‘Miscarriage of justice’: Condemnation in sections of the US to Assange plea deal

Washington: The release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has sparked condemnation and celebration across the US, reflecting the ongoing divisions over his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic documents.

And despite President Joe Biden being lobbied for months to drop prosecution proceedings against Assange, the White House says it played no role in his new plea deal, which will allow the Australian to be free after he pleads guilty to a single felony charge under the Espionage Act.

Julian Assange on board the plane that took him from Britain to Bangkok.Credit: WikiLeaks

“This was an independent decision made by the Department of Justice and there was no White House involvement in the plea deal decision,” National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told this masthead.

As news of Assange’s expected release reverberated across the US, some lashed out at the development or compared it to Donald Trump’s looming trial for his handling of classified documents, while others praised the deal as long overdue.

Former Republican vice president Mike Pence said the plea deal was a “miscarriage of justice and dishonours the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces and their families”.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence as president and vice president in April 2020.Credit: AP

“There should be no plea deals to avoid prison for anyone that endangers the security of our military or the national security of the United States. Ever,” Pence added.

Legal scholar John Yoo - a former deputy assistant attorney general under the George W Bush administration - took aim at the Justice Department, noting that the Assange was being freed despite leaking information that “might have led to the deaths of hundreds of American servicemen”.

“Yet they’re pouring resources into going after a former president for how he stored classified documents in boxes in his basement,” Yoo told Fox News, in reference to Trump.

But other Republicans, such as Congressman Tom Massie - who invited Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton as his special guest to Biden’s State of the Union address in March - said Assange’s “liberation is great news”.

“It’s a travesty that he’s already spent so much time in jail,” he added. “Obama, Trump, & Biden should have never pursued this prosecution.”

Independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr Credit: AP

Robert F Kennedy jnr, who is running as an independent presidential candidate against Trump and Biden agreed.

He said he was “overjoyed” and described Assange as a “generational hero” but wrote on X: “the bad news is that he had to plea guilty to conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence info. Which means the US security state succeeded in criminalising journalism and extending their jurisdiction globally to non-citizens.”

The now 52-year-old Assange spent seven years hiding away in the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London, and a further five years in the high-security Belmarsh prison after WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and diplomatic cables leaked by former US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning – the largest security breach of its kind in US military history.

Assange was indicted during the Trump administration and faced 18 charges carrying a total sentence of up to 175 years.

Under the new deal, he is expected to plead guilty to one single Espionage Act charge of “conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defence of the United States.”

In turn, he will finally be able to return to Australia.

The development follows lobbying by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who raised Assange’s case in meetings with US President Joe Biden, and by Australian politicians from across the aisle.

Meanwhile, in the US Congress, Republican Congressman Massie and Democrat Congressman Jim McGovern led a group of 16 members of Congress who wrote to Biden in November, urging him to halt all prosecution proceedings against Assange and warning that “should the US extradition and prosecution go forward, there is a significant risk that our bilateral relationship with Australia will be badly damaged”.

The politicians - who ranged from progressive Democrats such as Rashida Tlaib to far-right Trump allies such as Marjorie Taylor Green - had also told Biden: “the United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalising common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press”.

Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump speaks at the Libertarian National Convention at the Washington Hilton in Washington.Credit: AP

The issue gained further bipartisan support last month, when Trump was asked during an interview ahead of the Libertarian National Convention if he would pardon Assange if he returned to office.

“Well I’m going to talk about that today, and we’re going to give it very serious consideration,” he told podcaster Tim Pool - although he did not end up raising Assange at all during his speech.

The details of the plea deal were outlined in a justice department letter to Judge Ramona Manglona of the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, which will oversee the hearing and sentencing proceedings.

The plane thought to be carrying WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, on his way to enter a plea deal in U.S. court, departs Bangkok, Thailand.Credit: AP

“We appreciate the Court accommodating these plea and sentencing proceedings on a single day at the joint request of the parties, in light of the defendant’s opposition to travelling to the continental United States to enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal US District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return to at the conclusion of the proceedings,” the letter says.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.