Hillary Clinton knocked Julian Assange in an interview on Australian television that aired Sunday night, accusing the Wikileaks founder of doing “the bidding of a dictator.”

In an appearance of Australia’s news program Four Corners, the 2016 presidential candidate said of the Wikileaks founder: “I think Julian Assange was become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator.”

Interviewer Sarah Ferguson said that many see Assange as a martyr of free speech and freedom of information for his leaks, but Clinton contended that the Australian is “a tool of Russian intelligence.”

“And if he’s such a, you know, martyr of free speech, why doesn’t WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia?” she added.

Clinton’s issues with Assange date back to when she was secretary of state, when Wikileaks first released thousands of hacked State Department documents. During the 2016 election season, Wikileaks targeted Clinton’s campaign, dumping thousands of hacked emails from chairman John Podesta’s account.

In her interview with Four Corners, Clinton continued to reject Assange’s claim that he is simply a champion of freedom of information.

“If all you did was publish it, that would be one thing,” she said. “But there was a concerted operation between WikiLeaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to, as I say, weaponize that information.”

Assange, who remains holed up in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, responded to her comments in a tweet, describing a “cold creepiness” of the former secretary of state.

Watch above, via ABC.

[image via screengrab]

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