Julian Assange has begun leaking information about Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in what has been termed WikiLeak's "October Surprise."
The first set of leaks are emails belonging to Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. The data dumps detail how Clinton signed off the sale of a uranium company to Russian government-controlled interests and then received donations from the chairman of the company. They also revealed that she knew Saudi Arabia was providing financial and logistical support to ISIL but the US government continued its arms contracts with Saudi Arabia.
Assange announced WikiLeaks would be releasing documents pertaining to the US electoral system as part of its 10-year anniversary.
In a video, Assange said the forthcoming documents will pertain to Google, the US presidential election, arms trading, war, oil and mass surveillance.
WikiLeaks said it hopes to release them on a weekly basis over the next 10 weeks, so all information related to the US presidential race will be published before election day on November 8.
WikiLeaks is currently releasing a series of emails involving Clinton's campaign manager, Chairman John Podesta.
Podesta controls the Podesta Group, a major lobbying firm, is the Chair of the Center for American Progess (CAP), a think-tank, and was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001.
Part of the email leak focuses on Podesta's communications relating to nuclear energy and media handling over donations to the Clinton Foundation from mining and nuclear interests.
It makes the point that a uranium company in the US, uranium being a strategic asset and can be used to produce nuclear weapons, was sold to Russian government-controlled interests, which was seemingly signed off by then Secretary of State, Clinton. In addition, the chairman of the company, Uranium One, donated to the Clinton Foundation and these donations were undisclosed.
Another email details how Clinton reveals she knew the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia were providing financial and logistical support to ISIL, but the US government continued to hold arms contracts with Saudia Arabia anyway.
Other emails detail attack strategies against Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and the idea that Clinton was close with US journalists, which implied she received questions from town hall meetings in advance.
It has also been revealed that the former lead singer of Blink 182, Tom DeLonge, emailed Podesta about their apparent mutual interest in UFOs.
Some emails have revealed private information about the health of some of the staff at the Clinton Foundation, including the name and information about one staff member who said she would commit suicide due to the stress of working for the Foundation. WikiLeaks has been criticised in the past for revealing private medical information in the data dumps.
The leak was billed as an “October Surprise” and interest had been mounting ahead of this week's 'reveal'. “There is enormous expectation in the United States. Some of that expectation will be partly answered; but you should understand that if we're going to make a major publication in relation to the United States at a particular hour, we don't do it at 3AM,” said Assange.
Assange declined at the time to say whether the upcoming releases would tilt the election toward Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, though as the website was responsible for leaking the US Democratic National Committee emails in July this year, rumours circulated that the leaks would affect Clinton’s reputation.
"Are upcoming publications significant in relation to the US election? Yeah, we think they're significant," said Assange. "Do they show interesting features of US power factions and how they operate? Yes, they do."
However, he denied accusations that he and his organisation are targeting Clinton and the Democratic Party specifically, saying he felt sorry for the presidential candidates.
"I certainly feel sorry for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump," he said. "These are two people who are tormented by their ambitions, in different ways."
Tension is mounting in the US as it gets closer to November. In September, Clinton was revealed to have walking pneumonia, a mild form of the disease.
Recently, Trump lashed out at Google as he accused the search engine of political bias by suppressing bad news about his opponent Hillary Clinton.
The New York Times’ national polling average has Clinton at 45 per cent and Trump trailing five points behind at 4 per cent.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK