Everything you know about Assange is wrong

by Thomas Fazi

(Intro)

The last two-day extradition hearing for Assange just took place in London’s High Court. Contrary to many people’s expectations, the two judges, Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson, opted against an immediate ruling. They could take weeks to finally reach a decision. Julian’s fate thus continues to hang in the balance.

This is almost the end of the road for Assange’s half-decade legal battle to avoid being extradited to the US. If the court rules out a further appeal, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks could be immediately extradited to the United States. Technically, he could still appeal the extradition through European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but the British authorities could put him on a plane to the US before that happens, because the British government has already signed an extradition order.

During the hearing, the lawyer representing the US government, Clair Dobbin, repeated the same arguments the Americans have been making for years to justify their indictment of Assange, the two main ones being:

(a) that Assange’s work does not fall under the protection of the First Amendment because he didn’t limit himself to receiving and publishing classified documents but allegedly “went beyond that” by actively seeking classified information, and encouraging and helping Manning and others to hack into government computers (“It is not part of the ordinary responsibilities of journalists to actively solicit and publish classified information”, Dobbin told the court);

and (b) that Assange and WikiLeaks damaged US security and intelligence services and “created a grave and imminent risk” for US sources and informants.

I’d like to go over both claims, as well as other myths surrounding WikiLeaks’ work and Assange’s legal ordeal, expanding on my recent article in UnHerd. Let’s get started.