U.S. prosecutors press witnesses to testify against Assange-WikiLeaks

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U.S. prosecutors press witnesses to testify against Assange-WikiLeaks

By Mark Hosenball

 

FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Britain, May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. federal prosecutors have stepped up efforts to pressure witnesses to testify against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, WikiLeaks said on Wednesday, in connection with what it said were secret criminal charges filed by the Trump administration.

 

WikiLeaks did not mention any names in its public statement. But Assange's lawyers identified some of those contacted in a document asking the human rights arm of the Organisation of American States to demand that the charges be unsealed.

 

Reuters obtained excerpts of the document filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and spoke to one of the persons named.

 

President Barack Obama's administration extensively investigated Assange and WikiLeaks after it published hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables and secret documents detailing U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

The administration ultimately decided not to prosecute, however, on the grounds the group's work was too similar to journalistic activities protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

 

Late last year, a court filing by prosecutors in an unrelated case referred to a sealed American indictment of Assange.

 

Prosecutors said the filing was made in error and declined to confirm whether any charges had been filed.

 

Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks during his 2016 presidential campaign for publishing material about Hillary Clinton. Not long after Trump took office, however, then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, now Secretary of State, publicly called it a "non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia."

 

Assange, an Australian national, has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where authorities wanted to question him as part of a sexual assault investigation that was eventually dropped.

 

A spokesman for the federal prosecutors' office in Alexandria, Virginia, which has taken the lead for several years in investigations into WikiLeaks, did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

 

According to the document filed to the human rights commission, one of the people contacted by Alexandria prosecutors was Jacob Appelbaum, a Berlin-based U.S. computer expert and hacker.

 

Appelbaum told Reuters that while prosecutors offered him broad immunity from prosecution, he had no interest in cooperating or testifying before a grand jury.

 

Another potential witness targeted by U.S. prosecutors was David House, a Massachusetts computer programmer, the document said. House was involved in setting up a group to support Chelsea Manning, a U.S. soldier who passed on military communications to WikiLeaks and was jailed by U.S. authorities.

 

House could not be reached. The American Civil Liberties Union which represented him in connection with the Manning case did not respond to requests for comment.

 

The Justice Department also contacted American activist and computer scientist, Jason Katz. Katz, who has lived in Iceland since 2011, did not respond to a request for comment sent to that country's Pirate Party, of which he was a founding member.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Sonya Hepinstall)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-01-24

[Proboscis]

Unless there is something that we are not being told, Assange should have never stayed so long sheltering in the embassy. Somewhere along the way, there would have to have been an extradiction hearing and no extradiction would have taken place without all the charges being aired. A good public interest defense could have been made in such an extradiction hearing.

[farcanell]

1 hour ago, Proboscis said:

Unless there is something that we are not being told, Assange should have never stayed so long sheltering in the embassy. Somewhere along the way, there would have to have been an extradiction hearing and no extradiction would have taken place without all the charges being aired. A good public interest defense could have been made in such an extradiction hearing.

Yes... there’s something that is not being told.... check Wikileaks for details.

[Chomper Higgot]

1 hour ago, Proboscis said:

Unless there is something that we are not being told, Assange should have never stayed so long sheltering in the embassy. Somewhere along the way, there would have to have been an extradiction hearing and no extradiction would have taken place without all the charges being aired. A good public interest defense could have been made in such an extradiction hearing.

It was his choice.

 

The door wasn’t locked.

[tifino]

1 hour ago, Proboscis said:

Unless there is something that we are not being told, Assange should have never stayed so long sheltering in the embassy. Somewhere along the way, there would have to have been an extradiction hearing and no extradiction would have taken place without all the charges being aired. A good public interest defense could have been made in such an extradiction hearing.

yeah but the open air extradition stuff was only to do with the UK and Svedish tangental distractors.

 

The US didn't need to be bothered about that 'other' stuff' but was simply awaiting in the wings, circling like a hawk... to pounce!

[elephant45]

sounds fishy, the whole thing

[Trouble]

I view Wikileaks as a portal where truth comes from all sorts of places that want to keep things secret mostly to keep from having the public know what really goes on behind closed doors of governments.  We the people are kept in the dark most of the time from the governments that are supposed to serve us. In the United States for the last two years the investigation of the Russia crap has mostly been kept under wraps or classified because it might embarrass various people and/or agencies in government. Closed door hearings in Congress on this have nothing to do with spy craft or protecting the launch codes but because a lot of people are doing a lot of things they should not be doing in the first place. In my opinion Governments, all of them, are mostly rotten and corrupt to the core. They serve only the people who run them for the most part. 

[unblocktheplanet]

Any doubt the USA wants to give JA a life sentence without parole?

[ukrules]

What are the charges against Assange ?

[madmen]

I think JA is a highly intelligent person. Very much doubt he is roting away in the embassy by choice or bad judgment.

[Chomper Higgot]

6 hours ago, ukrules said:

What are the charges against Assange ?

It is believed, but not confirmed, that Mueller has a (at least one) sealed indictment against Assange.

 

Since Mueler’s investigation is focussed on Russian interference in the 2016 US election it is reasonable to assume the charges relate to the part played by Assange in that Russian operation.

 

The indictment last week of Roger Stone included multiple references to ‘Organization-1’ (very clearly from the text of the Indictment this is Wikileaks).

 

Assange naturally wishes to know if these charges exist and what they are, Mueller meanwhile naturally wishes to keep indictments and details of indictments sealed while he builds his case against the multiple participants in the Russian meddling in the US 2016 election.

 

Mueller’s indictment of Stone is very specific in its statement that Stone was instructed by a senior Trump Campaign member to contact Wikileaks in search of information damaging to Clinton.

 

The specificity of that statement indicates Mueller has evidence of that instruction and now seeks confirmation from Stone (Stone will cooperate).

 

So right now Mueller is moving in on Trump’s inner circle.

 

Assange will have to bide his time, but he will soon be hearing the details of any indictments that exist.

 

As an aside.

 

If Mueller does indeed have sealed indictments against Assange, these are by nature of being sealed not possible to enact.

 

I can’t see any means by which these sealed indictments (in the US) could be used to obtain an arrest warrant in the UK, let alone an extradition.

 

Do I believe the US will eventually arrest Assange? Absolutely I do.

 

Do I believe the US is currently trying to arrest Assange? No I do not.

[dick dasterdly]

12 hours ago, ukrules said:

What are the charges against Assange ?

They're keeping v. quiet on that point.....

 

As pointed out by Madmen, Assange is very intelligent and realises that the farce of the Swedish accusations and the Brit. courts looking to extradite him meant only one thing - he'd end up in the US on charges that would suddenly appear.....

 

Govts. have no time for free speech when it results in providing proof that they have behaved more than badly!