US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo must brief Congress on his meeting with Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia and reveal whether their discussion included any mention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, six Democratic members of Congress said in a letter published on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th December, 2018) US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo must brief Congress on his meeting with Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia and reveal whether their discussion included any mention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, six Democratic members of Congress said in a letter published on Tuesday."We write to request that the State Department immediately brief Congress on your November 26 meeting with Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia," they said in their letter to Pompeo. "We remain deeply interested in knowing whether you discussed the future of Julian Assange's presence in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in your meeting with Foreign Minister Valencia."
The Democrats requested that the briefing address several matters, including whether President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, as has been suggested in several media reports. They aslo asked that Pompeo reveal whether the US State Department has requested a complete log of all the visitors Assange has received at the embassy, and if the State Department received any security camera footage to supplement the visitors logs.
The official readout of the meeting from the State Department did not indicate whether Assange was a topic of conversation.
Assange has lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, first to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape charges that were eventually dropped and later to avoid arrest by the United Kingdom on bail jumping charges.
WikiLeaks has been targeted by US officials for releasing classified documents on US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange also played an important role in the 2016 US presidential election by releasing documents from the Democratic National Committee showing a rigged nominating process to favor candidate Hillary Clinton, and he later published emails stolen from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.
