Julian Assange is finally free. He is set to enter a guilty plea in Saipan and be sentenced to time served.
Free at Last
AP news reports WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty in deal with US and be freed from prison
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will allow him to walk free and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents.
Assange left a British prison on Monday and will appear later this week in the U.S. federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific. He’s expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.
The guilty plea, which must be approved by a judge, brings an abrupt conclusion to a criminal case of international intrigue and to the U.S. government’s years-long pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. Investigators, by contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke laws meant to protect sensitive information and put the country’s national security at risk.
He is expected to return to his home country of Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Northern Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.
The Wall Street Journal adds these Comments on Assange.
The plea deal offers a neat solution to what was becoming an increasing political headache for the U.S. government.
Earlier this year, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he hoped the U.S. could find a way to conclude the case against Assange, and lawmakers there passed a motion calling for Assange to be allowed to return to his native home. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also weighed in, saying that the British courts should not extradite Assange to the U.S. In February, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, said Assange shouldn’t be extradited to the U.S. to face trial, saying he suffered from “depressive disorder” and was at risk of being placed in solitary confinement.
The legal drama began around 2010, when WikiLeaks released a huge trove of classified documents that presented a bleak view of America’s actions in two wars. The website collaborated with top media organizations, and for years, Assange reveled in his status as a proponent of radical government transparency.
The public perception of him soured after the 2016 election, when WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of documents the U.S. says were stolen from Democrats by Russian government hackers. Former President Donald Trump’s first CIA director, Mike Pompeo, called the website a “nonstate hostile intelligence service.”
U.S. prosecutors later charged Assange in connection with the Iraq and Afghanistan leaks, accusing him of conspiring to help former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning break into a Defense Department computer system by trying to help her crack a password. They added charges under a U.S. espionage law, leaving him to face 18 counts of conspiring to disclose classified information and hack a military computer.
Trump-era Justice Department officials who charged Assange sought to differentiate his work from journalism because they alleged Assange solicited the classified material and knew its publication would jeopardize lives. The Obama administration also considered charging him but declined because of concerns about how it could affect conventional journalism.
In the Biden administration, officials struggled with how to proceed, given some parallels between his work and that of the press, and the passage of time, which would likely mean he had already essentially served any sentence he might get after being convicted in a trial.
Flashback June 19, 2022: Trump Pardoned Crooked Political Supporters But Left Assange and Snowden to Rot
Trump’s use of the pardon power was marked by an unprecedented degree of favoritism. He frequently granted executive clemency to his supporters or political allies, or following personal appeals or campaigns in conservative media, as in the cases of Rod Blagojevich, Michael Milken, Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza, and Clint Lorance, as well as Bernard Kerik. Trump granted clemency to five of his former campaign staff members and political advisers: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Stephen K. Bannon, and George Papadopoulos.
In November and December 2020, Trump pardoned four Blackwater guards convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre; white-collar criminals Michael Milken and Bernard Kerik; and daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law Charles Kushner.
In his last full day in office, Trump granted 143 pardons and commutations, including to his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy, and former Republican congressmen Rick Renzi, Robert Hayes, and Randall “Duke” Cunningham.
Charles Kushner is a wealthy real estate executive and the father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. After Charles Kushner learned that his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal investigators, Kushner hired a prostitute to lure the man into a motel room with a hidden camera, and sent the recording of the subsequent encounter to the man’s wife (Kushner’s sister) to retaliate against him.
Trump granted executive clemency to three court-martialed U.S. military officers who were accused or convicted of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump granted the pardons against the advice of senior military and Defense Department leadership, as well as U.S. military lawyers. Critics state that Trump’s pardons of the officers undermined military discipline, constituted an inappropriate interference in the U.S. military justice system, and called into question the U.S. commitment to the law of armed conflict. Tensions between Trump and the Defense Department regarding Trump’s interventions in the military justice system culminated in the firing of Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer. Two ex-military officers pardoned by Trump appeared with the president at campaign events in 2019.
Q&A On Assange and Snowden
Q: What Did Assange and Snowden Do?
A: Disclose the disgusting truth.
Q&A on Trump
Q: Who did Trump Pardon?
A: Those convicted of murdering Iraqi citizens, political cronies, a governor convicted of taking bribes to appoint a US Senator, close friends, and political donors.
Assange Is a Hero
Assange is guilty of only one thing: Telling the truth. He’s a hero.
The deal in progress by Biden seems politically motivated.
At least it’s the right thing to do. Trump flunked.