The Biden Administration Is Bent on Setting an Alarming Precedent by Prosecuting Julian Assange | Reason | Jacob Sullum:
February 20, 2024 - "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been imprisoned in London for nearly five years, pending extradition to the United States so he can be prosecuted for violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified information. Since that amount of time behind bars is about the same as the four-to-six-year prison term that Justice Department lawyers have said Assange would be likely to serve if convicted, you might think the Biden administration would be ready to reconsider this case, especially since it poses an alarming threat to freedom of the press. Instead, the U.S. government's lawyers are back in London for yet another hearing, which Assange's attorneys describe as a last-ditch attempt to block his extradition.
"Recognizing the First Amendment implications, the Obama administration declined to prosecute Assange for obtaining and disclosing confidential State Department cables and military files leaked by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010. After all, leading news organizations in the United States and around the world had published stories based on the same documents, and those acts of journalism likewise could be construed as felonies once this precedent was established. So could the routine practices of reporters who cover national security.... Despite those concerns, the Trump administration decided that Assange should be locked up for doing things that The New York Times et al. do on a regular basis.
"All but one of the 17 counts in Assange's latest federal indictment relate to obtaining or disclosing 'national defense information,' which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Theoretically, Assange could face 160 years in prison for those counts alone, although the government's lawyers say it probably would be more like the amount of time he already has served in the United Kingdom. Manning ... — who, unlike Assange, violated the terms of her government employment — received a 35-year sentence but was released after seven years thanks to Barack Obama's commutation.
"'Some say that Assange is a journalist and that he should be immune from prosecution for these actions,' John Demers, then the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, told reporters after the Assange indictment was announced in May 2019.... There is no need to worry, Demers suggested, because Assange is 'no journalist.' This line of argument misconstrues the 'freedom…of the press' guaranteed by the First Amendment, which applies to mass communication generally, not just the speech of people whom the government deigns to recognize as journalists.
"Demers' assurance is similar to the reasoning that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit recently applied in counterintuitively concluding that treating journalism as a crime is not 'obviously unconstitutional.' That case involved Priscilla Villarreal, a Laredo, Texas, gadfly and citizen journalist who was arrested in 2017 for violating Section 39.06(c) of the Texas Penal Code. Under that previously obscure law, a person who 'solicits or receives' information that 'has not been made public' from a government official "with intent to obtain a benefit" commits a third-degree felony, punishable by two to 10 years in prison.... According to the arrest affidavits, the 'benefit' that Villarreal sought was a boost in Facebook traffic....
"The seven dissenting judges saw the situation differently. 'If the First Amendment means anything," Judge James C. Ho wrote in a dissent joined by five of his colleagues, 'surely it means that citizens have the right to question or criticize public officials without fear of imprisonment.' Judge James E. Graves Jr. likewise complained that 'the majority opinion will permit government officials to retaliate against speech while hiding behind cherry-picked state statutes'.... Judge Stephen A. Higginson noted that Thomas Paine ... was, like Villarreal, a 'citizen-journalist.' Upholding 'the text of the Constitution, as well as the values and history that it reflects,' he said, 'the Supreme Court guarantees the First Amendment right of engaged citizen-journalists, like Paine, to interrogate the government'....
"Assange's critics, including some professional journalists, have proposed a similar distinction, arguing that he does not deserve the First Amendment's protection because he is not a 'real' journalist. But whatever you might think of Assange's opinions, his tactics, or the care he exercised in publishing classified material, that distinction is not grounded in the Constitution and will not hold in practice.
"The editors and publishers of The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País recognized as much in 2022, when they urged the Justice Department to drop the case against Assange. In ignoring that advice, the Biden administration seems bent on establishing a dangerous precedent that replaces the First Amendment's guarantee with the whims of prosecutors."
Breaking down the Julian Assange extradition saga | CBS News | February 22, 2024:
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