Joe Biden says the US is ‘considering’ dropping its legal pursuit of Julian Assange

Joe Biden says the US is considering dropping its pursuit of Julian Assange over allegations he wrongly procured and published state secrets.

Joe Biden has said he will consider dropping charges against Julian Assange.

The US is considering dropping espionage charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange according to President Joe Biden.

In a dramatic development on the eve of Assange notching up five years in the British high security Belmarsh prison, the United States president made the surprise revelation while with Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida at the White House.

As the two leaders walked down the White House colonnade toward the Oval Office a journalist asked about Australia’s request that the US end its prosecution of the 52-year-old Queenslander, who has been fighting US extradition from a London jail for years, and be allowed back to Australia.

“We’re considering it,” the president said, a comment that signalled at least a relaxation in the US Justice Department’s hitherto hard line stance that he should face prosecution in the US despite a global outcry among free speech advocates.

The statement by Mr Biden is a significant breakthrough and has given hope to Assange’s wife, Stella, and his supporters that Assange could be released soon under some sort of plea deal. It has been suggested that Assange may plead guilty to a minor charge of mishandling classified information and given time already served, he would be released from custody almost immediately.

Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange protest outside the Australian High Commission in central London.

The US has been seeking to extradite Mr Assange from the UK for alleged crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act related to WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 of vast troves of classified material related to the Iraq war, which humiliated Washington with embarrassing details about casualties and other internal deliberations.

The Justice Department in 2019 indicted Mr Assange on 17 espionage charges and one related to computer misuse, alleged crimes that could attract penalties of life imprisonment or the death penalty although the Americans have repeated told the court that the likely sentence would be much less, around five years.

The president’s comment came weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department was considering whether to allow Assange to plead guilty to a reduced charge of mishandling classified information, according to its anonymous sources, opening up the possibility of a deal that could eventually result in his release from a British jail.

In late March a UK court ruled that Assange couldn’t be extradited to the US unless authorities there guaranteed he wouldn’t be executed, which gave the WikiLeaks founder a partial victory in his long legal battle over WikiLeaks publication of classified American documents.

In February 86 members of the Australian House of Representatives, including prime minister Anthony Albanese, voted on a motion urging the US to bring the “matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia”.

“I hope this can be resolved. I hope it can be resolved amicably. It’s not up to Australia to interfere in the legal processes of other countries, but it is appropriate for us to put our very strong view that those countries need to take into account the need for this to be concluded,” Mr Albanese said at the time.

A bipartisan group of half a dozen Australian parliamentarians, including independent MP Monique Ryan and former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, in September visited the US capital to press the US government to drop its charges against the Queenslander.

Mr Assange has been locked up at Belmarsh prison in the UK since he was dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London on April 11th 2019, where he had lived since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden (where he was required for questioning on accusations of rape) and the US.

He has built considerable support among both Democrats and Republicans in the US, including Donald Trump’s eldest son Don Junior and numerous congressmen, who have called for his pardoning.

Seven top Democrats wrote a public letter to the president last April demanding the administration drop its pursuit.

“The prosecution of Mr Assange marks the first time in US history that a publisher of truthful information has been indicted under the Espionage Act. The prosecution of Mr Assange, if successful, not only sets a legal precedent whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted, but a political one as well,” the letter stated.

Foreign governments, including those of Brazil and Russia, have used Washington’s pursuit of Assange to accuse the US of hypocrisy on the topic of human rights and press freedom.