Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amendment Issues

 haresfur wrote: 
Oh, I think that the Swedes will try to get him extradited there, and my guess is that they'll succeed. The Swedes likely will have first crack at Assange because they filed first. 
As for the US govt. indicting Assange right before the statute of limitations ran out...   (sadly, no shrug emoticon available). My guess is that the Justice Dept. wanted to keep the option of trying him on the table. Maybe they knew the Ecuadorean government was going to throw him out of the Embassy and thought they'd get in line to prosecute him, just in case. 

But wow are you right about Assange being a dick and making bad choices. Someone—Wikileaks denies involvement—leaked photos of a luxurious lifestyle from the phones of  Ecuadorean president Moreno in an attempt to embarrass and blackmail him. Moreno turned the matter into a plus for himself and shortly thereafter had Assange turned out. 

Wikileaks according to the NYT piece had threatened Ecuador earlier. On October 14 2016, an aide to SoS John Kerry and a woman who'd worked in the Clinton White House visited the Ecuadorean ambassador during a black-tie dinner at the ambassador's residence. At that time, Wikileaks had just started releasing John Podesta's emails to the public. The day after that meeting, Assange's Internet access was curtailed. But Wikileaks threatened Ecuador and the Internet service was restored. 
WikiLeaks struck back soon after. On Oct. 16, the day after Mr. Assange’s internet was restricted, WikiLeaks tweeted a code, known in its parlance as an “insurance file,” and signaled that an upcoming leak involving Ecuador was imminent.

Mr. Assange certainly seemed to have acquired compromising material. In 2015, Cynthia Viteri, a prominent Ecuadorean politician, and Fernando Villavicencio, an Ecuadorean political journalist, had gotten secret documents showing that Ecuador was running a surveillance program, using an Italian company to spy on journalists and political enemies, in addition to spying on Mr. Assange at the embassy.

Mr. Villavicencio said he sent the material to a WikiLeaks email address, hoping the organization would publish the information. He eventually published the documents himself. WikiLeaks never did, though it is clear from leaked 2015 chat group logs from WikiLeaks Forum, a related site, that Mr. Assange and his inner circle were aware of them.

Mr. Villavicencio said he believed the documents he sent to WikiLeaks may have been among those that Mr. Assange had threatened to publish.

Nothing ever came of the Ecuador-related “insurance file” WikiLeaks tweeted about in October 2016.

“From 2011, WikiLeaks did not leak relevant information regarding Correa’s government,” Mr. Villavicencio said. “That certainly shows hypocrisy and a double standard, contradicting journalism principles.”

...

But Ecuadorean officials contend that the expulsion comes from an extensive list of transgressions by Mr. Assange that soured their long — and often strained — relationship.

In explaining his decision, Mr. Moreno accused Mr. Assange of installing electronic distortion equipment in the embassy, blocking security cameras, confronting and mistreating guards and gaining access to security files without permission.

...

Fernando Cutz, a former senior adviser to H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser, and a Latin America policy specialist at the White House, acknowledged that American officials regularly spoke with their Ecuadorean counterparts about handing over Mr. Assange.

But Mr. Cutz argued that Ecuadorean officials did not simply cave to American demands. They wanted Mr. Assange gone as well, he said.

“We would definitely raise it with Ecuador,” Mr. Cutz said. “It was a bilateral irritant, without a doubt. But I don’t think the U.S. pressure ended up being the reason for this move. Bettering relations with the U.S. was just the icing on the cake for Moreno. Assange was his own worst enemy.”

 kcar wrote:
 

I meant the statute of limitations on the US charges. He should have taken his chances on Sweden.  The Swedes could really mess with the Americans by trying to get him extradited there

 haresfur wrote: 
This WaPo piece doesn't give me the impression that the statute of limitations on the rape charge he faced in Sweden was about to run out. 

Two women accused Assange of acting in a nonconsensual manner after they separately had consensual sex with him in Sweden. Assange returned to the UK after being with the women but eventually faced extradition back to Sweden due to "allegations of sexual molestation, unlawful coercion and rape."


In June 2012, with his legal avenues exhausted, Assange finally faced extradition to Sweden. Instead, he fled to the Ecuadoran Embassy. Eight weeks later, he was granted asylum. Assange would not leave the embassy until this week.


...


Time ran out to pursue the Swedish allegations of molestation and unlawful coercion in 2015. Prosecutors decided to discontinue the rape investigation against Assange in 2017, with (Swedish prosecutor Marianne) Ny saying at a news conference in Stockholm that “all possibilities to advance the investigation have now been exhausted.”

This week may change that. On Thursday, chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren said that Sweden had not been informed ahead of time that Assange would be expelled from the embassy. Deputy Director of Public Prosecution Eva-Marie Persson noted that the statute of limitations for the rape case would not run out until 2020.

“We will now examine the case in order to determine how to proceed,” Persson said in a statement.

Ove Bring, a professor of international law at the University of Stockholm, said that if Sweden revived the case, that would imply a new European arrest warrant, a mechanism of the European Union, that would require Britain to extradite Assange.

Another WashPo article explains the nature of charges that the US government has brought against Assange: 

With Assange’s arrest, U.S. and British authorities ended a seven-year saga in which the anti-secrecy crusader stayed just beyond their reach while his group dumped classified and politically volatile materials onto the Internet. U.S. prosecutors confirmed for the first time that they had secretly charged Assange last year with conspiring with an Army intelligence analyst to illegally obtain secret U.S. military and diplomatic documents, which Assange’s group published online. He is accused of helping Chelsea Manning, the former soldier then known as Bradley Manning, perhaps unsuccessfully, try to crack a government password.

It could be some time, though, before he answers to that charge in an American court. Analysts say Assange’s extradition could take years, and only after he is in the United States can he begin what is expected to be a vigorous defense, arguing that he is like any newspaper publisher and that the charge against him is unjust.

...



Ecuador, which took in Assange when he faced a Swedish rape investigation in 2012, said it was rescinding asylum because of his “discourteous and aggressive behavior,” and for violating its terms.

Personally, I think it would be very difficult for Assange to defeat a charge of trying to illegally obtain secret US government documents if he did help Manning try to crack a password. Receiving and publishing classified documents, such as the Pentagon Papers, is one thing. Actively trying to steal or illegally obtain those secured documents is another. 

Greenwald/Lee: The U.S. Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom

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Chomsky: Arrest of Assange Is “Scandalous” and Highlights Shocking Extraterritorial Reach of U.S.

 R_P wrote: 
In any event, Clinton is giddy and can't wait to get him in a room alone with her guards at the door.

 miamizsun wrote:

Ecuador now has a right-wing government...

 haresfur wrote:
 
Or so some people claim...

 miamizsun wrote:
 
They said they withdrew the asylum he had been granted and let the Brits in to arrest him because of breaking rules on his political activities, and generally being a really shitty guest - refusing to clean up after himself and his cat, damaging the building, abusing the staff. He sued the Ecuadorian government because he didn't like the way they treated him. Basically he was being a real wanker.

Ok, what I haven't heard anyone talk about is why this all went down, days before the statute of limitations ran out on the crime he was indicted on. So that leaves me wondering what was going on between Ecuador, the US, and the UK.

I don't have a favorable opinion of Assange, and don't see him as a whistleblower or a journalist, but he was close enough that any attempt to indict him on releasing classified information would have bad implications for those who are. That's apparently why the Obama administration decided not to indict him.

One thing that is really clear is that he makes bad choices:

He holed up in the embassy for 7 years to avoid going to Sweden to be questioned on allegations that he raped a woman. So he probably spent longer imprisoned in the embassy than he would have if he was convicted of the rape. He claimed it was because he was afraid they were going to deport him to the US. I find it improbable that Sweden would send him to the US but the UK would not.

Then he worked with the Russians to attack Clinton and interfere to help Trump. Remember that Obama didn't indict him. But the Trump administration he helped did. Yeah, he totally fucked himself.

i'm probably not up to speed on the latest news surrounding the assange case

as i understand it he could have stayed in the ecuadorian embassy indefinitely

so what happened?

there was an original reason or reasons that ecuador offered him asylum

i believe those reasons were legitimate and principled 

so what changed?

did ecuadorian leadership cave presumably to some sort of political pressure?

obviously from a whistleblower standpoint this is very troubling

ACLU Comment on Julian Assange Arrest

Paul Waldman offers an interesting opinion take in the Washington Post—that the Trump administration's decision to seek extradition and indictment of Assange is a worrying sign that it may go after other individuals and news-gathering groups who publish classified information. 


Don’t celebrate the indictment of Julian Assange


Waldman quotes this WashPo article before offering his own opinions: 

The U.S. indictment unsealed Thursday accuses Assange of agreeing to help Manning break a password to the Defense Department’s computer network in 2010. That, prosecutors alleged, would have allowed Manning to log in with another username. The indictment includes no evidence that the password-cracking effort actually succeeded.


Waldman comments: 


There's a clear rule journalists follow: If my source stole important documents and gives them to me, I can write about what they contain. What I can't do is break down the door to the government building so he can get inside.

...

But given the magnitude of what WikiLeaks has published over the years and the criticism the organization has received, that one charge seems an awful lot like a pretense, a way of charging Assange with something so they can extradite him. 

...
While WikiLeaks’ modus operandi was highly controversial before 2016, it was at least operating according to a defensible set of principles, promoting the idea that people everywhere should know the things governments seek to conceal. But then in 2016, Assange and the group seem to have essentially decided that, for whatever reason (loathing of Hillary Clinton, probably), they would cooperate with the Russian government in a joint effort to help get Trump elected president of the United States.

...

Up until 2016, conservatives were generally more critical than liberals of WikiLeaks, given the conservatives’ greater suspicion of whistle-blowers and the idea of exposing government secrets. I’m sure many of them felt a twinge of ambivalence when the organization to which they had been so hostile joined the Trump cause and their candidate himself began praising them lavishly on the campaign trail...But they got over it...


...



The hypocrisy of Trump and his supporters doesn’t tell us much one way or the other about whether it’s a good thing that Assange was arrested. If prosecutors can prove the charge that he attempted to assist in the hacking of government systems, then he can be held accountable for that. But if what’s really at issue is WikiLeaks publishing classified information, we should be concerned about who the Trump administration will go after next.

Julian Assange carried a book during his arrest. He may have been sending a message.

If Assange is tried and cyber warriors attack, will the nation respond cohesively, or will all hell break loose?

No one knows, so my advice is this: Tread lightly, you who seeing Julian Assange in shackles, or chained to a wall in a country no one can spell. No one, including myself, wants to live in the world your hubris may provoke.

"British Secret Police" Have Entered the Ecuador Embassy and Arrested Julian Assange. What Kind of War Will It Start?
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2019/04/british-secret- . . .

Julian Assange arrested at Ecuadorian embassy in London

Julian Assange sues over 'inhuman' conditions, 'denigrating' cat obligations in Ecuadorean embassy

 aflanigan wrote: 

Paul Manafort Is Getting Transferred out of His 'VIP' Prison

 Proclivities wrote: 
I'm not sure but I believe the "solitary" thing was because the place he originally was incarcerated in Warsaw VA was not used to handling high profile inmates. They probably put him in the solitary space so that he could talk to his lawyers ad nauseum without bothering the rest of the population.

 kurtster wrote: 
He was jailed by a judge's order because he was charged with engaging in witness tampering while out on bail.  As the judge apparently said:  “this isn’t middle school, I can’t take away your cell phone.”  Still, the "solitary" aspect seems unusual, but I guess they consider that it could be dangerous for him to be in general population.

 steeler wrote: 
I am aware of that.  Not typical treatment though.  Rather extreme considering similar situations.

 kurtster wrote: 
He was jailed pending trial because he violated conditions of his release.