The controversial whistleblower Julian Assange will be told early next year whether he will be extradited by the British to the United States, to be tried there for, among other things, espionage.
The verdict in the case is on January 4, according to the British judge.
The decision thus comes after the US presidential elections on November 3. US President Trump would have pardoned the WikiLeaks founder if he told who was behind the Democratic Party hack in 2016, just before the presidential election.
The American justice is prosecuting the Australian Assange for, among other things, the publication of confidential material about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq on his whistleblower website.
Assange spent years in hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition, but last year that country had him removed from the embassy by British police.
During the 2016 US election campaign, WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic Party stolen by hackers. They were detrimental to candidate Hillary Clinton, who lost the election to Trump.
American intelligence services suspect that Russia is behind it.