British High Court ruled Julian Assange could be extradited into the United States in order to face an Espionage Act-related case. Assange will likely appeal to the British Supreme Court. Should that court concur in judgment, Assange’s decade-long flight will be over.
Assange is the founder of Wikileaks and was instrumental in publishing secret documents stolen by Edward Snowden and formerly-Bradley-now-Chelsea Manning.
It has always been more than a little unclear to me how Assange’s activities differ from those of any other journalistic organization that obtains stolen classified documents and publishes them. I’m not alone in this.
“Today’s win by the United States in the U.K. appellate court brings one step closer to justice a man who allegedly posted the names of individuals helping this country in a war zone, thereby putting them at serious risk,” said John Demers, who was assistant attorney general for national security in the Trump administration and whose prosecutors brought the case. “The Justice Department should be commended for seeing this case through. Those who defended his actions as journalism do a great disservice to a noble profession.”
These distinctions were dismissed by press freedom groups as not providing sufficient protection for journalists.
“We continue to have profound concerns about the press-freedom implications of this prosecution,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement Friday. “The Trump administration should never have filed this indictment, and we call on the Biden administration again to withdraw it.”
The group Reporters Without Borders also condemned the decision that Assange can be extradited, saying he would face possible life imprisonment “for publishing information in the public interest.”
The group called for the U.S. government “to drop its more than decade-long case against him once and for all,” in line with its commitment to protect media freedom.
Assange could be charged with violating Espionage Act. Then all newsrooms in New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers should also be investigated. Wikileaks certainly isn’t any more anti-American than anyone who pushed the Russia Hoax.
My suspicion is that this strategy is to increase the severity of the process. Wikileaks has been ignored for the last five years due to Assange’s indictment. If Assange is extradited, he’ll be kept in a federal gulag as prosecutors drag their feet in producing discoverable evidence to the defense. That’s why we have people in jail for nearly a year on what amounts to a misdemeanor trespass ticket that the feds are calling an “insurrection.”
In the end, Justice will probably decide that they aren’t willing to reveal classified information to prosecute him. He will then have been in isolation for at least two to three years, and he’ll be bankrupted.
This isn’t a victory for America or freedom.
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