WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleads guilty to U.S. charges in deal to gain freedom

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a brave whistleblower to his allies and a national security threat to his critics, is on the verge of being a free man. Assange is pleading guilty and will be sentenced to time served, allowing him to return to his native Australia. Nick Schifrin reports and has two views on the plea deal from Jamil Jaffer and Trevor Timm.

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Amna Nawaz: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a brave whistle-blower to his allies, a national security threat to his critics, is on the verge of being a free man.

Geoff Bennett: Assange is pleading guilty in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands — that’s a U.S. commonwealth — and will be sentenced to time served, allowing him to return to his native Australia.

Nick Schifrin is here tracking this story — Nick.

Nick Schifrin: Geoff, Assange is notorious for some of the largest leaks of classified information in U.S. history, as well as posting e-mails that played an outsized role in the 2016 election.

And, tonight, the WikiLeaks founder is ending a decade-long legal saga with the U.S. and heading home.

Tonight, Julian Assange’s brief and final moments on U.S. soil to appear in perhaps the U.S.’ most remote courthouse on the Northern Mariana Islands. His road to freedom began this morning on the way to a British airport, signing his plea deal documents and landing in Bangkok, his first time outside of the United Kingdom in 14 years.

Court documents reveal that Assange will plead guilty to a single felony, to receive and obtain documents, writings, and notes connected with the national defense, including such materials classified up to the secret level, and willfully communicate documents relating to the national defense.

He will spend no time in U.S. jail. And more than 62 months spent in a British prison will count for time served, allowing him to return to his native Australia, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today celebrated his release.

Anthony Albanese, Australian Prime Minister: Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long. There is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.

Julian Assange, Founder, WikiLeaks: The course of the war needs to change.

Nick Schifrin: Nearly 15 years ago, Assange presented himself as the ultimate truth-teller, revealing what he called the reality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…

MAN: Come on, fire.

Nick Schifrin: … including a 2007 U.S. military attack in Baghdad that killed two Reuters journalists. WikiLeaks dropped 400,000 classified documents that the Pentagon said risked U.S. informants’ lives. They were leaked by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, later convicted under the Espionage Act.

MAN: Political prisoner!

Nick Schifrin: In 2010, he was arrested by British authorities after two Swedish women accused him of sexual assault, charges later dropped. And after failing to make bail, he fled into Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he remained for seven years.

Julian Assange: As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression.

Mika Brzezinski, Co-Host, “Morning Joe”: WikiLeaks has released appeared to be transcripts.

Nick Schifrin: In 2016, WikiLeaks posted documents that Russian intelligence had hacked from the Clinton campaign. Clinton said it helped lead to her defeat.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Former U.S. Secretary of State: He has to answer for what he has done, at least it’s been charged.

Nick Schifrin: By 2019, a U.S. grand jury indicted Assange on 18 counts, including espionage, the embassy evicted him, and British authorities arrested for bail violation.

A free speech crusader to his allies, a threat to national security to his critics, Assange will now be able to write a new chapter, in Australia, with his wife, Stella.

Stella Assange, Wife of Julian Assange: I will really believe it when I have him in front of me and I can take him and hug him. And then it will be real, you know?

Nick Schifrin: For more on Assange’s plea deal, we get two views.

Jamil Jaffer is the founder of the National Security Institute at George Mason University. He’s a former House Intelligence Committee and Justice Department official. And Trevor Timm, founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, he specializes in free speech and government transparency.

Thank you very much, both of you. Welcome to the “NewsHour.”

Jamil Jaffer, let me start with you.

Should Julian Assange have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law?

Jamil Jaffer, Former Senior Counsel, House Intelligence Committee: Absolutely.

I mean, look, Julian Assange has leaked documents that have put thousands of American soldiers and intelligence operatives’ lives at risk. He’s probably gotten a number of our Afghan allies and friends killed as a result of his leaks, along with Chelsea Manning. And he absolutely deserved to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and deserved to serve a life sentence, frankly, in jail.

Nick Schifrin: Trevor Timm, did he deserve to serve a life sentence?

Trevor Timm, Founder and Executive Director, Freedom of the Press Foundation: Absolutely not. And, in fact, he shouldn’t have been prosecuted in the first place. This case has been a ticking time bomb for press freedom in the United States for several years now.

What Julian Assange is accused of and what he pled guilty to is receiving and obtaining documents and publishing those documents that the government considers secret. That is actions that journalists engage in at The New York Times and The Washington Post almost every single day.

Nick Schifrin: Jamil Jaffer, was Julian Assange a journalist? Was he doing what The New York Times and The Washington Post does every day?

Jamil Jaffer: Not even a little bit. He doesn’t uphold any of the traditional aspects of the press. He doesn’t vet his sources carefully. He doesn’t take action to protect innocents involved.

In fact, to the contrary, he just dumped those documents out there, revealing the names of tons of confidential informants, many of whom have probably been attacked by the Taliban and others and may have been killed. So this — the idea that Julian Assange is some hero for the little guy or some hero for press freedom, he’s not a journalist.

He’s never been a journalist. Let’s be real. Honest journalists like you, Nick, don’t even consider him a journalist.

Nick Schifrin: Well, regardless of my opinion, Trevor Timm, let me ask you about that.

Julian Assange posted documents that did reveal the names of Afghans and Iraqis who were helping the United States. Does that make him not a journalist?

Trevor Timm: You know, it doesn’t matter if I think Julian Assange is a journalist or Jamil doesn’t think or whatever you think. What matters is the acts that he is charged under.

Thankfully, in this country, the government doesn’t get to decide who is and who isn’t a journalist. The First Amendment provides that right to everybody. And what the acts that they are saying that he committed are to receive and obtain documents and publish those documents.

When you read the plea deal, it says nothing about sources and methods. It says nothing about redactions. You could take the most ethical, careful journalist in the world who checks their sources a million times, and under the letter of what this plea deal says, the U.S. government thinks that they can also be prosecuted for the same thing.

Nick Schifrin: So, Jamil Jaffer, let me highlight what the plea deal is.

A federal grandeur in 2019 indicted Assange on 17 counts of espionage and one on computer fraud. Today’s plea deal has him guilty of one count of espionage. So, why, after a 12-year-long saga, would this plea deal focus on espionage and only one count?

Jamil Jaffer: Well, that’s obviously the bigger case for the United States government, right?

The conspiracy to commit computer fraud, people get charged with that and prosecuted all the time. The espionage count is the critical one. It’s the one that Julian Assange has now pled guilty to. And what does that mean? It’s not just receiving and publishing information. It’s conspiring to get a person with access that information to reveal it to him.

That is illegal. It should be illegal. And it’s not something any responsible journalist does. They don’t go and provoke somebody to give them classified information. They simply receive it, publish it. That’s not at all what Julian Assange did. He went out, worked with Chelsea Manning, worked with others to obtain classified information, to get it, knowing they had access to it, and then publish it cavalierly without regard for the lives of the people involved.

Nick Schifrin: Trevor Timm, what is the impact of exactly what you were just pointing out,that this is not about computer fraud, at least the agreement that Assange has made today; it is about espionage?

Trevor Timm: Well, I think it’s a little naive to say that journalists just wait for documents to magically land in their lap, and that’s the only time in which they will publish them.

If you ask any journalist, any national security journalist, of course, they ask their sources for information and documents and follow-up questions, and prod them for any more data that they can get to find out what the government is doing behind closed doors.

A journalist at The New York Times, Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal is committing this — quote, unquote — “conspiracy” on a weekly or daily basis, and that’s what makes these charges so concerning for press freedom advocates. It’s not just my organization. It’s literally every press freedom organization in the country, it’s every human rights organization, it’s every civil liberties organization.

As I said before, it’s a ticking time bomb for journalists in this country, and we have an election coming up where we have one presidential candidate which is talking openly on the campaign trail about putting more journalists in jail.

And so, to me, that is a very worrying prospect for the near future.

Nick Schifrin: Jamil Jaffer, let me ask about some of the Republican responses to this plea deal, and this seems to show that this is not a clear ideological divide that Assange has created.

One is former President (sic) Mike Pence, who said today — quote — “The Biden administration’s plea deal with Assange is a miscarriage of justice and dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces and their families.”

At the same time, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia — quote — “Julian Assange is set to be released after being held for years for the crime of committing journalism. Praise God for setting Julian free.”

What does it say that you get those two diametrically opposed responses?

Jamil Jaffer: Well, I can tell you, Mike Pence is obviously right here.

Julian Assange is not a journalist. He’s never been a journalist. He’s never purported to be one for real. And here’s the thing about it at the end of the day, right? No real journalist has ever been prosecuted for this, and no real journalist would be, because they don’t act the way Julian Assange did, not in the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he got kicked out of, not the sexual assault charges he’s been accused of, none of those things, not to mention not putting the lives of innocent people who helped the U.S. and our allies out at risk.

Nick Schifrin: Trevor Timm, your response to that?

Trevor Timm: What Jamil is leaving out is that several administrations in the past 50 years have threatened journalists under the Espionage Act, have almost prosecuted them.

The New York Times was this close to being prosecuted for publishing the Pentagon Papers under the Nixon administration. There was a grand jury and paneled. Dick Cheney under the Ford administration wanted to charge Seymour Hersh at The New York Times under the Espionage Act. There have been several close calls.

The only reason that it hasn’t gone through is because the government officials have been worried that, ultimately, the law will be overturned as unconstitutional. But they found with Julian Assange, as an unpopular and polarizing figure, that people — that journalists won’t rise up and defend because they may not like him.

And that’s incredibly dangerous. Bad facts make bad law. And that’s why everybody was so worried about this case, was that, if there was a precedent set with Julian Assange, because of the charges that are in the documents that the government says, it means that they can then turn around and use that on The New York Times and Washington Post, whether or not there are cosmetic differences between the two.

Nick Schifrin: Jamil Jaffer, Trevor Timm, thank you very much to you both.

Trevor Timm: Thanks a lot.

Jamil Jaffer: Thanks, Nick.