake in a court filing.

The circumstances by which this information was disclosed, if indeed true, involved a filing in an unrelated case by a lawyer also assigned to the WikiLeaks case. Per the Post, the August filing related to a case involving national security and sex trafficking in the Eastern District of Virginia. The name Assange appeared at least twice in the filing:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, urging a judge to keep the matter sealed, wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Sources familiar with the matter told the Post that Dwyer’s disclosure was “was true, but unintentional.” Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, told the Post the filing was “made in error” and that it was “not the intended name for this filing.”

The revelation was surfaced Thursday on Twitter by Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, who posted a screengrab of the filing and tweeted that the Eastern District of Virginia “appears to have [A]ssange on the mind when filing motions to seal and used his name.”



The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Thursday that the Justice Department was looking to prosecute Assange and was “increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him into a U.S. courtroom,” citing sources in Washington familiar with the matter. But that’s easier said than done, as it would require his arrest and extradition.

Assange has been living in Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, and the Journal reported its sources wouldn’t reveal whether talks with the U.K. or Ecuador were in progress.
An unrelated court filing accidentally reveals that Julian Assange, a major target of the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 United States election, has been charged.