Julian Assange To Go Free After Striking Plea Deal With Biden DOJ

Shawn FleetwoodJune 25, 2024

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was released from a British prison after entering‍ a plea deal with President Biden’s Department‍ of Justice. Assange had been detained for five years and⁤ pled guilty to violating the Espionage Act by unlawfully obtaining and disseminating classified ‌U.S. information related to operations in the Middle East. This included vast amounts‌ of documentation on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as U.S. State Department cables and assessments of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

The leaked material was shared via Wikileaks in collaboration with Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. military intelligence officer who had her 35-year sentence commuted by ‍President Obama. Assange is scheduled to appear in court in the Northern ⁢Mariana Islands and is expected to return ‍to Australia afterward. The plea deal stipulates ‌that Assange will not face further time in U.S. custody and will‍ be ⁣credited for the time already spent in UK prison.⁢ His wife has expressed intentions to seek a pardon for him.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was released from prison on Monday after striking a plea deal with President Biden’s Department of Justice.

According to newly released court documents, Assange — who has been detained in a British prison for five years — pled guilty to violating the Espionage Act, in which he “knowingly and unlawfully” obtained and shared classified information about the U.S. government’s operations in the Middle East. This information included “tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports about the war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and assessment briefs of detainees at the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,” according to CNBC.

In releasing the information via Wikileaks, Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a trans-identifying man and former U.S. military intel officer. While originally sentenced to 35 years in prison, Manning’s sentence was commuted by former President Obama in the waning weeks of his presidency.

Assange is expected to appear in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S.-controlled territory, at around 9:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday, according to a letter issued by the DOJ. The islands are in close proximity to Australia — Assange’s home country — where he is expected to return following his court hearing and subsequent release. According to the BBC, the plea deal will allow Assange to spend “no time in US custody and … receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK.”

Assange’s wife told Reuters on Tuesday that she will seek a pardon for her husband, claiming her husband’s guilty plea “under the Espionage Act in relation to obtaining and disclosing National Defence information is obviously a very serious concern for journalists and national security journalists in general.”

In addition to the aforementioned classified materials, Wikileaks notably published hacked communications from the Democratic National Committee in the months leading up to the 2016 election. While Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted Russian intel officers in connection with the hacking in 2018, the special counsel’s 2019 report — which found no evidence Donald Trump colluded with Moscow to steal the 2016 election — noted that Mueller could not determine, as RealClearInvestigations summarized, “how the stolen Democratic material was transferred to WikiLeaks” or “how WikiLeaks acquired the stolen information.”

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood