Stephen Yang/Reuters
Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Julian Assange must “answer for what he has done” after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested on Thursday. At an event in New York, Clinton reportedly said that the charges against Assange make it clear that he is being punished for hacking into a “military computer to steal information from the United States government,” rather than for being a journalist. The Guardian reports Clinton also noted that Assange faces other criminal charges. “Look, I’ll wait and see what happens with the charges and how it proceeds, but he skipped bail in the UK,” she said. “The bottom line is he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it’s been charged.”
Assange is accused of working with Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a classified government computer in 2010. He was forcibly removed from London’s Ecuadorian embassy—where he was granted asylum—and the U.S. is seeking his extradition. In a jab to President Trump, Clinton said she found it “a little ironic” that Assange may be the “only foreigner that this administration would welcome to the United States.”