The United States government, through the Department of Justice, is seeking the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, according to a report from CNN. U.S. officials familiar with the matter say that Assange can no longer claim First Amendment protections. Prosecuting Assange has been a priority for the Department of Justice for many years, but under Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration, it was determined that such a prosecution would be too difficult to achieve. Now, Trump administration officials believe they have the charges necessary to proceed.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, “We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks. This is a matter that’s gone beyond anything I’m aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks, and some of them are quite serious. So yes, it is a priority. We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail.â€
Last week, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, in his first news conference since assuming the role at Langley, cited Wikileaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russiaâ€â€”the first such accusation to come from an American official.
Wikileaks has made several damaging releases of classified U.S. intelligence information over the past decade, most notably with files provided by then-Army intelligence soldier Private Bradley Manning in 2010. Its founder, Julian Assange, has sought refuge within the Ecuadorean embassy in London after rape allegations against him led to a warrant for his arrest in Sweden. Ecuador has refused to forcibly remove Assange, despite requests from the U.S.
Wikileaks regards itself as a “multi-national media organization” that “specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.” In 2016, it famously published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, exposing embarrassing internal politics that surrounded the campaign of Hillary Clinton for president.
Many in the national security community believe Assange and Wikileaks are agents for Russian intelligence.
Assange has compared his organization to news publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which routinely publish stories with what is considered classified information obtained through confidential sources.
It is not yet clear which charges are being prepared by the Department of Justice for Assange. But according to Director Pompeo, “Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms. He’s sitting in an embassy in London. He’s not a U.S. citizen.”
Image courtesy of the BBC
Join our community. To comment on this article please join/login.
Here’s a sample of the comments on this post.
What makes you sure I am not already their.
If you believe in pizza gate you really need to go check yourself into the nearest mental health institution
Considering the fact that the Government does have probable cause that Assange is an operative of a hostile foreign intelligence service, there is substantial precedent for him to be indicted by a federal grand jury regardless of his citizenship or current location. There are no 1st Amendment protections for hostile intelligence operatives. There is also precedent for the US to seek extradition, for an international fugitive with a federal arrest warrant related to national security, through our law enforcement partners abroad (see Ramzi Youseff).
Sorry, but Assange doesn’t have Constitutional rights. That being said, I’m not sure we really have a right to prosecute him, because he’s not subject to our jurisdiction. If the principle of foreign nationals, residing outside the jurisdiction of the United States had constitutional rights was true, then they could be subject to those same laws. If that were true, I promise you the IRS would be out around the world collecting their due. Even in foreign surveillance laws, we acknowledge that US citizens have protections that foreign nationals don’t. So to apply first amendment protection to foreign nationals, when they aren’t subject to the law, while residing outside of the jurisdiction of the US, doesn’t make sense to me. As for publishing state secrets, and privlidge information because someone else gave it to you, as a first amendment right doesn’t make sense either, especially knowing that what you are publishing is privlidge information. If that were true, that would mean multiple fundamental principles of the law don’t apply. If you buy a stolen radio from a crack addict, whether you knew it was stolen or not, the cops can throw you in jail. If you publish someone’s book, with out permission, you’re in trouble. If someone sends you a pirated cut of Star Wars 15, and you have it on your hard drive, let alone show it in your local Cinema, you’re screwed. You have no first amendment protections, or any protections in that case. So when the Supreme Court said you can published state secrets, as a some first amendment right, they’ve were wrong, just like they were wrong about the Dredd Scott decision, upholding slavery, and a lot of other things. Progressives have no principles, so it’s understandable, how when you get progressives in the courts, that they often get it wrong.
If the government can prove that Assange engaged in espionage, they can charge him on that. But if all that happened was that somebody sent him classified information and that he then published that information, that’s been repeatedly upheld as constitutionally protected free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States