Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State under President Donald Trump, has been summoned by a Spanish court to explain an alleged US government plot to assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to ABC Spain.

The alleged plot was first revealed by Yahoo News in September, which reported that senior CIA and Trump administration officials discussed possibly kidnapping or killing Assange after being angered by Wikileaks' publication of sensitive CIA hacking tools.

The discussions took place "at the highest levels" of the Trump administration, a former senior counterintelligence official told the outlet, with officials even requesting "sketches" or "options" for how to assassinate Assange.