RFK Jr.’s Petition For Biden To Pardon Julian Assange

By Neenah Payne

Julian Assange is the Australian founder of WikiLeaks who lives in London. Although Assange has committed no crimes and is not charged with any, he has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since 2019 under conditions which a UN investigator described as “torture”.

What is Assange being punished for? For publishing the truth about US war crimes in the Middle East during the endless “War on Terror”. Julian's life depends on his winning his fight against extradition to the US where he faces 175 years in jail although he is not a US citizen. Julian’s wife Stella says if Julian is placed in the isolation the US government threatens him with, he will be driven to commit suicide.

Court Date Set For Julian Assange’s Final Appeal To Avoid US Extradition explained that “Julian Assange will face two High Court judges over two days on Feb. 20-21, 2024 in London in what will likely be his last appeal against being extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act.”

Assange Judge Worked For MI6 & Defense Ministry points out that

“One of the two High Court judges who will rule on Julian Assange’s bid to stop his extradition to the US represented the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defense, Declassified has found.

Justice Jeremy Johnson has also been a specially vetted barrister, cleared by the UK authorities to access top-secret information. Johnson will sit with Dame Victoria Sharp, his senior judge, to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks co-founder. If extradited, Assange faces a maximum sentence of 175 years. His persecution by the US authorities has been at the behest of Washington’s intelligence and security services, with whom the U.K. has deep relations.”

Julian Assange’s Last Chance To Avoid Extradition

Julian Assange’s Last Chance to Avoid Extradition 2/20/24

The WikiLeaks publisher may be forced to stand trial in the United States, imperiling press freedoms worldwide.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is perilously close to extradition to the United States from Belmarsh Prison in London. He has one final opportunity on February 20 to persuade the British High Court of Justice that his rights would be violated if the appeals court allows the U.S. government to put him on trial.

The case has been widely condemned by civil liberties, human rights, and press freedom organizations because the allegations against Assange criminalize him for engaging in standard news gathering activities. Yet the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) under President Joe Biden has refused to heed calls, including from members of Congress, to drop the charges.

In 2010, Assange received hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents from U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. They were published on WikiLeaks, exposing torture, war crimes, and unreported civilian deaths. Leaked State Department cables revealed the stark gap between what U.S. ambassadors say in public and do in private.

Manning was charged with Espionage Act-related offenses and prosecuted in a military court-martial. She received a thirty-five-year sentence that President Barack Obama later commuted. But Assange was not indicted for publishing documents. As The Washington Post reported in 2013, the DOJ determined there was no way to prosecute Assange without having to also prosecute The New York Times.

Such First Amendment concerns were not a problem for the DOJ once President Donald Trump was elected. Following WikiLeaks’ publication of materials on the CIA’s hacking capabilities, CIA Director Mike Pompeo sought revenge. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made arresting Assange a priority.

Assange was charged with seventeen counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and one count of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.” Prosecutors accused Assange of soliciting information that he was not authorized to receive because he did not possess a U.S. security clearance. They maintained that Assange should have destroyed the documents he obtained from Manning and others or “returned” them to the U.S. government.

Journalists and media organizations throughout the world routinely ask potential sources to leak information that is in the public interest. At least seventy-five news gathering organizations operate a submission system called SecureDrop developed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation that is similar to the submission system which WikiLeaks initially pioneered.

Imagine the uproar if any U.S. prosecutor ever asked The Washington Post, ProPublica, or NBC News to destroy documents, or their staff would face criminal charges.

Assange is an Australian citizen. The Espionage Act has never been extraterritorially applied against anyone outside the United States before. By prosecuting Assange with the Espionage Act, the U.S. government has mounted an unprecedented attack on global press freedom that puts investigative journalism at risk.

Prosecuting Assange gives a green light to countries around the world that it is possible to protect their government secrets by charging international reporters or editors with crimes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently justified the detention of Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal, telling Tucker Carlson: “If a person gets secret information and does that in a conspiratorial manner, then this is qualified as espionage.”

Although what Putin said is authoritarian, this is not far off from the logic that underpins the U.S. case against Assange. Putin believes that Gershkovich was collecting secrets and should be jailed. The U.S. government believes that Assange was collecting secrets and should be jailed. Both are wrong. Both are fueling a race to the bottom that endangers journalism.

There is no U.S. law against publishing classified information, and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect a person’s right to publish information, even if the material was hacked or stolen.

The British legal system is unlikely to spare Assange. If the High Court rules against Assange, he could petition the European Court of Human Rights to hear an appeal. Or he could be extradited within days. If extradited, his wife Stella Assange says the WikiLeaks founder will die due to his poor mental and physical health.

Only a political solution can end this case and prevent the U.S. government from doing further damage to the freedom of the press. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Parliament have passed a motion demanding the United States and United Kingdom free Assange and allow him to return home to Australia.

A similar resolution was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. It states that “regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment,” and that the United States ought to drop all charges and abandon all efforts to extradite Assange.

Groups around the world are calling on the United States government to immediately drop its charges against Assange and cease all efforts to extradite him from Britain. More information can be found at the website freedom.press/assange/.

WikiLeaks logo Julian Assange during a press conference attended by international media at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, August 2014

WikiLeaks founder Assange may be near the end of his long fight to stay out of the US 2/19/24

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s fight to avoid facing spying charges in the United States may be nearing an end following a protracted legal saga in the U.K. that included seven years of self-exile inside a foreign embassy and five years in prison.

Assange faces what could be his final court hearing in London starting Tuesday as he tries to stop his extradition to the U.S. The High Court has scheduled two days of arguments over whether Assange can ask an appeals court to block his transfer. If the court doesn’t allow the appeal to go forward, he could be sent across the Atlantic.

His wife says the decision is a matter of life and death for Assange, whose health has deteriorated during his time in custody. “His life is at risk every single day he stays in prison,” Stella Assange said Thursday. “If he’s extradited, he will die.”

WHAT IS ASSANGE CHARGED WITH?

Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, has been indicted in the U.S. on 18 charges over Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010. Prosecutors say he conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He faces 17 counts of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. If convicted, his lawyers say he could receive a prison term of up to 175 years, though American authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower.

Assange and his supporters argue he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing and is protected under press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists. “Julian has been indicted for receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. government,” Stella Assange said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.” U.S. lawyers say Assange is guilty of trying to hack the Pentagon computer and that WikiLeaks’ publications created a “grave and imminent risk” to U.S. intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WHY HAS THE CASE DRAGGED ON SO LONG?

Read full article at Associated Press

RFK Jr.: Demand Immediate Release of Julian Assange

Independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. emailed on February 20:

“When whistleblowers like Daniel Elsberg, John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange revealed government corruption – they weren’t betraying America – they were returning America to its democratic and humanitarian ideals. But instead of championing free speech and celebrating these truth-tellers, today our government actively persecutes journalists and whistleblowers – which is why I’m calling on every citizen to sign our petition calling for the immediate release of Julian Assange.

This isn’t the Soviet Union. The America I love doesn’t imprison dissidents. Our founders put free speech as the First Amendment because all our other rights depend on it. If you give a government license to silence its critics, it now has license for any atrocity.

Julian Assange, a newspaper publisher, has spent 13 years behind bars for revealing crimes committed by our government. From torture at Guantanamo Bay to anti-democratic actions taken by the DNC to civilian casualties inflicted by the US military in the War On Terror, time and again, Assange has shed daylight on America’s moral corruption.

Since when did revealing crimes become a bigger crime than the crime itself?

It’s time we stood up for Assange the way he stood up for us.

On my first day in office, I’ll pardon Julian Assange and investigate the corruption and crimes he exposed. I will also issue an executive order to end all attempts by federal agents and federal agencies to censor the political speech of Americans.

Attacking the messenger is never good policy. The government’s war against whistleblowers has turned national heroes into criminals, and, it has deterred others who might still come forward. Only if we stand together can we protect whistleblowers, which is why I am encouraging every American –regardless of your political party – to sign our petition to demand the immediate pardon and release of Julian Assange from incarceration.

Sign Petition To Pardon Julian Assange

Kennedy Demands Immediate Release and Pardon of Julian Assange 2/19/24

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. today released a video and launched a petition demanding the immediate release and pardon of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

On Tuesday, London judges will decide whether Assange has exhausted all his appeals in the British courts and will be extradited to the U.S., where he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Assange, a newspaper publisher, has spent 13 years behind bars for revealing crimes committed by our government. From torture at Guantanamo Bay to anti-democratic actions taken by the DNC to civilian casualties inflicted by the U.S. military in the War On Terror, time and again, Assange has shed daylight on America’s moral corruption.

“Attacking the messenger is never good policy,” Kennedy said. “The government’s war against whistleblowers has turned heroes into criminals. Only if we stand together can we protect free speech, which is why I am encouraging every American to sign our petition to demand the immediate pardon and release of Julian Assange from incarceration.”

Kennedy has promised that if President Biden does not heed this call, then on “my first day in office, I will pardon Julian Assange and investigate the corruption and crimes he exposed.” Kennedy has also said that he “will issue an executive order to end all attempts by federal agents and federal agencies to censor the political speech of Americans.”

Petition to Free Julian Assange | Kennedy24

Julian Assange is a heroic publisher who exposed heinous crimes involving the murder of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians - presided over by the same US officials who launched the Iraq war based on a lie. In addition, WikiLeaks released emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), in which the DNC presented ways of undercutting Clinton's competitor Bernie Sanders and showed favoritism towards Clinton. The release led to the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and an apology to Sanders from the DNC.

These are merely two examples of Assange's vital role in exposing crimes against democracy and human rights.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has repeatedly said he would free Julian Assange on his first day in office as president.