WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was hit with a new federal indictment on Wednesday accusing him of conspiring with hackers, including the group “Anonymous.”
The superseding indictment doesn’t add new charges beyond the 18 counts the Department of Justice unsealed last year — but broadens “the scope of the conspiracy” that Assange is accused in, prosecutors said.
“Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks,” the DOJ said in a press release.
Prosecutors said that Assange and a WikiLeaks did their recruiting during conferences in the Netherlands and Malaysia in 2009.
“Since the early days of WikiLeaks, Assange has spoken at hacking conferences to tout his own history as a ‘famous teenage hacker in Australia’ and to encourage others to hack to obtain information for WikiLeaks,” the DOJ said.
In 2010, Assange allegedly gained access to a NATO country’s government computer system, prosecutors said.
Two years later, he allegedly “communicated directly” with the leader of the hacking group LulzSec — who was by the cooperating with the FBI — and “provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.”
“In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked materials would be from the CIA, NSA, or The New York Times,” the DOJ said.
WikiLeaks allegedly obtained and published information it got as part of a hack into an “American intelligence consulting company by an ‘Anonymous’ and LulzSec-affiliated hacker,” prosecutors said.
Assange was charged last year with allegedly violating the Espionage Act by conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to illegally obtain and disclose classified information.
He was arrested after being booted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and is now at the center of an ongoing extradition battle over whether he should be sent to the United States. He is currently locked up in a UK jail on other charges.
His alleged publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents could see him sentenced to 175 years in prison, his legal team has said.
Assange’s lawyers claim he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protections and that the US charges against him are politically motivated.
With Post wires