WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange participates via video link at a news conference in October in Berlin, marking the 10th anniversary of the group. Markus Schreiber/AP hide caption

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange participates via video link at a news conference in October in Berlin, marking the 10th anniversary of the group.

More than four years after he took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will face questioning there on Nov. 14 over Sweden's allegations against him of sex crimes, including rape.

This could mark a breakthrough in the standoff. Assange has repeatedly denied the accusations, which date to 2010. He maintains that he would face extradition to the U.S. if he appeared in Sweden for questioning, as we reported. Sweden has said an interview is necessary before it can determine whether to file charges against Assange.

Sweden's prosecution authority said in a statement that "Ecuador has granted the Swedish request for legal assistance in criminal matters." It said an Ecuadorean prosecutor will conduct the interview with a Swedish prosecutor and police investigator. They will also take a DNA sample from Assange, should he give his consent.

"I welcome the fact that the investigation can now move forward via an interview with the suspect," Director of Prosecution Marianne Ny said. The prosecutors said they will not release details after they conduct the interview because this is an ongoing investigation.

"Since he took refuge in the embassy, three of four sex-crimes allegations against Assange have expired, due to statutes of limitation," as we have reported. "The fourth allegation, of rape, remains."

A Swedish court upheld the arrest warrant tied to the sexual assault investigations again in September, despite repeated attempts by Assange to overturn it.

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Sweden Says Julian Assange To Face Questioning Next Week ...

Julian Assange, who has lived as a fugitive in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years, was unlikely to cooperate voluntarily with congressional investigators. | Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Congress

By KYLE CHENEY

03/21/2019 10:23 AM EDT

Updated 03/21/2019 01:45 PM EDT

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has declined to provide documents to the House Judiciary Committees broad inquiry into actions by President Donald Trump, his lawyer confirmed Thursday morning.

The First Amendment dictates that an inquiry by Congress should not begin by issuing requests to journalists for documents pertaining to its newsgathering, the attorney, Barry Pollack, wrote in an email.

Story Continued Below

Assange has long parried criticism that he acted on behalf of Russia when he posted hacked Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee emails in 2016 by suggesting his actions were no different than journalists accepting and publishing confidential documents.

But the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that WikiLeaks was an active participant in the effort to obtain and post Democratic emails, partnering with Russian propaganda outlets and acting as a tool of the Russian government. Assange has denied such claims.

Assange, who has lived as a fugitive in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for years, was unlikely to cooperate with congressional investigators. Hes the latest of 81 people and entities to decline a Judiciary Committee request for documents.

So far, the committee has received upward of 25 responses to its document requests. About a dozen witnesses have publicly confirmed that they had given or intended to provide documents including former Trump aide Hope Hicks, National Enquirer parent company American Media, Trump confidant Thomas Barrack, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and the lobbying firm of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Former Trump deputy campaign manager Rick Gates a longtime ally of Trump onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort declined to provide materials or testimony to the committee, citing his ongoing cooperation with federal prosecutors, but left the door open to cooperating later. Former Trump legal team spokesman Mark Corallo said his communications were protected by attorney-client and work-product privilege.

Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone also declined to cooperate with the committee investigation. In a letter obtained Thursday by POLITICO, Stone's attorney Grant Smith indicated that Stone would invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination in order to decline the panel's request. He called the investigation a "fishing expedition" but said he declined with the "utmost respect" for the committee.

POLITICO has reached out to nearly all 81 people and entities targeted by the Judiciary Committee, but dozens have declined to confirm if they have supplied or intend to supply documents. The committee has also declined to detail specific responses, though committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said on CNN on Wednesday that he wasnt sure it had quite reached a majority of the 81.

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Julian Assange won't hand over docs to House Judiciary ...

Last fall, a court filing in the Eastern District of Virginia inadvertently suggested that the Justice Department had indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other outlets reported soon after that Assange had likely been secretly indicted for conspiring with his sources to publish classified government material and hacked documents belonging to the Democratic National Committee, among other things.

Illustration by Ricardo Martnez

As a veteran of major free-press legal battles, I waited, throughout the days that followed, for journalists to come to Assanges defense. A few reliable advocates, such as the ACLU and the Knight First Amendment Institute, did sound the alarm, but the editorial boards of the Times and the Washington Post remained silent.

The Columbia Journalism Review allowed that Assanges prosecution could be a slippery slope that would threaten traditional journalists and publishers, but it was quick to note that WikiLeaks was a shadowy organization and not officially a journalistic one. (Of course, there is no body, not even the CJR, that determines what is officially a journalistic outfit.)

Overall, the same mainstream journalists who have treated Donald Trumps disparaging tweets about them as unprecedented threats to their freedom handled Assanges indictment as a political story, another piece of the ongoing TrumpRussia saga.

In fact, the Trump Administrations prosecution of Assange represents a greater threat to the free press than all of the presidents nasty tweets combined. If the prosecution succeeds, investigative reporting based on classified information will be given a near death blow.

Julian Assange started WikiLeaks in 2006 with the stated purpose of providing a place for newsworthy information to be released on a confidential basis. The site came to widespread international notice a few years later, when Assange obtained thousands of classified documents relating to the Iraq War from US Army soldier Chelsea (ne Bradley) Manning. Assange in turn shared these documents with Le Monde,El Pas,Der Spiegel, the Guardian, and the Times, each of which separately edited and published what theyd received.

Amid the furor surrounding this publication, politicians from across the political spectrumSenators Dianne Feinstein and Joseph Lieberman among themcalled for Assanges prosecution. Barack Obamas Justice Department seriously considered indicting Assange under the Espionage Act and convened a grand jury for that purpose. The legal theory behind such a prosecution involves charging Assange with conspiring with Manning to release classified materials. Using this conspiracy theory, the Espionage Act would be made to apply to a reporternot directly but indirectlyby using the reporters relationship with sources. In other words, the reporter would be made responsible for the actions of his sources. (Manning was eventually convicted under the Espionage Act for leaking to Assange.)

The Justice Department has been enamored of this conspiracy approach since the time of the Pentagon Papers. In that case, Richard Nixons DOJ attempted to enjoin the New York Times and, later, the Washington Post from publishing a forty-seven-volume Defense Department study of the history of US relations with Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, which had been classified top secret. I led the team of lawyers who defended the Times in that case. I had advised the Times that the government would attempt to enjoin publication and thereafter would attempt to prosecute the Times criminally. I also advised the Times that it would win any case brought against it in the Supreme Court, on First Amendment grounds.

In June 1971, the Times published three installments of the papers and was enjoined from further publication, as I had predicted. The Washington Post then picked up where the Times left off, and both papers ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruledin their favor. The courts decision is now widely considered a legal landmark, since it effectively determined that no injunction could be brought to stop publication of classified material.

The ruling did not, however, determine that newspapers or their reporters were immune from prosecution after the fact. Following the Supreme Courts decision, attorney general John H.Mitchell convened a grand jury in Boston to determine whether there was a conspiracy among Times reporter Neil Sheehan and others with respect to the publication of the Pentagon Papers. After a year and a half, the Justice Department gave up and dissolved the grand jury.

Since Assange has already published the leaks in question, he obviously cannot be stopped from publishing them now; all the government can do is prosecute him criminally for obtaining or publishing the leaks in the first place. To date, there never has been a criminal prosecution for this type of behavior. Obamas Justice Department ultimately concluded that a prosecution of Assange would damage the First Amendment. Their decision effectively meant that Assange was entitled to the same constitutional protections given reporters. (A Washington Post story about this decision quoted Obama officials who referred to the New York Times problemi.e., the fact that any precedent set with respect to Assange could be applied to traditional journalistic entities.)

Trumps Justice Department has reversed course on this decision. When Jeff Sessions first came into office as attorney general, he said that one of his top priorities would be going after Assange. Secretary of State Mike Pompeothen the director of the CIAsaid, It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state, hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.

While no one knows whats in the DOJs indictment, it is highly probable that it names Assange as a co-conspirator not only in connection with the Manning leaks but also in connection with the leaks of emails stolen from the DNC and from Hillary Clintons campaign chair John Podesta, as well as the leaks of classified information detailing the CIAs ability to perform electronic surveillance (the so-called Vault 7 matter).

With respect to the DNC/Podesta leaks, Assange is in the crosshairs of special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who apparently believes that he may have conspired with Russian intelligence and perhaps additionally with members of the Trump campaign to leak the emails. Assange denies both that he received the emails from Russian intelligence and that he provided information to the Trump campaign.

Muellers January indictment of the former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone alleges that Stone tried to communicate with Assange through two intermediaries: radio host Randy Credico and political commentator Jerome Corsi. After laying out these allegations, Mueller indicted Stone for lying about his contacts with Credico and Corsi, and for attempting to get Credico to lie before Congress about their conversations. In a later filing, Mueller contended that he had executed search warrants on accounts that contained communication between Stone and Organization 1, understood to be WikiLeaks. (Stone has pleaded not guilty to all charges.)

Not all of the facts about the DNC leaks have come out yet, so it is hard to know exactly what Assange did. If he explicitly agreed to act as a Russian agent, he should lose his First Amendment protection. On the other hand, if he did no more than what he did with Manningreceive the documents and publish themhe should have that protection. The same is true with respect to the Vault 7 matter: the facts concerning these leaks are not known, but the application of the conspiracy theory to these leaks is presumably the same as in the DNC hack.*

Should Trumps Justice Department succeed in prosecuting Assange, the only safe course of action for a reporter would be to receive information from a leaker passively. As soon as a reporter actively sought the information or cooperated with the source, the reporter would be subject to prosecution. National security reporting, however, is not done by receiving information over the transom. It is nave to think that reporters can sit around waiting for leaks to fall into their laps. In a recent interview, the longtime investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told me that he obtains classified information through a process of seduction in which he spends time trying to induce the source into giving up the information. If he isnt allowed to do that, he says, Its the end of national security reporting.

Its clear that the Justice Department believes such seduction creates a conspiracy between the leaker and the reporter. In its prosecution of the State Department employee Stephen Jin-Woo Kim for leaking classified information about North Korea to a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, the DOJ stated, in a sealed affidavit, that it considered Rosen a co-conspirator. The DOJ filed the affidavit with the D.C. District Court in 2010 to gain access to Rosens email, which showed him persuading Kim, asking for the leak time and time again until Kim finally relented. The affidavit was unsealed three years later, to the shock of Rosen and many other journalists. When Fox News angrily protested that Rosens First Amendment rights prevented him from being a co-conspirator, the Obama Justice Department assured Fox that it would not prosecute him. If this type of conspiracy theory were to be applied in a criminal trial, a court would end up examining every effort by a reporter to obtain information. It would criminalize the reporting process. Reporters and their publishers would argue that the First Amendment protected news-gathering efforts such as Rosens, but the result would be in doubt in every case.

If reporters can be indicted for talking to their sources, it will mean that the government has created the equivalent of a UK Official Secrets Actthrough judicial fiat, without any legislative action.

Given the threat the Justice Departments actions against Assange pose to the First Amendment, why havent more journalists, press organizations, and editorial boards jumped in to support him? Principally it is because journalists dislike what he is doing; they dont believe he is a real journalist and therefore do not see him as entitled to the same protections they enjoy.

Writing in U.S. News and World Report, for example, Susan Milligan says, [Journalism] requires research, balance and most of all judgment. . . . Dumping documentssome of them classifiedonto a website does not make anyone a journalist. Add to this my own experience of when I was attacked several years ago by a howling mob of A-list journalists led by the late Morley Safer at a party (for my own book) where I said Assange, as a reporter, was entitled to First Amendment rights. He is just a data dumper, I was toldand most everyone there agreed.

But hes not just a data dumper. He edited the Manning leaks initially, holding back some material. He may have done the same thing with his other leaks, including the Vault 7 releases. For better or for worse he seeks out information to be published on his website the way other journalists do for their publications. He is a publisher and is entitled to the same First Amendment protections as any other. Nonetheless, in the eyes of establishment journalists he remains a dumper, as well as a rapist, a liar, a thief, and a Russian agent.

One wonders whether the real reason journalists will not support Assange is that they simply dont get it. They dont understand how a successful prosecution of Assange would threaten their ability to report. I would suggest that the focus of the mainstream press should not be on whether Assange meets the usual definition of a journalist or whether they approve of what he does. Thats not the point. The point is that he carries out the functions of a journalist, has First Amendment protections (as they do), and should not be prosecuted for what he does. If he is, we are all worse off for it.

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[Revision] More Than a Data Dump | Harper's Magazine

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson denied ties Friday to President Trumps election campaign on the heels of his predecessor, Julian Assange, defying requests for related material from the House Judiciary Committee.

Its rather pathetic how people are trying to connect the dots about some kind of collaboration, said Mr. Hrafnsson, an Icelandic journalist who previously served as the spokesperson for WikiLeaks prior to succeeding Mr. Assange as the websites editorial lead last September.

Mr. Hrafnsson made the remarks in an interview published by the Reykjavk Grapevine shortly after it emerged that Mr. Assange and an associate, Randy Credico, would both refuse requests issued as part of the House panels probe into alleged obstruction, corruption and other crimes potentially committed by Mr. Trump and individuals in his inner circle.

WikiLeaks published emails during the 2016 election belonging to the Democratic National Committee, among others, and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have since determined those messages were sourced by Russian government hackers conducting a broad campaign targeting Mr. Trumps rival in the presidential race, Hillary Clinton.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat and committee chairman, sent requests to dozens of individuals earlier this month as part of his panels newly launched probe, including various people connected to Mr. Trumps campaign and administration in addition to Mr. Assange, the websites founder and publisher, and Mr. Credico, a New York City radio host who has referred to the WikiLeaks boss as a personal friend.

Neither Mr. Assange, 47, nor Mr. Credico, 64, will turn over records requested by Mr. Nadlers committee, their lawyers said Thursday.

The First Amendment dictates that an inquiry by Congress should not begin by issuing requests to journalists for documents pertaining to its newsgathering, said Mr. Assanges attorney, Barry Pollack.

Martin Stolar, an attorney for Mr. Credico, said they declined the House request, in order to avoid conflicting with a separate probe into the 2016 race led by special counsel Robert Muellers office on behalf of the Department of Justice.

Mr. Credico has no objection to the Special Counsels Office providing to your Committee all the materials which were turned over to them pursuant to subpoena, Mr. Stolar wrote to Mr. Nadler.

Speaking to the Grapevine, Mr. Hrafnsson denied reports that Mr. Assange spoke by phone during the race with Roger Stone, Mr. Trumps former campaign adviser, and in person with Paul Manafort, the presidents former campaign chairman.

He also defended WikiLeaks releasing stolen Democratic material, saying: The DNC emails had information that was newsworthy, and definitely it should have been published prior to the election, and thats the end of it.

Mr. Stone, 66, was charged last month by the special counsels office with crimes including lying to Congress about his conversations involving WikiLeaks, as well as obstruction and witness tampering.

He previously told lawmakers that Mr. Credico acted as a conduit during the race between himself and WikiLeaks. Mr. Credico has denied acting as their backchannel, and prosecutors have alleged that Mr. Stone offered that account in lieu of explaining messages he exchanged about the DNC release with another associate.

Moscow has denied meddling in the 2016 race, and Mr. Stone has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Manafort, 69, was convicted of charges brought by Mr. Muellers office. He denied from prison a report published in The Guardian newspaper last year that alleged he privately met multiple times with Mr. Assange at the latters residence in London, and lawyers for both have subsequently threatened to sue the outlet for libel.

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Julian Assange refuses House request as WikiLeaks colleague ...

The social media giant has given no reason to Christine Assange who had turned to Twitter to campaign for the liberty of her son.

By Joe LauriaSpecial to Consortium News

The Twitter account of Christine Assange, the mother of the arbitrarily detained founder of WikiLeaks, has been restricted, she told Consortium News on Tuesday.

My Twitter account has been blocked due to unusual activity,' Ms. Assange wrote in a text message. Twitter, however, has provided her no reason for its action.

Ms. Assange is a prolific user of Twitter in her campaign to free her son who has been a refugee in the Ecuador embassy in London since 2012.

Twitter has posted the following message on her page:

While a user can access her page by agreeing to view her profile, Ms. Assange told Consortium News she is unable to post new Tweets to her account nor see anyone elses.

Her last post, at 11:55 am on Tuesday in Australia, where she lives, is a retweet of an article published about her son. She posted 12 tweets in the past 24 hours. Interesting that it followed on from a day of my tweets about free speech and calling on journalists globally to stand up for Julian, Ms. Assange said in a text message.

Clinton and Bolton

In the past ten days, Ms. Assange tweeted direct replies to Hillary Clinton and John Bolton, the U.S. national security adviser. Bolton had tweeted on March 9: US military should use for cyber warfare target practice. Take down their capabilities & prevent further harm to natl security.

Ms. Assanges reply to Bolton is no longer visible under his tweet. Nine replies to Bolton are now unavailable. Ms. Assange said in a text message that her reply began by calling Boltons tweet, Fascist talk!

In response to the New Zealand massacre, Clinton tweeted on March 15: My heart breaks for New Zealand & the global Muslim community. We must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalization of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms.

Ms. Assange directly replied to Clinton: Hang on Hillary! My son, published your pre Presidential run bragsheet Tick Tock (email) on ! As a result of your trophy War in Libya, you were responsible for 40,000 deaths, ISIS expansion, womens slave market in Libya, & the subsequent refugee crisis in Europe!

Clinton was in nauseating false sympathy, Ms. Assange said in a text message.

Under Congressional Pressure

Twitter uses algorithms unknown to the public to remove, block, suspend or restrict accounts of its users. Like other social media companies, Twitter has also come under intense U.S. congressional pressure to censor accounts deemed hostile to U.S. interests.

Julian Assange has remained in the embassy to avoid arrest by British authorities for skipping bail from an investigation by Sweden that has since been dropped. He has not been charged with a crime by either Sweden or Britain.

Assange was granted political asylum by the previous government of Ecuador seven years ago. The current government, however, has made it known it wants him to leave and has made various moves to force him out. His contact with the outside world has been restricted. Twitter deleted his account on March 28, 2018. British authorities have not permitted him to leave the embassy for urgent medical treatment without being arrested.

Assange fears that if he is arrested by London police once he leaves the embassy that he will be extradited to the United States where a secret grand jury is preparing an indictment against him, most likely under the Espionage Act. Grand jury proceedings are still underway in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,Sunday Timesof London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached atjoelauria@consortiumnews.comand followed on Twitter@unjoe.

If you value this original article, please considermaking a donationto Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

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Twitter Restricts Account of Julian Assange's Mother

THE ASSANGE PRECEDENT: THE THREAT TO THE MEDIA POSED BY THE TRUMPADMINISTRATIONS PROSECUTION OF JULIAN ASSANGE

March 2019

Read the PDF version here.

New York Times:

An indictment centering on the publication of information of public interest would create a precedent with profound implications for press freedoms.[1] Mr. Assange is not a traditional journalist, but what he does at WikiLeaks has also been difficult to distinguish in a legally meaningful way from what traditional news organizations, like The New York Times, do every day: seek out and publish information that officials would prefer to be kept secret, including classified national security matters.[2]

David McCraw, lead lawyer for The New York Times:

I think the prosecution of him [Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers. From that incident, from everything I know, hes sort of in a classic publishers position and I think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.[3]

The Atlantic:

If the U.S. government can prosecute the WikiLeaks editor for publishing classified material, then every media outlet is at risk.[4]

The Trump Administration has confirmed that it has charged WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and that it seeks his extradition from the United Kingdom.[5] The charges relate to WikiLeaks 2010-2011 joint publications on war, diplomacy and rendition with a range of media organizations; these were published in Europe while Julian Assange was in Europe.[6] In the US, Assange faces life in prison.

The alleged source, Chelsea Manning, who was granted a commutation by President Obama, was re-jailed on 8 March 2019 by the Trump Administration to coerce her to testify in secret against WikiLeaks over the 2010 publications. On her jailing, she stated that I stand by my previous public testimony.[7] In her 2013 trial, Manning stated that the decisions that I made to send documents and information to WikiLeaks were my own.[8]

The Trump Administrations actions are a serious threat to freedom of expression and freedom of the media.

1. The Trump Administration is seeking to use its case against WikiLeaks as an icebreaker to crush the rest of the press.

The administration is seeking to end the rash of leaks about it by using the case against WikiLeaks as an icebreaker against the rest of the media. The administration has been plagued by hundreds of government leaks, on everything from Trumps conversations with the leaders of Australia and Mexico to Jared Kushners security clearance to an upcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un to his personal diary etc. In fact, the Trump Administration has already threatened to prosecute journalists publishing classified leaks.[9] The Trump Administration is hostile to the press and will not stop at WikiLeaks; WikiLeaks is the desired precedent-setter to hobble the rest of the press.

2. Prosecuting WikiLeaks is a severe precedent-setting threat to press freedoms.

If the US succeeds in prosecuting the publisher and editor of WikiLeaks, for revealing information the US says is secret, it will open the flood gates to an extremely dangerous precedent. Not only will the US government immediately seize on the precedent to initiate further prosecutions, states the world over will follow suit and claim that their secrecy laws must apply globally too. Assanges co-publishers atDer Spiegel, Le Monde, New York Times, Espresso and The Guardian, among others, will also risk immediate prosecution in (and extradition to) the US. The prosecution of Assange will have a profound chilling effect on the press and national security reporting. Publishers should not be prosecuted, in the US or elsewhere, for the crime of publishing truthful information.

3. The Trump Administration should not be able to prosecute a journalist in the UK, operating from the UK and the rest of Europe, over claims under US laws.

The extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange would post an invitation to other states to follow suit, severely threatening the ability of journalists, publishers and human rights organizations to safely reveal information about serious international issues. If the Trump Administration can prosecute an Australian journalist in Europe for publishing material on the US, why cant Russia prosecute an American journalist in Washington revealing secrets about Moscow? Why cant Saudi Arabia prosecute a Turkish journalist for revealing secrets about the Khashoggi murder?

With the Assange precedent established, foreign states will have grounds to insist journalists and publishers are extradited for their reporting. Even in states that bar the extradition of their citizens, as soon as the journalist goes on holiday or on assignment, they can be arrested and extradited from a third state using the Assange precedent.

4. The Trump Administration seeks to turn Europe and the rest of the world into a legal Guantanamo Bay.

The US seeks to apply its laws to European journalists and publishers and at the same time strip them of constitutional rights, effectively turning Europe into a legal Guantanamo Bay, where US criminal laws are asserted, but US rights are withheld.In April 2017, CIA director Mike Pompeo said that Julian Assange has no First Amendment privileges. He is not a U.S. citizen. He stated:

We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.[10]

But while rejecting any rights under the first amendment, which guarantees free speech and freedom of the media under the US Constitution, the US believes it still has a right to prosecute a non-US publisher in Europe.

Journalists whatever they think of Julian Assange should defend his First Amendment rights.[11]

James Goodale, the lawyer representing theNew York Timesin the Pentagon Papers case, put it succinctly:

the prosecution of Assange goes a step further. Hes not a source, he is a publisher who received information from sources. The danger to journalists cant be overstated As a matter of fact, a charge against Assange for conspiring with a source is the most dangerous charge that I can think of with respect to the First Amendment in almost all my years representing media organizations. The reason is that one who is gathering/writing/distributing the news, as the law stands now, is free and clear under the First Amendment. If the government is able to say a person who is exempt under the First Amendment thenlosesthat exemption because that person has conspired with a source who is subject to the Espionage Act or other law, then the government has succeeded in applying the standard to all news-gathering. That will mean that the press ability to get newsworthy classified information from government sources will be severely curtailed, because every story that is based on leaked info will theoretically be subject to legal action by the government. It will be up to the person with the information to prove that they got it without violating the Espionage Act. This would be, in my view, the worst thing to happen to the First Amendmentalmost ever. [12]

Which other publishers and journalists are also in the frame?

Wikileaks co-published the Afghanistan and Iraq files in 2010 with a range of media organizations. The co-publishers of the Afghanistan material were Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Espresso. The co-publishers of the Iraq material were Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Channel 4s Dispatches, the Iraq Body Count project, RUV (Iceland) and SVT (Sweden). The individual journalists reporting the Afghanistan and Iraq material are identified below.

The Guardian published hundreds of documents in full, in various sets, often using those exposes as major headlines, as did the other papers.[26] The New York Times published WikiLeaks war logs, as: An archive of classified military documents offers views of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.[27]

Re-reported coverage of WikiLeaks files by other media organizations is of course even more extensive. Hundreds of outlets reported on the files, often quoting from them extensively. Some of these news organizations published dozens of files in full, with interactive maps and facilities to search the documents, such as The Telegraph in the UK.[28]

All major newspapers prominently covered the WikiLeaks publication of thousands of CIA files in March 2017, the biggest leak in the history of the CIA and the stimulus for the Trump Administration to shut down WikiLeaks.

The fact that media freedom under threat is recognized by a raft of organizations:

No one should be prosecuted underthe antiquated Espionage Actfor publishing leaked government documents. That 1917 statute was designed to punish people who leaked secrets to a foreign government, not to the media, and allowsno defense or mitigation of punishmenton the basis that public interest served by some leaks may outweigh any harm to national security.[29]

David Kaye: UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression:

Prosecuting Assange would be dangerously problematic from the perspective of press freedom and should be strongly opposed[30]

Kenneth Roth, Director of Human Rights Watch:

Deeply troubling if the Trump Administration, which has shown little regard for media freedom, would charge Assange for receiving from a government official and publishing classified informationexactly what journalists do all the time.[31]

David Bralow, an attorney withThe Intercept:

Its hard to see many of WikiLeaks activities as being different than other news organizations actions when it receives important information, talks to sources and decides what to publish. The First Amendment protects all speakers, not simply a special class of speaker.[32]

Alexandra Ellerbeck, Committee to Protect Journalists, North America program coordinator:

We would be concerned by a prosecution that construes publishing government documents as a crime. This would set a dangerous precedent that could harm all journalists, whether inside or outside the United States.[33]

Trevor Timm, director of Freedom of the Press Foundation:

Any charges brought against WikiLeaks for their publishing activities pose a profound and incredibly dangerous threat to press freedom.[34]

Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor to The Nation:

The notion of sealed charges against a publisher of leaked documents ought to have warning sirens screaming in every news organization, think tank, research service, university, and civil-liberties lobby. The still-secret Assange charges, if unchallenged, could burn down the scaffolding of American investigative reporting.[35]

Ben Wizner, ACLU:

Any prosecution of Mr Assange for WikiLeaks publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.[36]

High-ranking Trump Administration officials have issued a series of threats against Assange and WikiLeaks to take down the organization, asserting that Julian Assange has no First Amendment privileges. He is not a US citizen (then-CIA director Mike Pompeo[37]) and stating that arresting Assange is a priority for the US (then-US Attorney General Jeff Sessions[38]).

The key reason for this approach is WikiLeaks release of thousands of files on the CIA in 2017, which revealed the CIAs efforts to infest computers, smartphones, TVs, routers and even vehicles with CIA viruses and malware. The US government arrested a young US intelligence officer as WikiLeaks source who now faces 160 years in prison and is being held in harsh conditions. The media reported in 2017, just after the Vault 7 publications, that the US was expanding the investigation against Assange and had prepared charges against him.[39] All the while, it has never been questioned that WikiLeaks simply published truthful information.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have won numerous major journalism prizes, includingAustralias highest journalistic honour (equivalent to the Pulitzer), the Walkley prize for The Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism, The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (UK), the Index on Censorship and The Economists New Media Award, the Amnesty International New Media Award, and has been nominated for the UN Mandela Prize (2015) and the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize (nominated by Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire). WikiLeaks has been repeatedlyfound by courtsto be a media organization.[40]

WikiLeaks receives censored and restricted documents anonymously after Julian Assange inventedthe first anonymous secure online submission system for documents from journalistic sources. For years it was the only such system of its kind, but secure anonymous dropboxes are now seen as essential for many major news and human rights organizations.

WikiLeaks publications have been cited in tens of thousands of articles and academic papers and have been used in numerous court cases promoting human rights and human rights defenders. For example, documents published by WikiLeaks wererecently successfully used in the International Court of Justice over the UKs illegal depopulation of the Chagos Islands, which were cleared to make way for a giant US military base at the largest Island, Diego Garcia. The Islanders have been fighting for decades for recognition.

Julian Assange pioneered large international collaborations to secure maximum spread and contextual analysis of large whistleblower leaks. For Cablegate, WikiLeaks entered into partnerships with 110 different media organizations and continues to establish partnerships in its publications. This model has since been replicated in other international media collaborations with significant successes, such as the Panama Papers.

All media organizations and journalists must recognize the threat to their freedom and ability to work posed by the Trump Administrations prosecution of Assange. They should join human rights organizations, the United Nations and many others in opposing Assanges extradition. They should do so out of their own self-interest given that their ability to safely publish is under serious threat.

For more information, contact: courage.contact@couragefound.org

The Courage Foundation http://www.couragefound.org is an international organization that supports those who risk life or liberty to make significant contributions to the historical record. It campaigns and fundraises for the legal and public defence of specific individuals such as Julian Assange who are subject to serious prosecution or persecution.

REFERENCES

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The Assange Precedent: The threat to the media posed by ...

Authored by Joe Lauria via ConsortiumNews.com,

The social media giant has given no reason to Christine Assange who had turned to Twitter to campaign for the liberty of her son...

Christine Assange with Ecuador chancellor Ricardo Patio in Quito, July 30, 2012.(Flickr)

The Twitter account of Christine Assange, the mother of the arbitrarily detained founder of WikiLeaks, has been restricted, she toldConsortium Newson Tuesday.

My Twitter account has been blocked due to unusual activity,' Ms. Assange wrote in a text message. Twitter, however, has provided her no reason for its action.

Ms. Assange is a prolific user of Twitter in her campaign to free her son who has been a refugee in the Ecuador embassy in London since 2012.

Twitter has posted the following message on her page:

While a user can access her page by agreeing to view her profile, Ms. Assange toldConsortium Newsshe is unable to post new Tweets to her account.

Her last post, at 11:55 am on Tuesday in Australia, where she lives, is a retweet of anarticlepublished about her son. She posted 12 tweets in the past 24 hours.

Interesting that it followed on from a day of my tweets about free speech and calling on journalists globally to stand up for Julian, Ms. Assange said in a text message.

In the past ten days, Ms. Assange tweeted direct replies to Hillary Clinton and John Bolton, the U.S. national security adviser. Bolton had tweeted on March 9: US military should use#Wikileaksfor cyber warfare target practice. Take down their capabilities & prevent further harm to natl security.

Ms. Assanges reply to Bolton is no longer visible under his tweet. Nine replies to Bolton are now unavailable. Ms. Assange said in a text message that her reply began by calling Boltons tweet, Fascist talk.

Twitter uses algorithms unknown to the public to remove, block, suspend or restrict accounts of its users. Like other social media companies, Twitter has come under intense U.S. congressional pressure to censor accounts deemed hostile to U.S. interests.

Julian Assange has remained in the embassy to avoid arrest by British authorities for skipping bail from an investigation by Sweden that has since been dropped. Has not been charged with a crime by either Sweden or Britain.

Assange was granted political asylum by the previous government of Ecuador seven years ago. The current government, however, has made it known it wants him to leave and has made various moves to force him out. His contact with the outside world has been restricted. Twitter deleted his account on March 28, 2018. British authorities have not permitted him to leave the embassy for urgent medical treatment without being arrested.

Assange fears that if he is arrested by London police once he leaves the embassy that he will be extradited to the United States where a secret grand jury is preparing an indictment against him, most likely under the Espionage Act. Grand jury proceedings are still underway in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom.

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Twitter Blocks Account Of Julian Assange's Mother | Zero Hedge

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A UN panel will conclude Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is being "arbitrarily detained" in the UK, the Swedish foreign ministry has said.

Mr Assange, 44, claimed asylum in London's Ecuadorean embassy in 2012. He wants to avoid extradition to Sweden over a rape claim, which he denies.

The Met Police says Mr Assange will be arrested if he leaves the embassy.

Swedish prosecutors said the UN panel's decision would have "no formal impact" on its ongoing investigation.

Mr Assange earlier said his passport should be returned and his arrest warrant dropped if the UN panel, due to deliver its findings on Friday, ruled in his favour.

The Australian was originally arrested in London in 2010 under a European Arrest Warrant issued by Sweden over rape and sexual assault claims.

In 2012, while on bail, he claimed asylum inside the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge after the UK Supreme Court had ruled the extradition against him could go ahead.

Swedish prosecutors dropped two sex assault claims against Mr Assange last year. However, he still faces the more serious accusation of rape.

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In 2014, Mr Assange complained to the UN that he was being "arbitrarily detained" as he could not leave the embassy without being arrested.

The application claimed Mr Assange had been "deprived of his liberty in an arbitrary manner for an unacceptable length of time".

The UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has been investigating the issue.

The Press Association said key factors in the panel's decision would include the inability of Mr Assange to access political asylum, the fact he has never been charged, and changes to UK law and procedures since he arrived at the embassy.

Wikileaks earlier tweeted it was waiting for "official confirmation" of the UN panel's decision.

Downing Street said the panel's ruling would not be legally binding in the UK while a European Arrest Warrant remained in place.

"We have been consistently clear that Mr Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK but is, in fact, voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy," a spokesman said.

"The UK continues to have a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden."

The Swedish foreign ministry said in a statement that it noted the UN panel's decision "differs from that of the Swedish authorities".

The statement added the legal process for Mr Assange's case would be handled in court by Swedish prosecutors.

Per Samuelsson, Mr Assange's lawyer, said Swedish authorities would be "morally" wrong to continue the investigation if the UN panel found in his favour.

"The ball is in Sweden's yard, in the prosecutor's yard. She is not formally bound by the decision by the UN, but morally it is very difficult to go against it."

The journalist John Pilger, who is a friend of Mr Assange, said "the ball is now at the feet of the British government", whose international legal "obligations" were represented by the UN panel.

"They did something in terms of supporting the tribunal in all the other celebrated cases, and Assange now joins them because the UN jurists have clearly found this is a case of arbitrary detention," he said.

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Mr Assange's Wikileaks organisation posted secret American government documents on the internet, and he says Washington could seek his extradition to the US to face espionage charges if he is sent to Sweden.

In the statement, published earlier by Wikileaks on Twitter, Mr Assange said: "Should the UN announce tomorrow that I have lost my case against the United Kingdom and Sweden I shall exit the embassy at noon on Friday to accept arrest by British police as there is no meaningful prospect of further appeal.

"However, should I prevail and the state parties be found to have acted unlawfully, I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me."

Last October, Scotland Yard said it would no longer station officers outside the Ecuador embassy following an operation which it said had cost 12.6m. But it said "a number of overt and covert tactics to arrest him" would still be deployed.

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Julian Assange is being 'arbitrarily held', UN panel to say ...

Mairead Maguire, has today written to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo to nominate Julian Assange, Editor-in-Chief of Wikileaks, for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

In her letter to the Nobel Peace Committee, Ms. Maguire said:

Julian Assange and his colleagues in Wikileaks have shown on numerous occasions that they are one of the last outlets of true democracy and their work for our freedom and speech. Their work for true peace by making public our governments actions at home and abroad has enlightened us to their atrocities carried out in the name of so-called democracy around the world. This included footage of inhumanity carried out by NATO/Military, the release of email correspondence revealing the plotting of regime change in Eastern Middle countries, and the parts our elected officials paid in deceiving the public. This is a huge step in our work for disarmament and nonviolence worldwide.

Julian Assange, fearing deportation to the U.S. to stand trial for treason, sought out asylum in the Ecuadorien Embassy in 2012. Selflessly, he continues his work from here increasing the risk of his prosecution by the American Government. In recent months the U.S. has increased pressure on the Ecuadorian Government to take away his last liberties. He is now prevented from having visitors, receiving telephone calls, or other electronic communications, hereby removing his basic human rights. This has put a great strain on Julians mental and physical health. It is our duty as citizens to protect Julians human rights and freedom of speech as he has fought for ours on a global stage.

It is my great fear that Julian, who is an innocent man, will be deported to the U.S. where he will face unjustified imprisonment. We have seen this happen to Chelsea (Bradley) Manning who allegedly supplied Wikileaks with sensitive information from NATO/US Middle Eastern Wars and subsequently spent multiple years in solitary confinement in an American prison. If the US succeeds in their plan to extradite Julian Assange to US to face a Grand Jury, this will silence journalists and whistle-blowers around the world, in fear of dire repercussions.

Julian Assange meets all criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize. Through his release of hidden information to the public we are no longer nave to the atrocities of war, we are no longer oblivious to the connections between big Business, the acquisition of resources, and the spoils of war.

As his human rights and freedom are in jeopardy the Nobel Peace Prize would afford Julian much greater protection from Government forces.

Over the years there have been controversies over the Nobel Peace Prize and some of those to whom it has been awarded. Sadly, I believe it has moved from its original intentions and meaning. It was Alfred Nobels will that the prize would support and protect individuals at threat from Government forces in their fight for nonviolence and peace, by bringing awareness to their precarious situations. Through awarding Julian Assange the Nobel Peace Prize, he and others like him, will receive the protection they truly deserve.

It is my hope that by this we can rediscover the true definition of the Nobel Peace Prize.

I also call on all people to bring awareness to Julians situation and support him in his struggle for basic human rights, freedom of speech, and peace.

*****

The Nobel Peace Prize Watch

Lay down your arms (www.nobelwill.org) [1]

Oslo/Gothenburg, January 6, 2019

DREAMINGOFANOBELPEACEPRIZE IN2019... for some person, idea or group dear to you?

If weapons had been the solution we would have had peace long ago.

Simple logic is valid; the world is heading in the wrong direction, not to peace, not to security. Nobel saw this when in 1895 he established his peace prize for global abolition of military forces and entrusted Norways Parliament with appointing a committee to select the winners. For decades any good person or cause has had a chance to win, the Nobel Peace Prize was a lottery, disconnected from Nobels purpose. The decay culminated last year when Parliament rejected a proposal to make loyalty to Nobels peace idea a condition for being eligible to the Nobel committee; this proposal got only two votes (of 169).

Fortunately, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is finally responding to years of criticism and political pressure from Nobel Peace Prize Watch. It now frequently cites Alfred Nobel, his testament, and his antimilitarist vision. The prize for ICAN in 2017 promoted nuclear disarmament. The 2018 prize for Mukwege and Murad condemned sexual assault as a cruel and unacceptable weapon (but still not decrying weapons and the institution of war itself).

You too can support global peace if you have a qualified candidate to bring forward. Parliamentarians and professors (in certain fields) anywhere in the world belongs to the groups entitled to make Nobel nominations. If you do not have nomination rights you may ask someone who has to nominate a candidate within Nobels idea of peace by co-operation to reform the norms of international conduct, demilitarization, a collective security system.

Nobel Peace Prize Watch is assisting by nominating qualified candidates and helping the Nobel Committee (reticently) refocus on winners that meet Nobels intention, to support contemporary ideas of creating the brotherhood of nations, a global co-operation on the abolition of arms and military forces. For examples illustrating who are the worthy winners in todays world, see our screened list at nobelwill.org, (Candidates 2018). Like Nobel we see global disarmament as the road to prosperity and security for everyone on the planet.

The Nobel idea of peace today looks unrealistic and strange to many. Few seem able to imagine, and much less to dream of, a world without arms and militarism, and yet it still is the task as a binding legal obligation of the Norwegian awarders to try to raise support for Nobels idea of a new, co-operative global system. In the age of the atomic bomb time seems overripe to seriously consider Nobels idea of co-operation on global disarmament. (/2 )

Practical: The nomination letter must be sent by January 31 each year to: the Norwegian Nobel Committee postmaster@nobel.no, by someone qualified to nominate (parliamentarians, professors in certain fields, earlier laureates etc.). We urge you to share a copy of your nomination for evaluation (send COPY to: nominations@nobelwill.org). The betrayal of Nobels testament has been hidden behind strict secrecy rules. Nobel Peace Prize Watch, believing transparency will help keep the committee straight, has, since 2015, published all known nominations we deemed in compliance with the testament on http://nobelwill.org/index.html?tab=8.

NOBELPEACEPRIZEWATCH/ http://www.nobelwill.org

Fredrik S. Heffermehl Tomas Magnusson

(fredpax@online.no, +47 917 44 783) (gosta.tomas@gmail.com, +46 70 829 3197)

Sender address: mail@nobelwill.org, Nobel Peace Prize Watch, c/o Magnusson, Gteborg, Sverige.

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Mairead Maguire Nominates Julian Assange for Nobel Peace ...

Julian Assange, (born July 3, 1971, Townsville, Queensland, Australia), Australian computer programmer who founded the media organization WikiLeaks. Practicing what he called scientific journalismi.e., providing primary source materials with a minimum of editorial commentaryAssange, through WikiLeaks, released thousands of internal or classified documents from an assortment of government and corporate entities.

Assanges family moved frequently when he was a child, and he was educated with a combination of homeschooling and correspondence courses. As a teenager, he demonstrated an uncanny aptitude with computers, and, using the hacking nickname Mendax, he infiltrated a number of secure systems, including those at NASA and the Pentagon. In 1991 Australian authorities charged him with 31 counts of cybercrime; he pleaded guilty to most of them. At sentencing, however, he received only a small fine as punishment, and the judge ruled that his actions were the result of youthful inquisitiveness. Over the next decade, Assange traveled, studied physics at the University of Melbourne (he withdrew before earning a degree), and worked as a computer security consultant.

Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006 to serve as a clearinghouse for sensitive or classified documents. Its first publication, posted to the WikiLeaks Web site in December 2006, was a message from a Somali rebel leader encouraging the use of hired gunmen to assassinate government officials. The documents authenticity was never verified, but the story of WikiLeaks and questions regarding the ethics of its methods soon overshadowed it. WikiLeaks published a number of other scoops, including details about the U.S. militarys detention facility at Guantnamo Bay in Cuba, a secret membership roster of the British National Party, internal documents from the Scientology movement, and private e-mails from the University of East Anglias Climatic Research Unit.

In 2010 WikiLeaks posted almost half a million documentsmainly relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While much of the information was already in the public domain, Pres. Barack Obamas administration criticized the leaks as a threat to U.S. national security. In November of that year, WikiLeaks began publishing an estimated 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables. Those classified documents dated mostly from 2007 to 2010, but they included some dating back as far as 1966. Among the wide-ranging topics covered were behind-the-scenes U.S. efforts to politically and economically isolate Iran, primarily in response to fears of Irans development of nuclear weapons. Reaction from governments around the world was swift, and many condemned the publication. Assange became the target of much of that ire, and some American politicians called for him to be pursued as a terrorist.

Assange also faced prosecution in Sweden, where he was wanted in connection with sexual assault charges. (It was the second arrest warrant issued for Assange for those alleged crimes; the first warrant was dismissed in August 2010 because of lack of evidence.) Assange was arrested in London in December 2010 and held without bond, pending possible extradition to Sweden. He was eventually released on bail, and in February 2011 a British judge ruled that the extradition should proceed, a decision that was appealed by Assanges attorneys. In December 2011 the British High Court found that Assanges extradition case was of general public importance and recommended that it be heard by the Supreme Court. This decision allowed Assange to petition the Supreme Court directly for a final hearing on the matter.

In May 2011 Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Foundations gold medal, an honour that had previously been bestowed on Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, for his exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights. Assanges memoir, Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography, was published against his wishes in September 2011. Assange had received a sizable advance payment for the book, but he withdrew his support for the project after sitting for some 50 hours of interviews, and the resulting manuscript, although at times enlightening, read very much like the early draft that it was.

While Britains Supreme Court continued to weigh the matter of Assanges extradition, he remained under house arrest on the estate of a WikiLeaks supporter in rural Norfolk. From this location, Assange recorded a series of interviews that were collected as The World Tomorrow, a talk show that debuted online and on the state-funded Russian satellite news network RT in April 2012. Hosting the program from a makeshift broadcast studio, Assange began the series with an interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Nasrallahs first with a Western journalist since the 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

In June 2012, after his extradition appeal was denied by the Supreme Court, Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy. He applied for asylum on the grounds that extradition to Sweden could lead to eventual prosecution in the United States for actions related to WikiLeaks. Assange claimed that such a trial would be politically motivated and would potentially subject him to the death penalty. In August Assanges request was granted, but he remained confined within the embassy as British and Ecuadoran officials attempted to resolve the issue. Assange began his second year within the walls of the embassy by launching a bid for a seat in the Australian Senate. His WikiLeaks Party, founded in July 2013, performed poorly in the September 7, 2013, Australian general election; it captured less than 1 percent of the national vote and failed to win any seats in the Senate. In August 2015 Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation of three of the allegations against Assange, as they had been unable to interview him prior to the expiration of a five-year statute of limitations. Swedish authorities continued to pursue an investigation into the outstanding allegation of rape, however, and Assange remained within the Ecuadoran embassy in London.

In 2016 Assange became an active player in the U.S. presidential race, when WikiLeaks began publishing internal communications from the Democratic Party and the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Assange made no secret of his personal hostility toward Clinton, and the leaks were clearly timed to do maximum damage to her campaign. Numerous independent cybersecurity experts and U.S. law enforcement agencies confirmed that the data had been obtained by hackers associated with Russian intelligence agencies. Despite this evidence, Assange denied that the information had come from Russia. In January 2017 a declassified U.S. intelligence report stated that Assange and WikiLeaks had been key parts of a sophisticated hybrid warfare campaign orchestrated by Russia against the United States. In May 2017, as Assange approached his fifth year under de facto house arrest in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Swedish prosecutors announced that they had discontinued their investigation into the rape charges against him.

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Julian Assange | Biography & Facts | Britannica.com