The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now a “priority” for the US, the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said.

We travel back to April, 2017 here, when Sessions admitted that the Justice Department was gunning to lock up Assange.

Hours later it was reported that authorities have prepared charges against Assange, who is currently holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Asked whether it was a priority for the justice department to arrest Assange “once and for all”, Sessions told a press conference in El Paso, Texas, on Thursday: “We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks. This is a matter that’s gone beyond anything I’m aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks and some of them are quite serious.”

He added: “So yes, it is a priority. We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail.”

US authorities has been investigating Assange and WikiLeaks since at least 2010 when it released, in cooperation with publications including the Guardian, more than a quarter of a million classified cables from US embassies leaked by US army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

Republican politicians expressed fury at the time, accusing Assange of treason, and Trump himself told an interviewer: “I think it’s disgraceful, I think there should be like death penalty or something.”

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