JOE LAURIA: Why the US Let Assange Go

July 12, 2024

The Consortium News editor examines the cumulative factors that led to the United States releasing WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange from prison.

These are remarks given in a speech in Sydney, Australia on July 7. The text, with additional material, follows.

JOE LAURIA, Editor-in-Chief, Consortium News: I tell you, it hasn’t really sunk in yet. It’s hard to believe because for so long, most of us thought he would wind up for the rest of his life in an American dungeon and die there. 

And why did we think that? Because we saw so many irregularities in this case that judges in Britain let go. For example, the spying, the 24-7 spying directly through the C.I.A., the fact that the spying included on his privileged conversations with his lawyers, his doctors examining him. This was the government that was prosecuting him, the intelligence agency of that government was spying on the communications he was having with his lawyers.

Any other case that would have been thrown out immediately. And this wasn’t. The British courts kept accepting all of these irregularities, and you couldn’t help but think this was a political case completely from the very beginning.

For example, Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the lower court in the extradition case, September 2020, she ruled he should not be extradited for health reasons, but agreed with all the other arguments of the United States, who then won on appeal to reverse her decision.

She ruled that the First Amendment guarantees that were required by the European Convention on Human Rights, to which British extradition law is bound, that that would be settled in the U.S.

Had she asked the U.S. then for an assurance on the First Amendment and not gotten one — which happened just a few months ago — this case could have ended four years ago.  [See: Assange Wins Right to Appeal on 1st Amendment Issue]

[In April the High Court of England Wales set a deadline for the U.S. to give an assurance that Assange would be allowed a free speech defense at trial in the United States in accord with the European Convention on Human Rights, which forms the basis of British extradition law. The U.S. failed to produce such an assurance, leading ultimately to Assange’s freedom.]

But nonetheless, this is a victory. One of those rare victories that you don’t think you’re going to win. And this reminds me of a quote from I.F. Stone, an American independent journalist, starting in the 1940s and 50s, very famous. And he said, quote,

“The only kind of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday somebody who believes as you do wins.”

And this is what happened. So this is a lesson about when the odds seem completely against us, but you keep speaking what you believe in, keep organizing against it, and you might just win.

And this was, of course, a deal that was in the works for at least nine months, the plea agreement. And I want to ask why?

Why did it happen? Why did it happen now, finally? Well, there’s a lot of reasons. Certainly pressure from world leaders like Obrador, the president of Mexico, spoke directly with Biden and Lula and other leaders, including, kicking and screaming come into this: [Australian Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese. He did not really want to say much about this. He kept putting it off.

[Foreign Minister] Penny Wong said, well, we can’t interfere in the judicial processes of foreign nations, even though Australia had done that at least three times to get back people from Iran and Egypt and Cambodia.

So it was total rubbish. And finally, Albanese, did bring it up with President Biden. [He says for the first time at the June 2022 NATO summit in Madrid.]

But I don’t think that was the deciding factor at all. There was also, of course, human rights groups, press freedom groups all over the world who eventually joined this fight. And of course, public pressure from activists like all of you here, this all worked together to bring this about.

But there was one decisive factor. And that was the United States realized around April 4th this year, just a couple months ago, that they were going to lose this appeal in the High Court in London. Now, how do we know this, that they were going to lose? Because The Washington Post reported that on April 4th, there was an email.

And the email I’m quoting from The Washington Post from last week: “‘The urgency here has now reached a critical point,’ the Justice Department trial attorney wrote, in an email reviewed by The Washington Post. ‘The case will head to appeal and we will lose.’”

Back to the DOJ in Washington. The urgency has reached a critical point. Quote, “the case will head to appeal and we will lose.”

April 4 was 12 days before the deadline given to the U.S. to produce the assurance guaranteeing free speech rights to Assange. 

That’s what the U.S. trial attorney told the Department of Justice on April 4th, because they knew they could not deliver the assurance about First Amendment protection for Assange [because of an earlier Supreme Court decision and because U.S. separation of powers does not allow the executive to make a such a decision], without which the British court could not extradite him. As I said, that could have been done four years ago by Baraitser. But it wasn’t. But this is what sprung him.

They could not satisfy that demand of the court. And that was exactly the reason why we learned from this Washington Post article that the British lawyers for the U.S., James Lewis QC, now KC, and Claire Dobbin, they actually said this from another email: “Without the First Amendment assurance, one trial attorney said in an email, the British lawyers representing the U.S. government concluded they would run into ‘an ethical obligation to drop the case’ because of ‘their duty of candor’ — they could no longer argue for extradition when a condition required by the court had not been met.”

They could no longer argue for extradition when a condition required by the court had not been met, the condition being the First Amendment assurance. So the British lawyers were going to quit. The British lawyers would not go forward and represent the U.S. government in this appeal. The United States was left with nothing to do but salvage something.

They did not drop the case. They moved on a plea agreement that had been lying there on the desk of an assistant attorney general in Washington, a deal that had been worked on for nine months. They moved on this at the last minute.

[Biden had said as vice president in December 2010 that the U.S. could not indict Assange without catching him stealing the documents. If he had passively received the documents as a journalist they could not indict him. The F.B.I. then cooked up a scheme to enter Iceland to try to frame Assange there, but the plot was uncovered and the F.B.I. was thrown out.

Obama-Biden then did not indict, the Trump administration did after WikiLeaks‘ C.I.A. releases. Biden was under pressure until the end no doubt from the C.I.A. and the DNC, after the DNC leaks, not to drop the case, even though Assange was not indicted for either leak. Only the prospect of losing the appeal led the Biden administration to give in to the pressure and conclude the deal.] 

And I want to add this. If he had been extradited to the United States, to the court in the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, Virginia, where I live, eight minute drive away from there — I am very glad I don’t have to make that drive to his trial — they would have lost in the U.S. because everything in the indictment is gone from this plea deal. There’s no longer a hacking allegation. There’s no longer talk about him endangering informants, which is all we heard in the extradition case from Lewis and the others ad nauseum that he put people in danger. It’s gone. It’s gone. The only thing he had to plead to was something he technically did do wrong.

As he said in court in Saipan, he honestly pled guilty to unauthorized possession or a conspiracy [with Chelsea Manning] to commit unauthorized possession and dissemination of defense information, which the Espionage Act, as it is now written, does make illegal. [See: Assange: I Broke the Law But the Law Is Wrong]

It’s not illegal only for government officials who sign non-disclosure agreements when they handle classified information, it applies to everyone. And this is the problem with the Espionage Act.

That part of it is clearly unconstitutional against the U.S. First Amendment. When you sign the NDA, you’re signing away your First Amendment rights. But a journalist, even an American one, a British one, an Australian one has not signed a non-disclosure agreement with the U.S. government.

They have every right to receive that information and publish it even though the law is written that way.

That’s [arresting a journalist for possession and dissemination] always been an option for U.S. governments. This was only the third time that a U.S. administration tried to indict the publisher of information. The first was FDR in 1942 against The Chicago Tribune. They published a story saying that the U.S. had broken the Japanese code in the Battle of Midway. The second time was Richard Nixon in ’72. He tried to go after The New York Times reporters for publishing the Pentagon Papers.

They couldn’t exercise prior restraint or censorship. They couldn’t stop The New York Times from publishing, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled. But once they did publish, the U.S. had the option of indicting a journalist.

And both times it collapsed: in Chicago with the Tribune the grand jury refused to indict, very likely because of the First Amendment. And in Boston, for the Pentagon Papers case, it was discovered that the F.B.I. had been tapping Dan Ellsberg’s phone and therefore also The New York Times reporters, because they were speaking to him on the phone. So the case collapsed. [The way C.I.A. spying on Assange in the embassy should have collapsed his case, but didn’t.]

This is the only time a journalist was successfully indicted, but they couldn’t go through with it because, again, the First Amendment stopped them. So what we need here is that that part of the Espionage Act be appealed, to go to the Supreme Court in the United States and to say to the judge that this is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court in the U.S. is a constitutional court. It could decide this is unconstitutional and order the Congress to change the law. And right now, there are amendments put forward by Rashida Talib, a congresswoman from Michigan, who put forward amendments to the law that, among other things, would differentiate between journalists and those government officials who signed a non-disclosure agreement.

But it appears that’s not going to happen. One bad thing about the plea agreement is Julian agreed to waive his right to appeal. They got that from him in exchange for his freedom and his admission that he’d broken that technical clause. And by the way, in the court, he said, he thought the First Amendment protected him. So he was saying, yes, I broke the law, but the law is unconstitutional. 

That’s what he said. The law needs to be changed, but he cannot appeal. And it seems he also signed away any right to sue the U.S. government, because an option would be a civil lawsuit against the United States to say that he was wrongly brought to this plea agreement because the Espionage Act breaks the law. As it’s written, the Espionage Act is wrong, it is unconstitutional.

So he can’t do any of that. Funny enough, if you read the agreement, the judge in the court on the North Mariana Islands said the deal was that the U.S. government agreed if she didn’t accept the plea and dismissed it, that he would walk free and he wouldn’t have had any conviction, as he now has.

So she accepted the plea deal. He’s free and well, let’s just hope that he’s free and safe in Australia, because [Foreign Minister] Penny Wong gave this warning. Or was it just a bone thrown to the opposition, which was making a big deal that Albanese called Assange, the first person to call him? It’s pure politics.

Penny Wong said this: “We have laws in Australia in relation to national security information. We expect those laws to be observed by all citizens and by all entities. That’s our position.” Julian has to be careful.

A journalist here can be prosecuted for publishing information in Australia, as we saw almost in the case of Dan Oakes at the ABC.

The last thing I’m going to say is two men that I had great pleasure in knowing, who were on the board of Consortium News and who worked so hard for Julian to be free, unfortunately, we lost both of them last year. I just want to remember John Pilger and Dan Ellsberg. Thank you.

CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

WATCH: CN Live! — Assange: The Price of Freedom

July 2, 2024

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is free after a plea deal with the United States. But at what price? Watch the replay with Alexander Mercouris, Marjorie Cohn & Bruce Afran.

Guests: Alexander Mercouris, legal analyst and editor of The Duran; Marjorie Cohn, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, board member, Assange Defense; Bruce Afran, U.S. constitutional and human rights lawyer. Hosts:  Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria. Producer: Cathy Vogan. TIME: 

Talk of a plea deal for Julian Assange first surfaced at the end of May last year when it was mentioned by Stephen Kenny, Assange’s Australian lawyer. At the same time, Bruce Afran, a U.S. constitutional and human rights lawyer, told CN Live! on May 31, 2023 that Assange could plead guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling official information; he could enter the plea remotely from Britain and could be released on time served on remand. 

Then in August of last year, according to The Washington Post, Assange lawyers approached the U.S. Department of Justice with an offer of pleading guilty remotely to a misdemeanor. Caroline Kennedy, daughter of a slain president and the U.S. ambassador to Australia, that month told The Sydney Morning Herald the U.S. was open to a deal.

In March this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that the DOJ and Assange’s lawyers were exploring a plea deal in which Assange would plead guilty to a misdemeanor remotely.

Meanwhile, after the U.S. was unable to provide an assurance of Assange’s First Amendment rights in a U.S. court, the High Court in London granted Assange an appeal of the U.K. extradition order.

A DOJ trial lawyer on Assange’s case wrote in an email leaked to The Washington Post: “The case will head to appeal and we will lose.”

The Post reported that on April 4:

“Without the First Amendment assurance, one [US] trial attorney said in an email, the British lawyers representing the U.S. government concluded they would run into “an ethical obligation to drop the case” because of ‘their duty of candor’ — they could no longer argue for extradition when a condition required by the court had not been met.’”

That spurred the U.S. to get something from a deal rather than completely lose the case on appeal.

What Assange got: His freedom after 14 years of arbitrary detention and then imprisonment in a maximum security jail.

What the U.S. got: Assange pleaded guilty to a felony, not a misdemeanor, the only thing he actually did wrong based on an unconstitutional provision of the Espionage Act: unauthorized possession and dissemination of defense information.

In court on the Mariana Islands Assange acknowledged that, as the Espionage Act is now written, he broke the law but that the law conflicts with the First Amendment. (It is not restricted to government employees who signed ndas but extends broadly to everyone.)

Bruce Afran argued in an article for CN last July, that the First Amendment authorized possession for Assange.

The price of Assange’s freedom was also that he agreed to order the destruction of unpublished WikiLeaks U.S. files; he had to indemnify the U.S.; give up his right to discovery and to file FOIA requests, and perhaps most significantly, he had to waive his right to appeal the Espionage Acts constitutionality, a waiver which itself may be unconstitutional.

Also, is there a price to be paid by journalists in the future because of this plea deal? 

These were the issues discussed in CN Live!‘s “The Price of Freedom.”

CONSORTIUM NEWS

This Is Not a Dream

 

This Is Not a Dream

Julian Assange reunited with his wife Stella this week in the Australian capital. Read here...

_______________________________________________________________________________________

The Media Kept
Assange Behind Bars

The establishment press acted in concert to assassinate the character of the WikiLeaks founder, making it respectable to hate him, writes Jonatahn Cook. Read here...

_______________________________________________________________________________________

WATCH: Revisiting
the Assange Case

A panel of journalists who covered the Assange case discuss the twists and turns in the drama leading to his release on Monday, with host Richard Medhurst. Read here...

_______________________________________________________________________________________

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WATCH: Revisiting the Assange Case

June 29, 2024

A panel of journalists who covered the Assange case discuss the twists and turns in the drama leading to his release on Monday, with host Richard Medhurst. 

British journalist Richard Medhurst sits down with colleagues who reported from inside the court on Julian Assange's case for 4 years. The WikiLeaks founder was freed last week in a plea deal with the United States. Guests: Kevin Gosztola, Mohamed Elmaazi, Cathy Vogan, Joe Lauria, Mary Kostakidis, Tareq Haddad, and Taylor Hudak Donate to children in Gaza: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-displ... Donate to Palestine: https://dspr.org/donate Donate to Palestine: https://shepherd-society.org/donation... Support the show on Patreon:   / richardmedhurst   Donate on PayPal: https://paypal.me/papichulomin Donate on GoFundMe: http://tiny.cc/GoFundMe-Richard Bitcoin address: bc1qnelpedy2q6qu67485w4wnmcya5am873zwxxvvp Subscribe to Richard Medhurst on other platforms here: Rumble: https://rumble.com/richardmedhurst Rokfin: https://rokfin.com/richardmedhurst Odysee: https://odysee.com/@richardmedhurst Substack: https://richardmedhurst.substack.com/ Richard Thomas Medhurst (1992) is an independent journalist, political commentator, and analyst from the United Kingdom with a focus on international affairs, US politics, and the Middle East. Medhurst is known for his coverage of the Julian Assange extradition case in London, as one of the only journalists to report on the trial of the WikiLeaks founder from inside the court. He has also covered the Iran nuclear deal talks on the ground in Vienna. Medhurst was born in Damascus, Syria. His father is English and mother is Syrian. Both his parents served in United Nations Peacekeeping and Observer missions and were among the UN Peacekeepers awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. Owing to his parents’ professional mobility, he has lived in Syria, Pakistan, Switzerland, and Austria. He speaks four languages fluently: English, Arabic, French, and German. As an independent journalist, Medhurst regularly hosts live broadcasts and video reports on his YouTube channel. Previous guests include the Foreign Minister of Venezuela, the Dep Foreign Minister of Iran; the Palestinian, Russian and Cuban ambassadors to the United Nations in Vienna; the former British Ambassador to Syria; and various UN officials, journalists, and more. Medhurst’s reports and analysis on Yemen, Ukraine, Syria, Niger, Lebanon, Iran, the Israeli occupation in Palestine and its genocide in Gaza have gone viral countless times, racking up millions of views. Richard Medhurst has a combined following of roughly one million people online, and appears regularly on international news outlets including Al Jazeera, WikiLeaks, Black Agenda Report, Al Mayadeen, The Times, LBC, and others. Richard Medhurst on Twitter:   / richimedhurst   Richard Medhurst on Instagram:   / richardtmedhurst   Richard Medhurst on Substack: https://richardmedhurst.substack.com/

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Jon Stewart Reacts to the Trump-Biden Debate & Kosta Tackles SCOTUS Bribes | The Daily Show

 

The Daily Show

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Jon Stewart weighs in on the first presidential debate, including the media's countdown to the event, Biden's senior moments, and Trump's blatant lies. Michael Kosta handles the release of WikiLeaks's founder Julian Assange, SCOTUS now being able to accept tips, and Alex Jones losing Infowars. #DailyShow #Comedy #JonStewart Subscribe to The Daily Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWh... Follow The Daily Show: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailyshow Stream full episodes of The Daily Show on Paramount+: http://www.paramountplus.com/?ftag=PP... Follow Comedy Central: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ComedyCentral Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentral Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comedycentral Watch full episodes of The Daily Show: https://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show About The Daily Show: Jon Stewart and The Best F**king News Team host The Daily Show, an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning program analyzing the biggest stories in news, politics, and culture through a sharp, satirical lens. The Daily Show redefined the late night show category on TV and, with an audience of over 51M across social media platforms, has become a launching pad for some of the biggest stars in entertainment. The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.