Julian Assange extradition order issued by London court, moving WikiLeaks founder closer to US

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has moved one step closer to being extradited to the United States, where he is set to be tried under the Espionage Act, after a London court sent his handover order to the British government for approval.

The court issued a formal extradition order in a hearing Wednesday, leaving UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to rubber-stamp his transfer to the US after a years-long legal wrangle. Assange is able to appeal the decision.

He is wanted in the US on 18 criminal charges after WikiLeaks published thousands of classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010. If convicted, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.

Assange joined the hearing virtually from the high security Belmarsh Prison in London, where he has been held since being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London three years ago. He stated his full name and date of birth.


Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/20/uk/julian-assange-extradition-order-intl/

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Observation: When Assange and Wikileaks released material about Iraq obtained by Chelsea Manning, a number of people decided he was on "our" side and were suggesting that the Swedish legal efforts to extradite him were part of a dark conspiracy with the US (never mind that was the Obama Administration) to deliver him here for trial. Sometimes a criminal is just a criminal.

[RainCaster]

1. Yet DFT is still free after stealing crates full of top secret...

... documents and taking them to Defa Cato.

[FarPoint]

5. Yes....

But do try to stay on topic with the OP....

[ck4829]

2. Time to release that insurance file, Jules. Or do your fans have 88 GB of pics of your genitals?

[captain queeg]

3. How many years has this been going on?

Seems like at least 5.

[manicdem]

21. It's from 2010

When wiki leaks published the US government files. Could've been even earlier.

[Jimvanhise]

4. HE'S NOT A HERO

When Hillary Clinton said that Julian Assange should be arrested, Assange devoted all of his efforts to insuring that she did not become President. He collaborated with the Russians to steal her emails and get them released and it as Assange who concocted the story that Seth Rich stole them and was murdered by the Clinton campaign. The NSA proved that Russia stole them because Assange wanted Trump to be President because he hated Hillary Clinton. He is no hero and his efforts helped give us the evil Donald Trump as President and he still wields power and authority because of the efforts of Julian Assange, may he rot in prison forever.

[cstanleytech]

7. "HE'S NOT A HERO" Agreed though I am confused

on how he can be charged by the US for a crime unless he committed the act while on US soil.

[cstanleytech]

6. Did he commit the act on US soil? If not then I am honestly not sure

how he can be charged for a crime by the US as I thought he was a foreign national.

[LudwigPastorius]

10. People who are not in the U.S., but break U.S. law, are charged with crimes all the time.

See Osama bin Laden, or any other indicted foreign national accused of terrorism, as an example.

[cstanleytech]

11. Ya but with Bin Laden he was involved in the planning and carrying out

the attacks on US soil.
So was Assange involved in carrying out, planning or at least informed beforehand that the theft of the data and other information that was stolen was going to occur?
If the answer to all of those is no then we come back to how he can be charged for it?

[hack89]

13. He conspired with Manning - they had a lengthy dialog.

The story of how Manning and Assange began their relationship is laid out in great detail in the 35-page statement Manning read on Feb. 28, 2013 when she pleaded guilty. Assange's federal indictment released Thursday essentially lays out another layer of the cooperation between Manning and Assange that was not described in her guilty statement.

According to the newly unsealed indictment made public on Thursday, in early March 2010, Assange agreed to help Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, with cracking an administrative password to the military's classified internet system. Getting access to the password would have made it harder for investigators to track Manning as the source of the information being posted by Wikileaks.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/julian-assange-chelsea-manning-intertwined/story?id=62344376

[cstanleytech]

19. It sounds like Assange is screwed then if that is what happened.

[LudwigPastorius]

15. "...was Assange involved in carrying out, planning or at least informed beforehand...

that the theft of the data and other information that was stolen was going to occur?"

The government will have to prove that in order to convict Assange. Otherwise, it doesn't have a case.

"we come back to how can he be charged for it?"

Prosecutors convinced a federal grand jury that there was probable cause that Assange had committed crimes.

[Martin68]

14. Assange is charged with helping to hack a U.S. government computer to steal classified information.

You can hack a computer in the U.S. without actually being in the U.S.

[LiberalLovinLug]

8. "Sometimes a criminal is just a criminal."

And sometimes a defendant is prosecuted in a show trial to set an example for anyone else thinking about exposing what's going on behind the curtain.

Did Assange reveal information, emails, that hurt Democrats? Helped cause more division between Bernie supporters and Hillary supporters? Undoubtedly. Would I wish he hadn't done that, even though as a Bernie supporter myself I was incensed with what I learned, Yes...I still wish he hadn't released them.

But lets make it perfectly clear, this is about sending a message to anyone or any organization out there wanting to emulate Wikileaks. And honestly, IMO, its more about how they embarrassed and exposed war crimes by US military that is the real reason, not a Democratic party led act of revenge. And this action is saying it doesn't even matter if you are a non American, and release it in a foreign country, The US MIC will never be embarrassed like this again.

[brooklynite]

9. So you're claiming the BIDEN DOJ wants to hold a show trial...

[LiberalLovinLug]

22. Not really anything to do with Biden

Barr would be the same. This is one area that is bipartisan.
This kind of truth to power is just not going to be tolerated. The MIC is threatened.
Obama was in charge when Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years.

[brooklynite]

23. "Not really anything to do with Biden"...Remind us who appointed Garland

"Obama was in charge when Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years."...you're saying she didn't deserve conviction?

[LiberalLovinLug]

24. No. Just like other whistleblowers like Ellsburg and Wigand

And especially not 35 years

and Obama agreed with that.

And commuted her sentence after 7 years.

I'm sure the MIC would have loved to have her rot in prison

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Since you mention Obama, and "sometimes a criminal is just a criminal", a timeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julian_Assange

A hacking offense cited in the indictment carries an eight-year statute of limitations, which may have played a role in spurring the Trump administration to decide whether to move forward: The unsealed court papers indicated that a grand jury returned the indictment on March 6, 2018 — almost eight years to the day that Mr. Assange is accused of agreeing to help Ms. Manning try to crack the password, court papers showed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/europe/julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador-embassy.html

March 2019:

Under Obama, Justice Department officials had decided not to pursue charges against Assange and WikiLeaks after concluding that to do so could set a precedent that paved the way for prosecuting news organizations for publishing classified information. But the case got a fresh look under President Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chelsea-manning-subpoenaed-to-testify-before-grand-jury-in-assange-investigation/2019/03/01/fe3bd582-3c32-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html

April 2019:

Prosecutors accused Assange of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010, to crack a Defense Department computer password for accessing a vast trove of classified U.S. military and diplomatic material that subsequently was disclosed through WikiLeaks.
...
If convicted of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, Assange, 47, could face five years in prison. It wasn’t clear if he would face additional U.S. charges now that he was in custody.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/la-fg-britain-julian-assange-arrested-20190411-story.html

May 2019:

Mr. Demers left the press briefing without taking questions. And a Justice Department official who stayed behind to answer questions on the condition that he would not be named would not address any about how most of the basic actions the indictment deemed felonies by Mr. Assange differed in a legally meaningful way from ordinary national-security investigative journalism — encouraging sources to provide secret information of news value, obtaining it without the government’s permission and then publishing portions of it.

Notably, The New York Times, among many other news organizations, obtained precisely the same archives of documents from WikiLeaks, without authorization from the government — the act that most of the charges addressed. While The Times did take steps to withhold the names of informants in the subset of the files it published, it is not clear how that is legally different from publishing other classified information.
...
On its face, the Espionage Act could also be used to prosecute reporters who publish government secrets. But many legal scholars believe that prosecuting people for acts related to receiving and publishing information would violate the First Amendment.

That notion has never been tested in court, however, because until now the government has never brought such charges. The closest it came was indicting two lobbyists for a pro-Israel group in 2005 who received classified information about American policy toward Iran and passed it on. But that case fell apart after several skeptical pretrial rulings by a judge, and the charges were dropped.

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

Now, the Swedish case was about sexual assault, and the above does tie in with "the Swedes were not in a dark conspiracy with the USA" (because the Obama admin seemed to decide bringing the case could be a 1st Amdendment problem). But that doesn't mean "sometimes a criminal is just a criminal" - the Swedes have by now dropped their case, for whatever reasons, and we're left with what the Trump administration has charged him with - first a relatively small 5 year potential sentence, for helping Manning's attempt to access data, and then the huge 170 years using the Espionage Act. And none of this is about what he or Wikileaks did during the 2016 election.

"Sometimes a criminal is just a criminal" does not apply here. This is a complicated case.

[AZProgressive]

20. +1000

Thanks for the summary.

[Botellos]

16. His only hope is Trump

If Trump wins in 2024, God forbid, he will pardon Assange.

[AZProgressive]

18. The prosecution started under Trump

He was free the whole time under the Obama administration but the Trump admin went forward.

If he was going to be pardoned by Trump it would have happened already.

[AZProgressive]

17. He is not being prosecuted for publishing Russian hacked documents

It is over what Chelsea Manning exposed and there are some press freedom concerns with this prosecution.