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The leaking of classified information on the US military’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq occurred during Barack Obama’s time as US President, but it was his successor Donald Trump who pursued prosecution.
It was also Assange’s website, Wikileaks, that was behind the hacking and publishing of Hillary Clinton’s private emails, occurring just weeks before she was slated to challenge Trump at the ballot box in the 2016 presidential election.
On the campaign trail, Trump heaped praise on Wikileaks, saying at one rally that “Wikileaks is like a treasure trove,” and “Boy, I love reading Wikileaks,” at another.
But in 2019, when asked about the prosecution of Assange, Trump said: “I know nothing really about him. That’s not my deal in life.”
For her part, Clinton welcomed the arrest of Assange, saying in 2019: “The bottom line is he has to answer for what he has done.”
As Obama’s vice-president back in 2010, Joe Biden remarked that the Afghanistan leak had put people’s lives in danger and said he more closely resembled a high-tech terrorist than a whistleblower.
Currently, as US President, Biden hasn’t said much about Assange, instead letting his actions do the talking by continuing to pursue his extradition to the US to face charges there.