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Julian Assange leaving a London court in a prison van in 2019. He has been asking Britain’s courts to prevent his extradition to the United States.
Julian Assange in London in 2011. He has been jailed for nearly five years after being indicted by the United States with 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act.
Why the jailed publisher’s extradition case should be everyone’s concern.
How much is a non-binding “assurance” worth from people who probably want to see you dead? This is the linchpin question as a British court deliberates on the Biden administration’s latest conniving to bring Julian Assange to America for his legal destruction.
Since Julian Assange was indicted in 2019 for 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act, the U.S. Justice Department has sought his extradition from Belmarsh, the supermax prison in Britain where he has spent almost five years. The fight against extradition is probably the last best chance for even a facade of due process for Assange.
On Tuesday, the British High Court announced that it had effectively accepted assurances from U.S. politicians to British politicians that the Assange case is non-political, but the British judges did recognize three potential grounds for appeal. That court gave the U.S. government three weeks to provide “satisfactory assurances” that “Assange is permitted to rely on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution… that he is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen and that the death penalty is not imposed,” and that the U.S. court would not be prejudiced against him because he is a foreigner.
None of the British or American officials recognized the supreme irony of the court decision. Assange and Wikileaks exposed deceptions and depredations by many governments around the world. Yet his legal fate depends on whether the British government chooses to trust the U.S. government—regardless of the endless lies that Assange exposed.
Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, scoffed that the decision was “astounding”: “What the courts have done is to invite a political intervention from the United States, to send a letter saying, ‘It’s all okay.’” Amnesty International stated, “While the U.S. has allegedly assured the UK that it will not violate Assange’s rights, we know from past cases that such ‘guarantees’ are deeply flawed—and the diplomatic assurances so far in the Assange case are riddled with loopholes.”
If Assange is brought to the U.S., his fate will be settled in an Alexandria, Virginia federal courtroom notorious for stacking the deck against anyone who exposed government crimes or wrongful killings. Ask John Kiriakou—the former CIA agent and torture whistleblower who was convicted there and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Ask Daniel Hale—the whistleblower who exposed the coverup of mass killings of innocent people by Obama’s drones, convicted and sentenced to prison for 45 months. Edward Snowden was charged in the same court but prudently omitted showing up for a kangaroo trial.
Assange’s fate threatens to be a bellwether for the destruction of journalists who vex officialdom. David Davis, a Conservative member of Parliament, warned, “The successful extradition of Julian Assange would effectively criminalize investigative journalism as espionage. It would set a legal precedent allowing the prosecution of anyone who breaks the duty of silence on classified American information and state sponsored crime.” Jodie Ginsberg, chief of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warned that Assange’s prosecution “would have disastrous implications for press freedom. It is time that the U.S. Justice Department put an end to all these court proceedings and dropped its dogged pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder.”
The U.S. government has been vilifying Assange ever since he and Wikileaks commenced revealing that thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis were killed by the U.S. military. Vice President Joe Biden denounced Assange in 2010 as a “high-tech terrorist.” But even Biden admitted at that time: “I don’t think there’s any substantive damage” from the Wikileaks revelations. “Look, some of the cables that are coming out here and around the world are embarrassing,” he said.
Federal agencies also never proved that any of the information that Assange and Wikileaks released was false. At the court martial of former Army Corporal Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, who leaked the documents, prosecutors failed to show that any information Wikileaks disclosed had led to the death of a single person in Afghanistan or Iraq. That conclusion was re-confirmed by a 2017 investigation by PolitiFact. But Assange was guilty of violating the U.S. government’s divine right to blindfold the American people.
The fact that Assange disclosed classified documents is sufficient to seal his legal doom—at least according to how the game is played in federal courts. After Britain arrested Assange on behalf of the U.S. government in 2019, Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, whooped that Assange “is our property and we can get the facts and the truth from him.” But Manchin had no recommendations on how Americans can “get the facts and the truth” from the federal government. Federal agencies are creating trillions of pages of new “classified” secrets each year.
Ironically, while howling for Assange’s scalp, the Biden White House purportedly launched a “new war on secrecy” and is especially concerned about “potentially illegal [government] activities that have been shielded from the public for decades,” POLITICO reported in late 2022. A Biden administration official, speaking anonymously, declared that it is in the “nation’s best interest to be as transparent as possible with the American public.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, groused, “We spend $18 billion protecting the classification system and only about $102 million … on declassification efforts… That ratio feels off in a democracy.” But inside the Beltway, rigging the game 176-to-1 is “close enough for government work” for transparency. Thus far, Biden’s “war on secrecy” has apparently not gone beyond self-serving White House statements.
Perhaps the most important testimony for Assange dribbled out during a sometimes scatter-brained interview last October conducted by Special Counsel Robert Hur. As Hur was pressing President Biden about the stashes of confidential documents discovered illicitly stored in his garage, his den, his think tank, his office, etc., Biden declared, “We over-classify everything…. And 99.9 percent of it has nothing to do with anything I couldn’t pick up and read out loud to the public.” Special Counsel Hur deigned not to file charges against Biden—even though his violations of federal law had plenty of similarities to the conduct that spurred 40 felony charges against former President Donald Trump. The bizarre dichotomy in the Biden and Trump cases is showcasing the arbitrariness and absurdities of federal classification policy.
Another key to the Assange case is whether he is “permitted to rely on the First Amendment,” as the British judges wrote. Assange can’t rely on the First Amendment when telling the truth is the only war crime now recognized by the U.S. government. Defendants on espionage act cases routinely face so many piled-on court charges that they plea bargain, muzzling themselves as the price for not being locked up forever.
There are lessons from an early American landmark court case that could help resolve the Assange case. In 1735, John Peter Zenger was charged with seditious libel for an article he published on the Royal Governor of New York. Zenger’s criticism was accurate but that was irrelevant. In Britain and its colonies, truth was no defense against seditious libel; thus, any criticism of the government risked personal destruction. But a jury of New Yorkers heroically refused to convict Zenger, thereby revolutionizing both freedom of speech and the relation of citizens to government.
Could a similar legal standard be used to end persecution of anyone who publicly reveals official documents that never should have been classified? Instead of rubberstamp convictions, the government should be obliged to prove that a disclosure harmed the public interest or endangered the nation. That would also undermine the perverse incentive that perpetually propels overclassification. Unfortunately, it would not be possible to get the same positive impact simply by relying on jury trials. Since that federal court is inside the Beltway, the jury pool would be overstocked with people who work for the feds and/or believe everything they hear on National Public Radio. Washington jurors are prone to behave like Soviet mobs in the 1930s who howled for death sentences for anyone the Communist Party accused of being a “wrecker.”
Almost all the media coverage of the Assange case is failing to credit him for revealing how blindfolding citizens defines down democracy. Self-government is a sham if citizens are prohibited from knowing what elected officials are doing in their name. Politicians and Washington’s “best and brightest” have long been accustomed to covertly and recklessly intervening around the world with none of the usual checks and balances of democracy. But there is never a penalty for officialdom deceiving the public they claim to serve.
Biden’s Justice Department and Assange’s lawyers have reportedly discussed a possible plea deal that would drop the most serious charges against him. Fair play would be satisfied if Assange pleads guilty to lese majeste—embarrassing the government by exposing its follies, frauds, and crimes. I still believe that Assange deserves a presidential Medal of Freedom, as I recommended in USA Today in 2018.
But that would never satisfy people like Hillary Clinton, who joked about seeing Assange dead, or former CIA chief Mike Pompeo, who plotted on kidnapping and killing Assange. Hell-raisers like Assange are necessary to prevent America from becoming an Impunity Democracy in which government officials pay no price for their abuses.
The next hearing in the Assange case will be May 20 in London, a few weeks after the annual World Press Freedom Day. Biden marked that day last year by proclaiming, “Courageous journalists around the world have shown time and again that they will not be silenced or intimidated. The United States sees them and stands with them.” Except, of course, for any courageous journalist that Biden seeks to destroy.
The post Convicting Julian Assange Would Mean the End of Free Speech appeared first on The American Conservative.
Julian Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, speaking outside the High Court in London during a hearing in February.
A UK court said Julian Assange can’t immediately be extradited to the U.S. on espionage charges, a partial victory for the WikiLeaks founder.
The post Extradition of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange to U.S. Delayed by British Judges appeared first on Breitbart.
Supporters of Julian Assange outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London last month.
His Majesty’s Government is bent on destroying Britain’s oldest and dearest patrimony.
I remember when British people used to say things like “They can’t run me in; I haven’t done anything wrong,” or “They can’t do that; it’s against the law.” George Orwell noted in 1941 that a vague belief in law being above power, expressed in such sentiments, was part of the English character. We also used to say that an Englishman’s home was his castle.
But night after night, local TV news bulletins show police in body armor with special battering rams, smashing down the door of some alleged drug dealer’s home. And we are expected and intended to approve, even though these events, plainly done for show, have less than no effect on the vast levels of drug abuse in our society. In fact, although we have had a Bill of Rights in England since 1689, on which much of the American Bill of Rights is based (including, amazingly, the right to bear arms), we are very poorly protected from the state if it wishes to start pushing us around.
Two recent cases in the London courts, one awaiting judgment and the other perhaps awaiting appeal, would be engaging the attention of the Voltaire of our age if we had one.
But we do not. Radicals, in Britain at least, have given up concerning themselves about annoying matters of free speech or the abuse of power. I think this is because those radicals, finally in charge, are actually rather enjoying the sweets of government—the freedom to start wars, and the freedom to squash the liberties of others.
The two cases are those of Julian Assange, an Australian whose Wikileaks organization published American secrets after Chelsea Manning leaked them; and Graham Phillips, an unloveable British video blogger whose reports from Ukraine have, to put it mildly, not glorified the Ukrainian side in the current war in that country.
Here I must give thanks for the Internet, which allows the curious reader to examine the details of these two men’s actions for themselves. There are many such details, and I do not ask anyone to admire either man. I have disagreed with Assange rather fiercely over the drug issue. I don’t much like Phillips’s behavior, especially towards prisoners of war captured by the Russians. But, as the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once rightly said, “The safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.”
I won’t even go very deeply into the argument about what Assange published except to say that his supporters fiercely rebut the main (and most widely believed) claim against him—that he endangered Americans by his actions. They say he took careful precautions against doing so, and that no evidence of such harm has ever been produced. I’d add that his revelations about the shocking behavior of American Apache helicopter crews over Baghdad in July 2007 are by any standards an illustration of what journalism truly is and what it is most profoundly for—revealing the concealed truth about the actions of the state, and so increasing the amount of justice in the universe.
The U.S. government wants Assange in its hands, even though, if he were a U.S. citizen, he would (I believe) be protected by the First Amendment. It wants to try him under the oppressive Espionage Act of 1917, which allows no public interest defense. The same rather disreputable piece of legislation was used against Daniel Ellsberg after his 1970s leaking of the Pentagon Papers. This is now pretty universally believed to have been a noble and correct act, and Ellsberg, before his recent death, was a vocal supporter of Julian Assange.
There is no question that this is a political case. It has been openly discussed by the former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who was highly critical of Assange. If any British government official of similar rank had intervened in this matter in the same way, I doubt that our courts would have allowed the case to proceed. The Extradition Treaty between Britain and the U.S. specifically and explicitly bans political extradition.
Yet the London courts and the British government have so far insisted that Assange (languishing now for years in a UK maximum security prison as if he were a terror suspect) should be sent to America. It is quite astonishing how few British journalists, whose own freedom seems to me to be gravely threatened by these proceedings, have been prepared to back Assange. There is a kind of acceptance of this mighty crushing action, unworthy of an allegedly free country, let alone two allegedly free countries.
Even fewer voices have been raised for Phillips, the only purely British citizen (that is to say, without any other nationality) ever to have been sanctioned by His Majesty’s Government under ferocious recent laws granting ministers arbitrary powers to punish individuals without due process. Generally, such sanctions are levied against governors of Siberian provinces of Russia or Syrian army officers who will never set foot in England and do not need to be worried about them. They have been a way for Britain to look as if it is doing something in various officially noble causes when it is not really. But Phillips, a former minor civil servant, is badly hurt by this treatment.
The expression “Kafkaesque” is used pretty widely and lightly in our language. When we employ it, we do not really think that an individual is being treated remotely as badly as Josef K. was in “The Trial.” Yet Phillips is genuinely trapped in a legal matter in which he can do no right, and from which there is no obvious escape. He owns a modest house in North London and expects one day to return to his homeland. These sanctions, imposed by decree rather than by any court, make him a prisoner of the state. He cannot receive payment for work. Nor can he pay anyone for any services. So he is forced to break the law. He cannot, for example, pay the property taxes on his house to his local town hall. Non-payment is of course against the law. Some time ago, I had to intervene to explain this to that town hall, who might otherwise have taken stern action against him, but who had the humanity to see he was trapped and to act accordingly.
Phillips has been repeatedly told that he could apply for a special license from His Majesty’s Treasury, allowing him to live some of his life. He understandably resisted this, believing that to do so would be to accept a punishment unjustly imposed on him. Now that he has sought to apply for such a license, he has found that it has not in fact helped him very much. His British bank still does not wish to deal with him, for instance. He cannot make it do so. The charge against him is so strange that I find it almost incredible. Phillips is being sanctioned because he is “a video blogger who has produced and published media content that supports and promotes actions and policies which destabilize Ukraine and undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty, or independence of Ukraine.”
Two thoughts occur to me. One is that Ukraine must be weaker than we thought if the insignificant video blogs of this little-known person threaten its territorial integrity, sovereignty, stability or independence. The other is that my own newspaper and magazine writing, and my broadcast debate contributions, critical of Ukraine and of British policy towards it, could, under a slightly dimmer government than Britain now possesses, be cited against me in the same way. Phillips, who could barely get the London Foreign Office to respond to his letters about his treatment, took this matter to the High Court in London as a civil matter, thanks to the pro bono support of a London barrister called Joshua Hitchens (to whom I am not related). Joshua Hitchens fought the case hard, on the grounds of free speech, and lost. He has since sought permission to appeal.
In initially refusing him, the High Court said that the arbitrary punishment of Phillips was an intentional outcome of UK sanctions law. It noted that “it is clear that Parliament intended that sanctions could be imposed in response to the exercise of rights of speech and expression.”
These are bad times for freedom of speech in the country that gave birth to it, and worse times for those who thought that the country, or at least a reasonable number of journalists, would rise in revolt against the extinction of its liberty. It turns out that they can do that here—that they can run you in if you haven’t done anything, and nobody but a few eccentrics will care.
The post Assange, Phillips, and the End of Rights appeared first on The American Conservative.
Supporters of Julian Assange protested on Tuesday outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
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