WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested and charged with conspiracy

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to a single count under the Espionage Act in federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands on June 26, 2024, and was sentenced to time served as part of a plea agreement with the U.S. government, The Guardian reported.

Assange left the United Kingdom on June 24 after he was granted bail by London's High Court and released from the city's Belmarsh Prison, where he spent the last five years, according to a WikiLeaks post on the social platform X.

In a June 25 indictment reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, Assange was charged with one felony count of conspiracy to obtain, receive and disclose national defense information. An additional 17 counts were dropped as part of the plea deal.

The charges stem from allegations that Assange conspired with Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to acquire and publish hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents from 2009 to 2011.

A letter from the Department of Justice said that the hearing was held in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific, because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States and because of the court’s proximity to Australia, where Assange plans to return following the hearing.

During the hearing, Assange defended his actions but acknowledged that he would have struggled to win in a trial, The Washington Post reported. “Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information. I believe the First Amendment protected that,” Assange said.

As a condition of his plea agreement, Assange is required to destroy the information provided to WikiLeaks, according to The Associated Press.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, which operates the Tracker, released a statement that the plea agreement and end of the case has mixed implications for the press.

“It’s good news that the DOJ is putting an end to this embarrassing saga. But it’s alarming that the Biden administration felt the need to extract a guilty plea for the purported crime of obtaining and publishing government secrets. That’s what investigative journalists do every day,” said FPF Director of Advocacy Seth Stern. “The plea deal won’t have the precedential effect of a court ruling, but it will still hang over the heads of national security reporters for years to come.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted leave on May 20, 2024, to appeal an order authorizing his extradition to the United States to face charges of multiple violations of the Espionage Act, The Guardian reported.

The publisher was first charged in March 2018 with a single count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but the indictment was not unsealed until more than a year later. A superseding indictment in May 2019 revealed that he was facing an additional 17 charges for violating the Espionage Act. While the law has been used against whistleblowers and journalists under previous administrations — most notably under former President Barack Obama — these charges marked the first time they were used against a publisher.

The charges, which include conspiring to obtain national defense information and receiving and disclosing that information, stem from allegations that Assange conspired with Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to acquire and publish hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents.

Assange has been held at Belmarsh Prison, a high-security detention center, since his arrest by British authorities in 2019 while awaiting a decision on the United States’ extradition request. Britain’s then-Home Secretary Priti Patel signed the judicial extradition order in June 2022.

London’s High Court first refused Assange’s request to appeal the order in 2023 and deferred a decision in March 2024, according to The Guardian. During the latter hearing, two judges ruled that they would allow an appeal unless the U.S. government could provide satisfactory assurances that Assange would be able to rely on the First Amendment in court, would not face prejudice based on his nationality and would not face the death penalty.

James Lewis, an attorney representing the United States, argued again that Assange’s alleged conduct was not protected by the First Amendment, according to The Guardian. “The position of the US prosecutor is that no one, neither US citizens nor foreign citizens, are entitled to rely on the first amendment in relation to publication of illegally obtained national defence information,” Lewis said in a written submission to the court.

The court then ruled that the U.S. government’s assurances were insufficient and granted Assange leave to file an appeal on May 20.

Speaking outside the high court following the hearing, Assange’s wife, Stella, called on President Joe Biden to drop the charges. She added that “as the case goes along, it becomes clearer and clearer to everyone that Julian is in prison for doing good journalism, for exposing corruption, for exposing the violations on innocent people in abusive wars for which there is impunity.”

Freedom of the Press Foundation, which operates the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, has repeatedly condemned the charges against Assange and called for reforms to the Espionage Act to ensure that it isn’t wielded against journalists and their sources.

“On appeal, we urge the court to refuse to extradite Assange. But better yet, the Biden administration can and should end this case now,” said FPF Deputy Director of Advocacy Caitlin Vogus. “If Biden continues to pursue the Assange prosecution, he risks creating a precedent that could be used against any reporter who exposes government secrets, even if they reveal official crimes. If the Biden administration cares about press freedom, it must drop the Assange case immediately.”

Editor’s Note: This article was first published under the Tracker’s “Other” category but was subsequently recategorized to the “Arrest/Criminal Charge” and “Subpoena/Legal Order” categories to account for the superseding charges that stem from his journalistic work.

The British home secretary formally approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States on June 17, 2022, so he can face trial on 18 charges under the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The charges stem from allegations that Assange conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to acquire and publish hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents.

The New York Times reported that Assange has 14 days to apply to the High Court for permission to appeal the home secretary’s decision. Assange’s wife, Stella Moris, told The Times that they will continue to fight the extradition and charges against him.

“I am going to spend every waking hour fighting for Julian until he is free, until justice is served,” Moris said.

Freedom of the Press Foundation, where the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is housed, condemned the move.

“By continuing to extradite Assange, the Biden DOJ is ignoring the dire warnings of virtually every major civil liberties and human rights organization in the country that the case will do irreparable damage to basic press freedom rights of U.S. reporters,” FPF Executive Director Trevor Timm wrote. “A successful conviction would potentially make receiving classified information, asking for sources for more information, and publishing certain types of classified information a crime.”

According to The Times, if he exhausts his avenues for appeal in British courts, he could attempt to plead his case before the European Court of Human Rights.

The Department of Justice announced a superseding indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on June 24, 2020, charging him with conspiring to violate a federal anti-hacking law.

In a press release, the DOJ specifies that the indictment does not add new counts to the 18-count indictment filed against Assange in May 2019.

“It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged,” the press release says. The charging document alleges that Assange recruited and conspired with hackers, including those affiliated with the hacking groups LulzSec and Anonymous.

The broadened indictment still charges Assange under the Espionage Act and maintains allegations that he conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning.

Assange is currently detained in the United Kingdom as a request for his extradition is being decided by the British government.

On May 23, 2019, a federal grand jury returned an 18-count superseding indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, which included an additional 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act on top of the single count of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that was contained in an initial indictment against Assange in April.

The new charges have alarmed press freedom advocates, who say they could potentially criminalize newsgathering and reporting techniques commonly used by mainstream U.S. reporters on national security and foreign policy issues.

Assange has been in jail in London since April, when he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he previously had asylum.

Three of the Espionage Act charges (counts 15–17) relate to Assange’s decision to publish unredacted copies of the Afghanistan war logs, Iraq war logs, and State Department cables. The government claims that Assange’s decision to publish the documents without first redacting the names of confidential informants mentioned in the documents put the informants’ lives at risk and damaged U.S. national security.

The other Espionage Act charges concern Assange’s communications with Manning about leaking specific documents. Assange is charged with conspiring to obtain classified documents, causing Manning to obtain classified documents, causing Manning to disclose classified documents to him, and receiving classified documents. Those are all separate charges.

However, First Amendment lawyers have strongly disagreed with the Justice Department’s position. “It’s not criminal to encourage someone to leak classified information to you as a journalist — that’s called news gathering, and there are First Amendment protections for news gathering,” Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a prominent media lawyer who recently represented CNN in a lawsuit against the White House, told The New York Times. “The ramifications of this are so potentially dangerous and serious for the ability of journalists to gather and disseminate information that the American people have a right to know.”

Following the release of the superseding indictment, Justice Department officials argued that Assange was not a journalist and the case against Assange was not a threat to mainstream journalists.

“The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy and we thank you for it,” John Demers, the head of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice, told BuzzFeed News. “It has not and never has been the department’s policy to target them for reporting. But Julian Assange is no journalist.”

Legal experts, however, pointed out that it is irrelevant under the law if the Justice Department considers Assange a journalist or not. “The Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and nonjournalists,” Matt Miller, former spokesman for Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder said. “If you can charge Julian Assange under the law with publishing classified information, there is nothing under the law that prevents the Justice Department from charging a journalist.”

Press freedom advocacy groups also expressed serious concern at the charges.

"The indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information is an attack on the First Amendment and a threat to all journalists everywhere who publish information that governments would like to keep secret," said Committee to Protect Journalists Executive Director Joel Simon. "Press freedom in the United States and around the world is imperiled by this prosecution."

Advocacy groups such as Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation and the ACLU, among others, condemned the government’s actions in statements as well.

The superseding indictment charges Assange with violating the Espionage Act for allegedly solicited leaks of classified information. But the conduct that Assange is accused of engaging in is very similar, if not identical, to the conduct that mainstream journalists often engage in when dealing with whistleblowers.

The indictment specifically alleges that Assange solicited classified information by publishing a list of “Most Wanted Leaks” on WikiLeaks, which may have influenced Manning’s decision to look for and leak certain documents to WikiLeaks:

This kind of “solicitation” of classified information is not unique to WikiLeaks. Reporters regularly tweet calls for whistleblowers to securely send them confidential or classified information related to specific government programs.

Another part of the indictment describes Assange communicating with Manning about the Iran War and taking steps to protect her identity:

Once again, this is not unique to Assange and WikiLeaks. Mainstream national security reporters who publish articles based on classified information generally do so with the knowledge that their source is “a government or military source” and they are not authorized to disclose the information.

Prosecuting Assange for publishing the names of confidential informants could also set a dangerous precedent for journalists. According to the indictment, Assange published the unredacted State Department cables despite being told in advance by the State Department that doing so could put the informants’ lives at risk.

Demers, the Justice Department official, told the press that “no responsible actor — journalist or otherwise” would publish the information that Assange did. It’s true that most journalists wouldn’t recklessly identify so many confidential informants, but even mainstream newspapers like The New York Times have been known to identify covert intelligence officials over the government’s objections.