WASHINGTON — News that the U.S. Justice Department has reached a plea deal that will lead to freedom for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange brings a stunning culmination to a long-running saga of international intrigue that spanned multiple continents. Its central character is a quixotic internet publisher with a profound disdain for government secrets.
A look at Assange, the case and the latest developments:
Who is Julian Assange?
An Australian editor and publisher, he is best known for having founded the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, which gained massive attention — and notoriety — for the 2010 release of almost half a million documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His activism made him a cause célèbre among press freedom advocates who said his work in exposing U.S. military misconduct in foreign countries made his activities indistinguishable from what traditional journalists are expected to do as part of their jobs.
But those same actions put him in the crosshairs of American prosecutors, who released an indictment in 2019 that accused Assange — holed up at the time in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — of conspiring with an Army private to illegally obtain and publish sensitive government records.
“Julian Assange is no journalist,” John Demers, the then-top Justice Department national security official, said at the time. “No responsible actor, journalist or otherwise, would purposely publish the names of individuals he or she knew to be confidential human sources in war zones, exposing them to the gravest of dangers.”
What is he accused of?
The Trump administration’s Justice Department accused Assange of directing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
The charges relate to WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents, with prosecutors accusing Assange of helping Manning steal classified diplomatic cables that they say endangered national security and of conspiring together to crack a Defense Department password.
Reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq published by Assange included the names of Afghans and Iraqis who provided information to American and coalition forces, prosecutors said, while the diplomatic cables he released exposed journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and dissidents in repressive countries.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after about seven years behind bars.
Why wasn’t he already in U.S. custody?
Assange has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison, fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. and winning favorable court rulings that have delayed any transfer across the Atlantic.
He was evicted in April 2019 from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge seven years earlier amid an investigation by Swedish authorities into claims of sexual misconduct that he has long denied and that was later dropped. The South American nation revoked the political asylum following the charges by the U.S. government.
Despite his arrest and imprisonment by British authorities, extradition efforts by the U.S. had stalled prior to the plea deal.
A U.K. judge in 2021 rejected the U.S. extradition request in 2021 on the grounds that Assange was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. Higher courts overturned that decision after getting assurances from the U.S. about his treatment. The British government signed an extradition order in June 2022.
Then, last month, two High Court judges ruled that Assange can mount a new appeal based on arguments about whether he will receive free-speech protections or be at a disadvantage because he is not a U.S. citizen. The date of the hearing has yet to be determined.
What will the deal require?
Assange will have to plead guilty to a felony charge under the Espionage Act of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States, according to a Justice Department letter filed in federal court.
Rather than face the prospect of prison time in the U.S., he is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing. Those proceedings are scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Northern Mariana Islands.
The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia.
On Monday evening, he left a British prison ahead of a court hearing expected to result in his release.
Is this case connected to the 2016 election?
It’s not, but beyond his interactions with Manning, Assange is well-known for the role WikiLeaks played in the 2016 presidential election, when it released a massive tranche of Democratic emails that federal prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives.
The goal, officials have said, was to harm the electoral effort of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and boost her Republican challenger Donald Trump, who famously said during the campaign: “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.”
Assange was not charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. But the investigation nonetheless painted an unflattering role of WikiLeaks in advancing what prosecutors say was a brazen campaign of Russian election interference.
Assange denied in a Fox News interview that aired in January 2017 that Russians were the source of the hacked emails, though those denials are challenged by a 2018 indictment by Mueller of 12 Russian military intelligence officers.
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