Julian Assange, the co-founder and editor of Wikileaks, says that his organization will “absolutely” be releasing thousands of “significant” documents regarding Hillary Clinton before the Nov. 8 election.
“We’re working around the clock. We have received quite a lot of material,” Assange told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly during an interview that aired Wednesday.
Asked if he will release the documents before the election, Assange replied: “Yes, absolutely.”
Assange has previously teased an “October surprise” that could threaten Clinton’s candidacy. The release, should it occur, would follow last month’s dump of nearly 20,000 pages of emails and documents hacked from the Democratic National Committee
The release contained emails showing that DNC officials, including former chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, favored Hillary Clinton over her primary challenger, Bernie Sanders. Wasserman Schultz resigned amid the uproar, as did four other DNC officials.
During Wednesday’s interview, which was the first of two parts, Kelly asked Assange if he believes that the forthcoming release will be an election “game changer.”
“I think it’s significant,” he said, appearing to shy away from using Kelly’s term. “It depends on how it catches fire in the public and in the media.”
“I don’t want to scoop ourselves,” he said when ask to describe the Wikileaks material. “We have a lot of pages of material, thousands of pages of material.”
“I don’t want to give the game away, but it’s a variety of different types of documents from different types of institutions that are associated with the election campaign.”
He added that there are “some quite unexpected angles that are, you know, quite interesting, some even entertaining.”
Assange and Wikileaks have faced criticism from some for releasing the hacked DNC emails. Federal authorities believe that the hack was carried out by Russian intelligence.
But Assange defended his methods, saying that the electorate has a right to know for whom they are voting.
“In the case of the DNC leaks we pushed as fast as we could to try and get it in before the Democratic nomination conference because obviously people have a right to know who they’re nominating,” he said.
Likewise, “people involved in [the Nov. 8] election have a right to understand who they’re electing.”
