Although Julian Assange has legions of determined enemies in the U.S., some influential actors may not be enthusiastic about his prosecution. | Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Some liberals have defended Assange as a journalist, conservatives celebrated him in 2016 and Trump once declared his 'love' for WikiLeaks.
Apparent criminal charges against Julian Assange are thrusting the WikiLeaks founder back into American politics — a development that could create awkwardness across the political spectrum.
Many liberals and civil rights activists have defended Assange as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protections. Conservatives have celebrated him for exposing Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. And President Donald Trump, who himself declared his “love” for Assange’s website during the 2016 contest, may have new concerns about whether the focus on Assange has a connection to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
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For now, the details remain murky about what U.S. law Assange, an Australian national holed up in a London embassy, has even been charged with violating. An unrelated federal court filing discovered late Thursday appears to have accidently mentioned Assange but doesn’t explain whether the sealed charges deal with WikiLeaks’ publication of stolen Democratic documents to influence the last U.S. presidential campaign or another matter that has also triggered notice from U.S. prosecutors.
It’s unclear when — if ever — the details about Assange will even be made public. Still, Assange’s reemergence at a time when Mueller has carefully studied how WikiLeaks obtained the Russian-hacked Democratic emails in 2016 jumpstarts a debate over the fate of the Australian computer programmer.
Although Assange has legions of determined enemies in the U.S., especially pro-Clinton Democrats and national security insiders who consider him a hostile foreign agent, some influential actors may not be enthusiastic about his prosecution.
The American Civil Liberties Union, characterizing him as a journalist, warned that prosecuting Assange “would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.”
“It should not be lost upon anyone that there are leaks of classified information to the media just about every day,” added David Coombs, the lawyer who represented Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning during the 2013 trial about the leak of thousands of diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks.
Some Republicans argue that it is high time for Assange, who has been living under asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, to face justice.
“This is cut and dried: WikiLeaks is an outlet for foreign propaganda and Julian Assange is an enemy of the American people,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican. “He deserves to spend the rest of his life in an American prison.”
But many influential conservatives gleefully celebrated the release of Clinton’s emails in 2016 and have hailed Assange as a whistle-blower.
In September of 2016, Fox News host and Trump confidante Sean Hannity hosted Assange on his show and congratulated the 47-year-old for showing “how corrupt, dishonest and phony our government is.”
“I do hope you get free one day,” Hannity added.
In late 2010, after Wikileaks released a trove sensitive U.S. diplomatic documents pilfered by the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, Hannity had called for Assange to be jailed for “waging war” against the U.S.
But Assange’s potential criminal prosecution may be most awkward of all for Trump, who during the 2016 campaign repeatedly praised WikiLeaks for revealing damning correspondence from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
“I love WikiLeaks,” Trump extolled several times during the presidential campaign. “This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove.”
Since then, after briefings from U.S. intelligence officials who consider Assange a national security threat,Trump has changed his tune and sought to place some distance between himself and Assange.
“The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange — wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people.... to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against "Intelligence" when in fact I am a big fan!” Trump wrote in a two-part tweet in January 2017.
Only a few months into Trump’s presidency, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said it would be a “priority” to stop leaks and arrest Assange. CNN reported in April 2017 that the U.S. was preparing charges to arrest Assange and that then-CIA director Mike Pompeo characterized WikiLeaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”
Assange’s efforts in the 2016 campaign presents challenges for several people in Trump’s orbit. Mueller’s prosecutors and his grand jury have summoned about a dozen associates of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone to Washington to explain how the self-proclaimed dirty trickster came to know about the pending WikiLeaks release of emails embarrassing to the Clinton campaign.
The president’s oldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., also appeared to have correspondence with WikiLeaks leading up to the election, The Atlantic reported last year.
Legal experts cautioned against drawing conclusions about the nature of any charges the Justice Department might bring against Assange.
“I don’t think we should assume this is Russia related,” said Matthew Miller, a former Obama-era Justice Department spokesman. U.S. officials have considered bringing charges against Assange since he was the conduit for Manning’s 2010 disclosure of secret government documents.
Seamus Hughes, a former U.S. counterterrorism official now working at George Washington University, first discovered the reference to criminal charges against Assange and posted the publicly-filed document on Twitter.
“This is every lawyer’s worst nightmare,” said Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor and former federal prosecutor who said the disclosure looks to be “an erroneous cut and paste.”
At issue is a three-page court filing dealing with an unrelated sex-crime case brought by federal prosecutors alleging Seitu Sulayman Kokayi tried to coerce and entice a minor. In one passage, Assange’s name mysteriously appears amid an explanation for why the case needs to be kept from public view “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case.”
After explaining the reasons why the U.S. government can keep a case sealed, the document concludes: “The complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.
Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement the reference to Assange in an unrelated criminal case “was made in error.”
“That was not the intended name for this filing,” he said.
A spokesman for Mueller declined comment.
Barry Pollack, a U.S.-based lawyer representing Assange, took issue both with the disclosure of the charges, as well as its longer-term implications. “The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed,” he said. “The government bringing criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy to take.”
Even some Assange critics agree. While the Obama White House publicly described Assange as an "accomplice" in Manning's theft of classified information, Obama officials concluded that it would be difficult to charge him given the implications for more traditional journalists.
Several former federal prosecutors said Assange could be a goldmine of information for Mueller if U.S. officials were able to extradite him from the Ecuador embassy and ultimately flip him into a government witness.
Philip Lacovara, an attorney from the Watergate special counsel team, called Assange “the linchpin between the Russian intelligence operatives and the activities by Donald Jr., Stone, and others to exploit the illegally hacked emails and to disseminate them for coincident purposes of aiding Trump’s own political goals and enabling Russian influence on the election.”
“He could reveal important information to prosecutors, not just about Americans who worked with WikiLeaks to commit crimes, but also about foreign intelligence services that used WikiLeaks to undermine the United States,” added Renato Mariotti, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago.
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