The UK Guardian is reporting:

Spanish police ‘recover Julian Assange surveillance footage’

Material that originated from Ecuadorian embassy was reportedly offered for sale

WikiLeaks has said it has uncovered a surveillance operation against Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy and that images, documents and videos gathered have been offered for sale.

Spanish police were said to have mounted a sting operation against unnamed individuals in Madrid who offered the material for sale in what lawyers and colleagues of Assange said on Wednesday was an attempt at extortion.

Some of the material came from video cameras with a capacity to record audio and which had been installed last year, a press conference organised by WikiLeaks was told.

WikiLeaks said material including video, audio, copies of private legal documents and a medical report had turned up in Spain, where a group was said to have threatened to start publishing unless they were paid €3m (£2.6m).

The Guardian reported last year that Ecuador had bankrolled a multimillion-dollar surveillance operation to protect and support Assange at the embassy, employing an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even the British police.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said he had met four individuals, one of whom he was told was a ringleader and who had prior convictions. There was a possibility that at least one was not a Spanish national, he added. The matter is now in the hands of an investigating Spanish magistrate, according to the whistleblowing website.

Hrafnsson said the surveillance at the embassy – which had led to Assange living a “Truman Show existence” – was part of an escalation designed to result in Assange being extradited to the US.

“If you connect the dots it’s easy to draw that picture,” said Hrafnsson, who was appearing with the barrister Jennifer Robinson and Fidel Narváez, a former consul of Ecuador in London.

WikiLeaks said the surveillance had constituted a total invasion of privacy, which had included recordings of Assange’s meetings with his lawyers and doctor.

Robinson, a lawyer at Doughty Street Chambers who has long advised Assange, described the surveillance as a severe breach of lawyer-client privilege, which had undermined the ability of his legal team to properly defend their client.

Copies of photos, videos and documents recovered from the alleged extortionists were projected on to a screen at the press conference. There was no immediate comment from Ecuadorian authorities or Spanish police.

In March last year, Ecuador cut off Assange’s internet connection, saying he had breached an agreement not to issue messages that might interfere with other states. In a statement, the government said his behaviour on social media “put at risk the good relations [Ecuador] maintains with the United Kingdom, with the other states of the European Union, and with other nations”.

WikiLeaks believes Assange would be extradited to the US if he left the building and was arrested by the Metropolitan police on an outstanding warrant for failing to surrender to bail.

In his first year in office, Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, called Assange a “hacker”, an “inherited problem” and a “stone in the shoe”.

If Assange has released everything, why this attempt at extortion? And why arrest him, now? Remember: He never released Phase III

Assange sparked the pizzagate investigation October 7, 2016 when Wikileaks began to release the Podesta emails an hour after the Trump Access Hollywood video was released. Citizen investigators, appetites whetted by the DNC email leaks and hints of child trafficking from FBIAnon in July 2016, fell on the leaks like locusts. October 17, U.S. SoS John Kerry visited the Ecuadorian embassy and forced them to cut Assange's internet but Wikileaks kept publishing Podesta emails daily.

Then the internet as a whole was shutdown across much of the U.S. October 21, 2016 by a DDoS attack against domain name registrar Dyn. The Obama administration pointed at the time it was the Russians:

"This cyberattack comes at a time of heightened tension, with the US claiming it will retaliate against Russia after accusing the country of orchestrating hacks of the Democratic National Committee.

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are aware of the attacks and investigating "all possible causes," DHS told Mashable."

Pizzagate investigator @RebelSkum reported the internet shutdown coincided with Reddit mod tampering with r/Wikileaks:

"Theories abound as to why the attack took place, however the culprit(s) remain unknown. The attack did not seem to benefit Anonymous or Wikileaks much, and it could have just as likely been a multi-staged attack on those organizations to prevent the eventual creation of #Pizzagate.

The attack took place during the time the public was becoming aware of the Podesta situation. Thus the attackers could buy time for parties afraid of the contents of those emails, distract and frighten the public, and make an enemy out of organizations who would eventually investigate them.

Before and during this time there was also a great deal of suspicious Reddit mod activity, including the removal of many posts from /r/WikiLeaks [5] "

From the time Assange was silenced, there was an onslaught of trolls attempting to convince people Wikileaks was a CIA-controlled honeypot. Here's a thread implying Assange was extracted from the embassy and extradited to the U.S. on October 21, 2016. During the campaign, Hillary worked hard to paint Assange as a Putin operative:

During the second debate between the two presidential candidates, on 9 October 2016, Hillary Clinton accused Russian hackers for the leak of information to WikiLeaks, presumably working under the orders of Vladimir Putin: "... But you know, let's talk about what's really going on. Because our intelligence community said the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking, on American accounts to influence our election ... And believe me, they're not doing it to get me elected. They're doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump".

Remember, Assange began releasing the information in phases, but his internet was shut down before "Phase III" could be released. To this day, no one knows what "Phase III" contained, or why Wikileaks failed to release it.

Is this why Ecuador installed video cameras to record Assange 24/7?

The indictment against him was filed months ago...why wait until now to arrest him?

If Assange goes to trial, will it allow the defense to make Phase III documents part of the public record?

Does this have anything to do with Obama warning Berliners in his April 6 town hall speech to beware of fake videos that cause political upheaval? At 1:08:29 he says,

"It's going to get worse with AI. You're gonna start seeing... If you think Fake News is bad now, what you're gonna start seeing is the ability to duplicate people's speech and figures so that distinguishing what's true and what's not is going to become even more difficult."

Remember when Jennifer Palmieri tried to get ahead of "fakes" from Wikileaks the week after they announced Phase III was coming?