Julian Assange has been charged, prosecutors reveal inadvertently in court filing

[dannno]

November 15 at 11:19 PM

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged under seal, prosecutors inadvertently revealed in a recently unsealed court filing — a development that could significantly advance the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and have major implications for those who publish government secrets.


The disclosure came in a filing in a case unrelated to Assange. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, urging a judge to keep the matter sealed, wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”


Dwyer is also assigned to the WikiLeaks case. People familiar with the matter said what Dwyer was disclosing was true, but unintentional.


Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Virginia said, “The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.”


An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.


Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have long been investigating Assange, and in the Trump administration had begun taking a second look at whether to charge members of the WikiLeaks organization for the 2010 leak of diplomatic cables and military documents that the anti-secrecy group published. Investigators also had explored whether WikiLeaks could face criminal liability for the more recent revelation of sensitive CIA cybertools.


Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also has explored the publication by WikiLeaks of emails from the Democratic National Committee and the account of Hillary Clinton’s then-campaign chairman, John D. Podesta. Officials have alleged that the emails were hacked by Russian spies and transferred to WikiLeaks.


Mueller also has been exploring, among other things, communications between the group and associates of President Trump, including political operative Roger Stone and commentator and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.


In July, his office charged 12 Russian military spies with conspiring to hack DNC computers, stealing the organization’s data and publishing the files in an effort to disrupt the election, and referred in an indictment to WikiLeaks, described only as “Organization 1,” as the platform the Russians used to release the stolen emails.


A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment.


It was not immediately clear what charges Assange would face. In the past, prosecutors had contemplated pursuing a case involving conspiracy, theft of government property or violating the Espionage Act. But whether to charge the WikiLeaks founder was hardly a foregone conclusion. In the Obama administration, the Justice Department had concluded that pursuing Assange would be akin to prosecuting a news organization. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, though, had taken a more aggressive stance and vowed to crack down on all government leaks.


Barry J. Pollack, one of Assange’s attorneys, said, “The only thing more irresponsible than charging a person for publishing truthful information would be to put in a public filing information that clearly was not intended for the public and without any notice to Mr. Assange. Obviously, I have no idea if he has actually been charged or for what, but the notion that the federal criminal charges could be brought based on the publication of truthful information is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set.”


The filing in the Eastern District of Virginia came Aug. 22, in a case that combines national security and sex trafficking. Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, 29, was charged with enticing a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him and send him pornographic images of herself. But he was detained in part, according to the court filing, because he “has a substantial interest in terrorist acts.”


His father-in-law, according to the filing, has been convicted of terrorist acts. The case involves previously classified information, according to government filings, and prosecutors plan to use information obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Kokayi was indicted last week and is set to be arraigned Friday morning.


The case had been sealed until early September, though by itself it attracted little notice. On Thursday evening, Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University who is known for scrubbing court filings, joked about the apparent error on Twitter — which first brought it to the attention of reporters.


Even if he is charged, Assange coming to the United States to face trial is no sure thing. Since June 2012, Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran Embassy, afraid that if he steps outside he will be arrested.


When he first sought asylum in the embassy, he was facing possible extradition to Sweden in a sex crimes case. He has argued that case was a pretext for what he predicted would be his arrest and extradition to the United States.


In the years since, the Swedish case has been closed, but Assange has said he cannot risk leaving the embassy because the United States would attempt to have him arrested and extradited for disclosures of U.S. government secrets. Throughout that time, the United States has refused to say whether there are any sealed charges against Assange.


If Assange were to leave the embassy and be arrested by British authorities, he would likely still fight extradition in the British courts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1f9d314b16fc

 

[Swordsmyth]

What is the charge?

Is Mueller making up another crime that doesn't exist?

 

[TheTexan]

What is the charge?

Is Mueller making up another crime that doesn't exist?

Probably gonna charge him with helping Russia to interfere with our elections.

 

[dannno]

Probably gonna charge him with helping Russia to interfere with our elections.

That sounds like a Trumped up charge.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

fake charges from the extreme left agenda as usual.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I hope the president of all people who didnt deserve a pardon,will decide to pardon someone who actually does. At least pardoning Assange would piss off the left. Anymore, I think I just enjoy seeing the left writhe in anger for their policies being blocked and rejected by the silent majority.

 

[TheCount]

I guess he'd better clean his cat's litter box.

 

[Anti Globalist]

If Trump could pardon Assange, that would make me so happy.

 

[brushfire]

If Trump could pardon Assange, that would make me so happy.

That would be awesome, but they've cleverly put Assange into that "evil russian" box.

 

[shakey1]

 

[Matt Collins]

Good thing the US government has never interfered with elections in other countries.


Seriously, Assange is not a US citizen, he has committed no crime on US soil, how exactly does the US government have jurisprudence over him?

 

[Todd]

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/c...w6toqRrad0zwbec0mq5CcLtDCxVvB1Y5f_LEZWZhXg54Y

crucifying Julian Assange

 

[charrob]

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/c...w6toqRrad0zwbec0mq5CcLtDCxVvB1Y5f_LEZWZhXg54Y

crucifying Julian Assange

Good article. Some really interesting (and worrisome) points in it. Also a nice summary of the despicable evil Hildabeast; her corruption is astonishing:

[...]

“The U.S. government has made Julian’s arrest a priority. They want to get around a U.S. journalist’s protection under the First Amendment by charging him with espionage. They will stop at nothing to do it.”

“As a result of the U.S. bearing down on Ecuador, his asylum is now under immediate threat,” she said. “The U.S. pressure on Ecuador’s new president resulted in Julian being placed in a strict and severe solitary confinement for the last seven months, deprived of any contact with his family and friends. Only his lawyers could see him. Two weeks ago, things became substantially worse. The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who rightfully gave Julian political asylum from U.S. threats against his life and liberty, publicly warned when U.S. Vice President Mike Pence recently visited Ecuador a deal was done to hand Julian over to the U.S. He stated that because of the political costs of expelling Julian from their embassy was too high, the plan was to break him down mentally. A new, impossible, inhumane protocol was implemented at the embassy to torture him to such a point that he would break and be forced to leave.”

[...]

The Snowden leaks also revealed, ominously, that Assange was on a U.S. “manhunt target list.”

What is happening to Assange should terrify the press. And yet his plight is met with indifference and sneering contempt. Once he is pushed out of the embassy, he will be put on trial in the United States for what he published. This will set a new and dangerous legal precedent that the Trump administration and future administrations will employ against other publishers, including those who are part of the mob trying to lynch Assange. The silence about the treatment of Assange is not only a betrayal of him but a betrayal of the freedom of the press itself. We will pay dearly for this complicity.

We learned from the emails published by WikiLeaks that the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the major funders of Islamic State. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton paid her donors back by approving $80 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, enabling the kingdom to carry out a devastating war in Yemen that has triggered a humanitarian crisis, including widespread food shortages and a cholera epidemic, and left close to 60,000 dead. We learned Clinton was paid $675,000 for speaking at Goldman Sachs, a sum so massive it can only be described as a bribe. We learned Clinton told the financial elites in her lucrative talks that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best-positioned to manage the economy, a statement that directly contradicted her campaign promises. We learned the Clinton campaign worked to influence the Republican primaries to ensure that Donald Trump was the Republican nominee. We learned Clinton obtained advance information on primary-debate questions. We learned, because 1,700 of the 33,000 emails came from Hillary Clinton, she was the primary architect of the war in Libya. We learned she believed that the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate. The war she sought has left Libya in chaos, seen the rise to power of radical jihadists in what is now a failed state, triggered a massive exodus of migrants to Europe, seen Libyan weapon stockpiles seized by rogue militias and Islamic radicals throughout the region, and resulted in 40,000 dead. Should this information have remained hidden from the American public? You can argue yes, but you can’t then call yourself a journalist.


Christine Assange warned: “The U.S. WikiLeaks grand jury, producing the extradition warrant, was held in secret by four prosecutors but no defense and no judge. The U.K.-U.S. extradition treaty allows for the U.K. to extradite Julian to the U.S. without a proper basic case. Once in the U.S., the National Defense Authorization Act allows for indefinite detention without trial. Julian could very well be held in Guantanamo Bay and tortured, sentenced to 45 years in a maximum-security prison, or face the death penalty. My son is in critical danger because of a brutal, political persecution by the bullies in power whose crimes and corruption he had courageously exposed when he was editor in chief of WikiLeaks.”

 

[AZJoe]

Glenn Greenwald: As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom

THE TRUMP JUSTICE DEPARTMENT inadvertently revealed in a court filing that it has charged Julian Assange in a sealed indictment. The disclosure occurred through a remarkably amateurish cutting-and-pasting error in which prosecutors unintentionally used secret language from Assange’s sealed charges in a document filed in an unrelated case. Although the document does not specify which charges have been filed against Assange, the Wall Street Journal reported that “they may involve the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of national defense-related information.”

Over the last two years, journalists and others have melodramatically claimed that press freedoms were being assaulted by the Trump administration due to trivial acts such as the President spouting adolescent insults … or banning Jim Acosta from White House press conferences due to his refusal to stop preening for a few minutes so as to allow other journalists to ask questions. Meanwhile, actual and real threats to press freedoms that began with the Obama DOJ and have escalated with the Trump DOJ – such as aggressive attempts to unearth and prosecute sources – have gone largely ignored if not applauded.

But prosecuting Assange and/or WikiLeaks for publishing classified documents would be in an entirely different universe of press freedom threats. Reporting on the secret acts of government officials or powerful financial actors – including by publishing documents taken without authorization – is at the core of investigative journalism. From the Pentagon Papers to the Panama Papers to the Snowden disclosures to publication of Trump’s tax returns to the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, some of the most important journalism over the last several decades has occurred because it is legal and constitutional to publish secret documents even if the sources of those documents obtained them through illicit or even illegal means.

The Obama DOJ – despite launching notoriously aggressive attacks on press freedoms – recognized this critical principle when it came to WikiLeaks. It spent years exploring whether it could criminally charge Assange and WikiLeaks … It ultimately decided it … could not do so, consistent with the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment. … such a prosecution would pose a severe threat to press freedom because there would be no way to prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents without also prosecuting the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and others for doing exactly the same thing. …

Last year, the Trump DOJ under Jeff Sessions, and the CIA under Mike Pompeo, began aggressively vowing to do what the Obama DOJ refused to do – namely, prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents. Pompeo, as CIA Director, delivered one of the creepiest and most anti-press-freedom speeches heard in years, vowing that “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us,” …

But the grand irony is that many Democrats will side with the Trump DOJ over the Obama DOJ. Their emotional, personal contempt for Assange – due to their belief that he helped defeat Hillary Clinton: the gravest crime – easily outweighs any concerns about the threats posed to press freedoms … This reflects the broader irony of the Trump era for Democrats. While they claim out of one side of their mouth to find the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and press freedom attacks so repellent, they use the other side of their mouth to parrot the authoritarian mentality of Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo that anyone who published documents harmful to Hillary or which have been deemed “classified” by the U.S. Government ought to go to prison. …

During the Obama years, the notion that Assange could be prosecuted for publishing documents was regarded as so extreme and dangerous that even centrist media outlets that despised him sounded the alarm for how dangerous such a prosecution would be. The pro-national-security-state Washington Post editorial page in 2010, writing under the headline “Don’t Charge WikiLeaks,” warned: …

Such prosecutions are a bad idea. The government has no business indicting someone who is not a spy and who is not legally bound to keep its secrets. Doing so would criminalize the exchange of information and put at risk responsible media organizations that vet and verify material and take seriously the protection of sources and methods when lives or national security are endangered.​

In contrast to Democrats, Republicans have been quite consistent about their desire to see WikiLeaks prosecuted. … In the wake of the 2010 disclosures of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, Donald Trump himself told Fox and Friends’ Brian Kilmade that he believed Assange deserved “the death penalty” for having published those documents (a punishment Trump also advocated for Edward Snowden in 2013): …

What has changed since that Obama-era consensus? Only one thing: in 2016, WikiLeaks published documents that reflected poorly on Democrats and the Clinton campaign rather than the Bush-era wars, … It’s really just as simple – and as ignoble – as that. …

Recall that the DNC itself is currently suing WikiLeaks and Assange for publishing the DNC and Podesta emails they received: emails deemed newsworthy by literally every major media outlet, which relentlessly reported on them. Until this current Trump DOJ criminal prosecution of Assange, that DNC lawsuit had been the greatest Trump-era threat to press freedoms – because it seeks to make the publication of documents, which is the core of journalism, legally punishable. The Trump DOJ’s attempts to criminalize those actions is merely the next logical step in this descent into a full-scale attack on basic press rights. …

Neither the most authoritarian factions of the Trump administration behind this prosecution, nor their bizarre and equally tyrannical allies in the Democratic Party, care the slightest about press freedoms. They only care about one thing: putting Julian Assange behind bars, because (in the case of Trump officials) he revealed U.S. war crimes and because (in the case of Democrats) he revealed corruption at the highest levels of the DNC …

They’re willing to create a precedent that will criminalize the core function of investigative journalism …

 

[AZJoe]

 

[pcosmar]

Good thing the US government has never interfered with elections in other countries.


Seriously, Assange is not a US citizen, he has committed no crime on US soil, how exactly does the US government have jurisprudence over him?

WMDs?

Seriously,, when have they needed evidence..

Look at Global Warming..

 

[Swordsmyth]

Prosecuting Assange will be the biggest mistake Mueller makes in his entire farce of an investigation.

 

[Brian4Liberty]

How can we worry about the traitor Julian Assange when the great patriot Jim Acosta’s rights are being stripped by Trump?! Fight the fascists!

 

[kona]

Trump likes Assange, why is he doing this? Or is it all Mueller?

 

[Occam's Banana]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Julian Assange again.