Assange Walks Free, But Press Freedoms Are Still In Peril

The Julian Assange saga has finally reached its absurd conclusion with a plea deal. But while Assange may be heading home to Australia, the implications for press freedom remain as dire as ever. The U.S. government has successfully criminalized a core function of journalism – working with sources to obtain and publish information in the public interest. And they’ve opened the door for future administrations to do the same, all while avoiding the pesky need for an actual court ruling.

I don’t agree with Julian Assange on much. And going back many years, we’ve noted how he’s a problematic character in many, many ways. But just being a problematic person does not mean that we throw basic rights out the window. We warned all the way back to 2010 that the US should not try to twist laws to charge him for doing things that basically any investigative journalist does on a regular basis.

The Obama administration kept looking for ways to charge him, but held back. Many people pointed out that going after him legally would set a terrible precedent regarding press and internet freedom. Eventually, after nearly a decade of investigation, the Trump administration finally had him arrested in 2019. He had already been in the Ecuadorian embassy for years, and they agreed to hand him over. The past five years have been a grueling fight over potential extradition to the US.

However, as we noted, no matter what you think of Assange, the indictment criminalizes things that journalists do all the time. If Assange’s actions with WikiLeaks violated the Espionage Act, then many, many people (not just journalists!) likely violated the Espionage Act as well. Calls for the Biden administration to drop the case fell on deaf ears. Two years ago, a UK judge approved the extradition, though the fight continued.

However, on Monday, a filing in the… um… US federal district court in the Northern Mariana Islands (?!?), revealed that a plea deal had been reached. Assange agreed to plead guilty to a single count: “conspiring with Chelsea Manning to commit the following offenses against the United States”:

To receive and obtain documents, writings, and notes connected with the national defense, including such materials classified up to the SECRET level, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense, and knowing and with reason to believe at the time such materials were received and obtained, they had been and would be taken, obtained, and disposed of by a person contrary to the provisions of Chapter 37 of Title 18 of the United States Code, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793(c);

b. To willfully communicate documents relating to the national defense, including documents classified up to the SECRET level, from persons having lawful possession of or access to such documents, to persons not entitled to receive them, in violation of Title 18, United States Code. Section 793(d); and

c. To willfully communicate documents relating to the national defense from persons in unauthorized possession of such documents to persons not entitled to receive them, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793(e).

Again, investigative reporters do all these things in cultivating sources, talking to whistleblowers, and collecting documentation for reporting. The idea that this violates the law is crazy.

But the details of the deal are that by pleading guilty, Assange gets no sentence. He’s already been couped up for years, first in the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK, then in a UK prison, and now he is being released and will apparently head home to Australia.

The deal obviously makes sense for Assange, in that he is freed and gets to go home after all these years. It makes sense for the US government that hasn’t seemed all that into keeping up the charade for an actual trial. So it’s good that it’s over.

But still, the whole thing remains ridiculous. Yes, Assange is problematic in many ways. Some of the accusations against him have been troubling. Wikileaks was a mess for years, and certainly had a history of selective leaking to help some entities while harming others. And for all of Assange’s talk of openness and transparency, it was pretty much all bullshit, as shown by the time he tried to threaten and silence people making a documentary about Wikileaks.

Even so, charging him with very serious crimes for merely doing the same thing journalists do is an affront to press freedom. As the Freedom of the Press Foundation rightly points out, it’s good that the case is over, but it’s ridiculous that he had to plead guilty to any of this:

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.

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. The deal doesn’t add any more prison time or punishment for Assange. It’s purely symbolic. The administration could’ve easily just dropped the case but chose to instead legitimize the criminalization of routine journalistic conduct and encourage future administrations to follow suit. And they made that choice knowing that Donald Trump would love nothing more than to find a way to throw journalists in jail.