U.S. charges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with espionage

By Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball

 

FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures during a news conference at the Ecuadorian embassy in central London August 18, 2014. REUTERS/John Stillwell/File Photo

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department unveiled 17 new criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, saying he unlawfully published the names of classified sources and conspired with and assisted ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in obtaining access to classified information.

 

The superseding indictment comes a little more than a month after the Justice Department unsealed a narrower criminal case against Assange.

 

Assange was initially charged with conspiring with Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

Wikileaks describes itself as specializing in the publication of "censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption."

Assange is now fighting extradition to the United States, after Ecuador in April revoked his seven-year asylum in the country's London embassy. He was arrested that day, April 11, by British police as he left the embassy.

 

He is now serving a 50-week sentence in a London jail for skipping bail when he fled to the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012.

 

The decision to charge Assange with espionage crimes is notable, and unusual. Most cases involving the theft of classified information have targeted government employees, like Manning, and not the people who publish the information itself.

 

The Justice Department's quick turn-around with the filing of a more substantial indictment againstAssange is not surprising.

 

Under extradition rules, the United States had only a 60-day window from the date of Assange's arrest in London to add more charges. After that, foreign governments do not generally accept superseding charges.

 

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Leslie Adler)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-05-24

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Good hope they nail that sob

Anything on the war crimes he exposed?

Interesting that the administration is granting pardons for soldier(s) ( Behenna, Gallagher, Golsteyn ) who committed heinous war crimes, and yet feel the need to imprison (Manning, Assange) those who, among other things, exposed such crimes.

 

Evidently, some powerful people are lobbying for the pardons for the soldiers, which most veterans find appalling.

 

One assumes Mr. Snowden will be pursued with similar vigor?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, mtls2005 said:

interesting that the administration is granting pardons for soldier(s) ( Behenna, Gallagher, Golsteyn ) who committed heinous war crimes

And many others! Cherry-picking at its best.

I think espionage includes potential death penalty, which would give UK and Sweden a valid reason not to extradite to US.

55 minutes ago, Emdog said:

I think espionage includes potential death penalty, which would give UK and Sweden a valid reason not to extradite to US.

Unless The Donald promises a lighter sentence of about 147 years or thereabout...

56 minutes ago, Emdog said:

I think espionage includes potential death penalty, which would give UK and Sweden a valid reason not to extradite to US.

I think (but don't know) that the US just has to take the death penalty 'off the table' to enable extradition?

1 hour ago, Emdog said:

I think espionage includes potential death penalty, which would give UK and Sweden a valid reason not to extradite to US.

 

Remind me never to hire you as a lawyer. (Death is only a penalty in Sec. 794, aiding a foreign government.)

 

18 U.S. Code § 798. Disclosure of classified information

 

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

 

That said, 17 counts means life in prison, given the current administration, and SCOTUS makeup, expect free-speech to take a back seat, and now secret documents will be ruled as being "people".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 20197 yr by mtls2005

1 hour ago, Emdog said:

I think espionage includes potential death penalty, which would give UK and Sweden a valid reason not to extradite to US.

Except people are often extradited to the US for what are capital offences.

 

This is achieved by a binding agreement between the US and the extraditing nation that the person being extradited will no face capital punishment.

The FBI are not yet done with Assange, he has yet to face indictment for crimes uncovered by Mueller. 

 

A shoddy redaction (perhaps deliberate) by Stone's legal team exposed the existence of at least one indictment against Assange from the SC's investigation.

 

There is no evidence that any of these indictments existed at the time when Assange fled from justice, which raises the very real possibility that had he gone to Sweden in the first place he might have been out of Sweden before these indictments were filed against him.

 

  

Not only has he only wasted seven of the best year of his life in a futile attempt to escape justice, it now appears his flight from justice might very well have given the US time to raise and file indictments. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 20197 yr by Chomper Higgot

6 minutes ago, helpisgood said:

 

Thanks for the info!  You always do a great job with analysis and with your posts.  Keep up the good work!

 

I guess you haven't seen the very recent news that Assange is now, instead, being charged under the Espionage Act with a superseding indictment just filed on May 23.  I'll provide both a link to the NY Times article about it and the link to the text of the actual indictment itself. 

 

If I understand it correctly, the indictment that you have linked to, which was filed on March 6, has more to do with conspiracy.  In other words, the prosecutors are charging Assange with helping or conspiring, or something like that, with Manning, who originally got the info.  Like the Pentagon Papers (Daniel Ellsberg's story), if the journalist or the newspaper merely publishes the wrongfully obtained info, the prosecutors never went after the mere publisher. 

 

However, with this new indictment, and I haven't had the chance to neither read the article nor the new filing, it looks like the prosecution is using the Espionage Act to go after someone (viz., Assange) even though he was merely the publisher.  If this is true, this could open the door to a chilling effect on newspapers, etc. from publishing info obtained from the govt.  Whatever you may think of Assange, there may now be a cause for freedom of the press and the US govt. being to shut down stories from the public.  Watch this space!  

 

Again, I'll provide the links and you can all review it all yourselves.  Again, thanks for your kind help!:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/us/politics/assange-indictment.html

 

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1037-julian-assange-espionage-act-indictment/426b4e534ab60553ba6c/optimized/full.pdf#page=1

If, as alleged, Assange conspired with Manning to illegally obtain the information then Assange/Wikileaks is not 'merely the publisher'.

 

5 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

If, as alleged, Assange conspired with Manning to illegally obtain the information then Assange/Wikileaks is not 'merely the publisher'.

 

 

I don't have time to read the whole new indictment, but it looks like the prosecution is crafting their charges more carefully and avoid any difficulties of proof that the original indictment may have caused.

 

I don't have time now to read all 37 pages of the new indictment.  I am soon off to other things. 

 

I just wanted to help everyone out in getting the latest info. 

1 hour ago, mtls2005 said:

Case Dismissed

There was no ruling with regard to guilt or innocence.

" The charges against these defendants raise serious factual and legal issues that I would certainly prefer to have litigated to completion. . . . However. . . the conduct of the government has placed the case in such a posture that it pre­cludes the fair dispassionate resolution of these issues by a jury. I have con­cluded that a mistrial alone would not be fair. Under all the circumstances, I believe that the defendants should not have to run the risk, present under ex­isting authorities, that they might be tried again before a different jury."

The Court ruling provides no guidance with regard to the charges against Assange.

3 hours ago, Emdog said:

I think espionage includes potential death penalty, which would give UK and Sweden a valid reason not to extradite to US.

I think they can if there were assurances that he would not face the death penalty.

 

But I think it is immaterial as by the time he has served his time at HMP Belmarsh, then extradited to Sweden, done his time there, then extradited to the USA then 30 years on death row, he would be pushing up daisies long before then.  

Edited May 24, 20197 yr by Basil B

6 hours ago, grumbleweed said:

Anything on the war crimes he exposed?

He is charged with spying so he should put in a counter charge against USA for war crimes.

The relentless hounding of Julian Assange for daring to tell truth to power has alarming implications for the freedom of the media worldwide.

 

"If the US can prosecute a foreign publisher for violating our secrecy laws, there’s nothing preventing China, or Russia, from doing the same," warns the Americal Civil Liberties Union.

 

An excellent analysis of the political agenda underlying the Trump administration's bid to make an example of the Australian whistleblower is here:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1905/S00127/the-espionage-act-and-julian-assange.htm

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Emdog said:

I think espionage includes potential death penalty, which would give UK and Sweden a valid reason not to extradite to US.

Capital punishment is a legal penalty under the United States federal government criminal justice system. It can be carried out for treason, espionage, murder, piracy, large-scale drug trafficking, or attempted murder of a witness, juror

US terrorist approach :

- Assange he is a Journalist that obtained clear evidence of US Army and its sub contractors International War Crimes
- Now US charge him on espionage ! Espionage of what ? to have show video of drugged US Army personnel laughing and gunning down innocent civilians including child and elderly !

this is US democracy Shame on anyone who wish Assange behind bars !

9 hours ago, Tug said:

Good hope they nail that sob

guess one day a similar journalist will expose if any army or police personnel will gun down without any valid motiv your close relative, you may still say "nail that sob" 

Edited May 24, 20197 yr by Jerry787
spelling

4 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

 

Remind me never to hire you as a lawyer. (Death is only a penalty in Sec. 794, aiding a foreign government.)

 

18 U.S. Code § 798. Disclosure of classified information

 

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

 

That said, 17 counts means life in prison, given the current administration, and SCOTUS makeup, expect free-speech to take a back seat, and now secret documents will be ruled as being "people".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I should think those wikileaks aided Russia (used to be a foreign government, not so sure now) in creating more chaos than Trump could do on his own, plus other wikileaks released names of secret agents abroad working for US. I imagine some of the more hostile foreign governments did not give hero medals to those who helped USA, but I'm just guessing

Off topic posts and replies have been removed.  Please don't attempt to the hijack the topic to other cases of a similar nature. 

Anyone surprised that the US has "suddenly" asked for extradition, while playing coy for so long. 

If he is extradited and put in court, I hope he has loads of embarrassing stuff to put on the internet.

9 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

Interesting that the administration is granting pardons for soldier(s) ( Behenna, Gallagher, Golsteyn ) who committed heinous war crimes, and yet feel the need to imprison (Manning, Assange) those who, among other things, exposed such crimes.

 

Evidently, some powerful people are lobbying for the pardons for the soldiers, which most veterans find appalling.

 

One assumes Mr. Snowden will be pursued with similar vigor?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed. But he also exposed certain politicians, very high level ones. And that can't be tolerated.

3 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

The relentless hounding of Julian Assange for daring to tell truth to power has alarming implications for the freedom of the media worldwide.

 

"If the US can prosecute a foreign publisher for violating our secrecy laws, there’s nothing preventing China, or Russia, from doing the same," warns the Americal Civil Liberties Union.

 

An excellent analysis of the political agenda underlying the Trump administration's bid to make an example of the Australian whistleblower is here:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1905/S00127/the-espionage-act-and-julian-assange.htm

 

 

 

 

 

A very vengeful and spiteful Clinton said she wanted him extradited and prosecuted too.

 

Seems one thing that unites politicians - can't have anyone telling the truth to the sheeple.

1 hour ago, Emdog said:

more chaos than Trump could do on his own

 

Impossible !!

Actually, the Obama adminstration decided not to prosecute Assange on the grounds that the Trump administration is pursuing precisely because it would mean the media would be subject to criminal prosecution for publishing what whistleblowers shared with them.

The US of A's way of dealing with truth tellers- sad. 

An inflammatory post and a reply has been removed. 

22 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

The relentless hounding of Julian Assange for daring to tell truth to power has alarming implications for the freedom of the media worldwide.

 

"If the US can prosecute a foreign publisher for violating our secrecy laws, there’s nothing preventing China, or Russia, from doing the same," warns the Americal Civil Liberties Union.

 

An excellent analysis of the political agenda underlying the Trump administration's bid to make an example of the Australian whistleblower is here:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1905/S00127/the-espionage-act-and-julian-assange.htm

The Obama DOJ spent years exploring whether it could criminally charge Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing classified information. It ultimately decided it would not do so, and could not do so, consistent with the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment. After all, the Obama DOJ concluded, such a prosecution would pose a severe threat to press freedom because there would be no way to prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents without also prosecuting the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and others for doing exactly the same thing.

https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/\

But apparently when it comes to the law and constitutional rights, in the Trump DOJ only Trump benefits.