WASHINGTON (Reuters) - WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are facing multiple investigations by U.S. authorities, including three congressional probes and a federal criminal inquiry, sources familiar with the investigations said.

The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees and leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee are probing the websites role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, according to the sources, who all requested anonymity, and public documents.

WikiLeaks published emails hacked from the Democratic Party and the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign chairman.

In a report issued in January, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Russian intelligence did the hacking, and the GRU, Russias military intelligence agency, sent hacked data to WikiLeaks via intermediaries.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating who gave WikiLeaks the hacked Democratic National Committee data that WikiLeaks published in July 2016, which included more than 44,000 emails and 17,000 attachments, the sources said. So far, its inquiries are still at an early stage, the sources said.

Senate Judiciary Committee leaders have asked Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law, for emails related to WikiLeaks.

The House Intelligence Committee has questioned Roger Stone, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump and a veteran political operative who promoted WikiLeaks disclosures of the emails on Twitter.

After initially refusing to identify an intermediary he dealt with who was in contact with Assange, Stone later told the committee it was Randy Credico, a left-wing comedian.

The committee sent Credico a letter asking him to appear voluntarily. When he declined to do so, the panel sent him a subpoena requiring him to give a deposition.

Credicos lawyer, Martin Stoller, said on Wednesday that Credico was considering whether to invoke his First and Fifth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution to avoid answering questions.

It is unclear whether Credico could help investigators uncover where WikiLeaks got the hacked Democratic emails.

In emails to Reuters, Stone has dismissed the intelligence agencies conclusion about Russian hacking.

It is not known whether Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, is investigating WikiLeaks.

A U.S. lawyer for Assange, Barry Pollack, said Muellers team had not contacted him.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, are conducting a criminal investigation into how WikiLeaks obtained thousands of classified U.S. government documents, including CIA materials and most recently ultra-secret technical materials describing American spy agency hacking tools. Law enforcement sources and Pollack said the probe began several years ago.

Assange has lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for several years after taking refuge there when Swedish authorities sought his extradition in a sexual molestation case.

(This story has been refiled to fix spelling of WikiLeaks in headline)

Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Jonathan Oatis

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WikiLeaks faces U.S. probes into its 2016 election role and ...

The release of the files started on 5 July 2012.[5] The database comprises 2,434,899 emails from 680 domains.[5][6] At least 400,000 files are in Arabic and 68,000 files in Russian.[7] Media organisations working with WikiLeaks on the release include the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar, the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, the Italian weekly L'espresso, the German public radio and television broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) of the ARD consortium, the French information website OWNI and the Spanish website Pblico.[8] The New York City based multinational news agency Associated Press (AP) was initially announced by WikiLeaks to be helping with the release. The claim was withdrawn by WikiLeaks and an AP spokesperson stated that AP was "reviewing the emails for possible coverage [and] did not have any advance agreement on how [it] might handle the material."[9] According to Al Akhbar's analysis, the Syria Files "illuminateoften in small waysthe nature of power within and the inner workings of certain political and economic elements in Syria".[10]Al Akhbar states its confidence that "the emails are authentic, that the senders and receivers are mainly who they say they are".[10]

A hacktivist group of the Anonymous collective claimed credit for obtaining the emails and providing them to WikiLeaks. Anonymous stated that it had "worked day and night" in order to access computer servers in Syria and that "the data available had been so massive that downloading it had taken several weeks." Anonymous gave the data to WikiLeaks because it judged WikiLeaks to be "supremely well equipped to handle a disclosure of this magnitude". Anonymous stated that as long as Bashar al-Assad remains in power, it will continue "to assist the courageous freedom fighters and activists in Syria".[11]

According to emails published by WikiLeaks on 5 July 2012,[12] the Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica increased its sale of mobile communications equipment to Syrian authorities during 2011, delivering 500 of these to the Damascus suburb Muadamia in May 2011,[1][13] after the Syrian Civil War had started, and sending engineers to Damascus in February 2012 to provide training in using the communications equipment in helicopter terminals,[14] while the conflict continued.[2]

In May 2011, the public relations firm Brown Lloyd James sent an email to Syrian authorities "on how to create the appearance it is pursuing reform while repressing the uprising", in Ynetnews' description of an email[15] published by WikiLeaks on 6 July.[3] Brown Lloyd James advised that "Refocusing the perception of outsiders and Syrians on reform will provide political cover to the generally sympathetic US Government, and will delegitimize critics at home and abroad. In our view, the President needs to communicate more often and with more finely-tuned messaging and the First Lady needs to get in the game. The absence of a public figure as popular, capable, and attuned to the hopes of the people as Her Excellency at such a critical moment is conspicuous. The key is to show strength and sympathy at once."[4][16] The company recommended a public relations campaign to "create a reform 'echo-chamber' by developing media coverage outside of Syria that points to the President's difficult task of wanting reform" so that the "coverage [would] rebound into Syria".[4][16] Brown Lloyd James also recommended "countering ... the daily torrent of criticism and lies" by "[a] 24-hour media monitoring and response system [that] should be in place with assets in UK and US markets; [monitoring] social media sites and [challenging and removing] false sites; and a steady, constantly updated messaging document that contains talking points geared to latest developments."[4][16]

Brown Lloyd James stated that the document was not paid for, was a "'last-ditch' effort 'to encourage a peaceful outcome rather than violence',[4] and that it was sent to Asma al-Assad, the wife of President Bashar al-Assad.[3]

On 8 July 2012, Al Akhbar presented an analysis of emails by President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma al-Assad. Al Akhbar listed the main topics of the al-Assad's Syria Files emails, and stated, "Viewed through the prism of the 'Syria Files', Syrias first couple appear to be occupied with their representative capacities, with ample time devoted to the state of the palatial gardens, renovations, the stationary needs of low-level employees, but also issues related to bolstering the couples image, be it via charitable efforts or through political favors. During the first year of the uprising covered by the emails in the cache, the official and unofficial correspondence of the First Couple and ministry of presidential affairs present only few references to the ongoing tumult.... But there is no real sense of tangible power on behalf of the First Couple present within the 'Syria Files.' What is revealed is only a faade, or perhaps fittingly, a brand calculated to cloak another system: the military-security machine, which remains as of yet tightly in control and far from prying eyes."[10]

Syria Files examined by Al Akhbar show that after businessman Rami Makhlouf publicly claimed to respond to protestors' demands by "repenting" from business, selling shares and investing his money and time in charity and development projects, he continued to invest in several banks during 2011 and 2012. In late January 2012, he bought about 15 times as much shares (by value) as he sold, buying S127,000,000 and selling S8,670,000 of shares, mostly in Qatar National BankSyria and Syria International Islamic Bank.[17][18]

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Syria Files - Wikipedia

A 2016 email sent to candidate Donald Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.

The email sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 noted that Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC and included a link and a decryption key, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.

The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents.

The full email which was first described to CNN as being sent on Sept. 4, 10 days earlier indicates that the writer may have simply been flagging information that was already widely available. CNN later corrected its story to note the email had been sent Sept. 14.

The message also noted that information from former secretary of state Colin Powells inbox was available on DCLeaks.com. That development, too, had been publicly reported earlier that day.

Alan S. Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., described it as one of a ton of unsolicited emails like this on a variety of topics.

Futerfas said Erickson was unknown to Trump Jr. or the campaign. The message was one of thousands turned over to the House Intelligence Committee and others investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, emails that included spam and junk emails. Trump Jr. was asked about the email Wednesday, when he spent about seven hours behind closed doors answering questions from members of the committee.

The email was never read or responded to and the House Intelligence Committee knows this, Futerfas said. It is profoundly disappointing that members of the House Intelligence Committee would deliberately leak a document, with the misleading suggestion that the information was not public, when they know that there is not a scintilla of evidence that Mr. Trump Jr. read or responded to the email.

Futerfas said that he and Trump Jr. had been required to surrender their electronic devices during the interview for security reasons. He expressed anger that details of the session leaked out before it had even concluded. We are concerned that these actions, combined with the deliberate and misleading leak of a meaningless email, undermines the credibility of the serious work the House Intelligence Committee is supposedly undertaking, he said.

House Intelligence Committee officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The email came from a Yahoo email address. It is unclear whether the senders name is actually Michael Erickson. The author could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Donald Trump Jr. did not answer some questions during a closed hearing on Dec. 6. (The Washington Post)

In addition to Trump Jr., it was sent to a rarely used address for Donald Trump, as well as Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen and a Gmail account that had sometimes been used by Hope Hicks, who is now the White House communications director. It also went to several other Trump Organization employees, with the subject line Trump: Another Wikileaks DNC Upload.

Karoun Demirjian, Ellen Nakashima and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

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Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents that were ...

When first published Friday morning, the story, written by senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju and politics reporter Jeremy Herb, said the email was sent to the Trumps on September 4, 2016. It was corrected to say that the email was actually sent on September 14, one day after WikiLeaks made the documents public.

"CNN's initial reporting of the date on an email sent to members of the Trump campaign about Wikileaks documents, which was confirmed by two sources to CNN, was incorrect," CNN said in a statement. "We have updated our story to include the correct date, and present the proper context for the timing of email."

In its updated story, CNN acknowledged, "The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported."

A CNN spokesperson said there will not be disciplinary action in this case because the reporters followed CNN's editorial standards process, which requires review and approval of the use of anonymous sources. CNN says it does not believe that the sources intended to deceive the reporters.

Before the correction, the story -- which relied on multiple sources who described the email to CNN -- had been heavily promoted by the network. CNN devoted multiple segments to discussing it on air. It was also the lead story on its homepage for much of Friday morning and into the afternoon. During that time, CBS News also reported that it had matched CNN's initial reporting.

But at 1 p.m. ET, the story unraveled. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the email in question, which CNN did not have, and reported it was sent on the afternoon of September 14 -- 10 days after CNN had reported it was sent. The Wall Street Journal quickly matched The Post's reporting and The Daily Caller posted a copy of the email.

CNN corrected its story at 3:45 p.m. ET. A network spokesperson said that as soon as the network had reviewed its reporting and independently confirmed that the story was wrong, it moved to correct it. CBS News also corrected its story.

Both Raju and Herb declined to comment through a spokesperson.

The error prompted Donald Trump Jr. to attack CNN. In a series of tweets, he characterized the story as fake news and went after the credibility of the network. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, also attacked CNN and CBS News.

President Trump responded to the error at a rally Friday night by thanking CNN for apologizing for it, though the network hasn't done so.

Friday's correction is not the first high-profile error in recent memory for CNN. Earlier this year, the network retracted a story about former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Three journalists, including the executive editor in charge of the network's new investigative unit, resigned their positions after the publication of that story.

CNN's error also comes on the heels of a major correction from ABC News. Last Friday, ABC News' Brian Ross reported based on one source that Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that as a candidate Trump instructed him to make contact with Russians. That report, which ABC News has said was not fully vetted through its editorial standards process, was later corrected to say that Flynn was prepared to testify the instruction came while Trump was president-elect. ABC News has since suspended Ross for four weeks without pay.

CNNMoney (New York) First published December 8, 2017: 6:30 PM ET

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CNN corrects story on email to Trumps about Wikileaks - Dec ...