Assange promises election leaks but doesn’t drop October surprise

WikiLeaks held a much-hyped news conference early Tuesday morning that its supporters and Hillary Clinton's critics hoped would damage her chances at the presidency, even driving the Twitter hashtag #octobersurprise.

But instead of revealing new documents, the event was an hour-plus-long infomercial celebrating the activist group's 10th anniversary, with speakers extolling the virtues of WikiLeaks and its past achievements.


Founder Julian Assange appeared via video at the Berlin event, wearing a shirt with the word "truth" printed on it. "I've seen the internet and I understand there are enormous expectations in the United States," he said. But, he explained, "if we're going to make a major publication" in the U.S., "we don't do it at 3 a.m."

He still promised more documents ahead, including information "affecting three powerful organizations in three different states, as well as, of course, information previously referred to about the U.S. election process."

Assange said the organization would publish documents on various subjects every week for the next 10 weeks, and vowed that the U.S. election-related documents would all come out before Election Day.

"There's been a lot of misquoting of me and WikiLeaks publications," Assange said, noting reports that the upcoming leaks are because "we intend to harm Hillary Clinton ... or I don't like Hillary Clinton." That framing is "false," Assange said. "Do they show interesting features of us power factions and how they operate? Yes they do."

