Julian Assange's lawyer tells ABC News U.S. spying indictment is imminent for WikiLeaks founder

[The Straight Story]

Julian Assange's lawyer tells ABC News U.S. spying indictment is imminent for WikiLeaks founder

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the man behind the publication of more than a 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, could soon be facing spying charges in the U.S. related to the Espionage Act, Assange's lawyer said today.

"Our position of course is that we don't believe it applies to Mr. Assange and that in any event he's entitled to First Amendment protection as publisher of Wikileaks and any prosecution under the Espionage Act would in my view be unconstitutional and puts at risk all media organizations in the U.S.," Assange's attorney Jennifer Robinson told ABC News.

Robinson said a U.S. indictment of Assange was imminent.

Assange is already in custody in London on sexual assault charges including rape originating out of Sweden. He is being held in solitary confinement with restricted access to a phone and his lawyers, Robinson said.

"This means he is under significant surveillance but also means he has more restrictive conditions than other prisoners," she said. "Considering the circumstances he was incredibly positive and upbeat."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/assange-lawyers-prepare-us-espionage-indictment/story?id=12362315

[Poll_Blind]

1. Their case against him is a flaming bag of shit that will explode in their faces.

No doubt about it.

PB

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. I hope not...... The US will make a horrible PR mistake

Let alone a horrible human rights mistake.

But the way the US is acting these days I anticipate the worse.

[leveymg]

3. This is essentially the same case they dropped against the AIPAC defendants,

Weissman and Rosen, because U.S. law is set up to prosecute gov't employees who release classified docs, not the media that publishes it or US persons who receive it.

Unlike the UK, there is no Official Secrets Act. The last effort to pass one was vetoed by Pres. Clinton. Maybe, now there is, or Obama would apparently sign such a law if it passed both Houses.

[jaxx]

4. Is Assange wanting to be an American?

The first amendment is USA made. Is he giving up?

[DearAbby]

6. If he isnt AMERICAN Deserving of these rights....

And according to you, One must be an AMERICAN to deserve these rights...How can he be violating American Law? He wasn't on American soil. What crime has he committed here?

[jaxx]

8. Fencing stolen goods.

He was told the material was stolen and told to give it back. He declined. Looks like he now wants to use American amendments to save him. Doesn't make any sense for him to do that.

[leveymg]

14. Publishing overclassified documents the public has a right to know is the proper legal framework.

Not fencing stolen goods. There is an important distinction under U.S. law.

[NightWatcher]

5. He NEVER should have come out of hiding. He will NEVER be free again

The US will get their hands on him, prob try him as a terrorist or something else that happens in the dark, and stick him somewhere dark....unless he doesn't survive the plane ride here.

I can't wait to decipher "insurance.aes256"

[ddeclue]

7. Umm he isn't in US jurisdiction and never was.

He didn't pay these people to provide the info - they did it on their own. The US Govt can't simply start declaring it has world wide jurisdiction over the citizens of other countries while they are IN other countries. I sure hope I'm on his jury.

[NightWatcher]

9. Extraordinary Rendition?

He wouldnt be the first guy we've snatched up without cause or jurisdiction

[azul]

10. He offered himself to the public as a lightning rod.

Perhaps the public attention is being focused on him as part of getting more publicity. For him and against him. It may be all good.

The book The Hidden Brain lays out the telescopic effect of attention -that makes it easier to focus and get emotionally involved with the fewest number of subjects in a story, and the story gets more and more attention and intensity by it.

[siligut]

13. "He offered himself to the public as a lightning rod"

And it seems to be working. He didn't do this without a great deal of thought and preparation.

[Kalyke]

11. The U.S. should not spend their time re-fighting just rulings"

Ellsberg surrendered to authorities in Boston and admitted that he had given the papers to the press. He was later indicted on charges of stealing and holding secret documents by a grand jury in Los Angeles. Federal District Judge Byrne declared a mistrial and dismissed all charges against Ellsberg (and Russo) on May 11, 1973, after several irregularities appeared in the government's case, including its claim that it had lost records of illegal wiretapping against Ellsberg conducted by the White House Plumbers in the contemporaneous Watergate scandal. Byrne ruled: "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."

I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.
— Ellsberg on why he released the Pentagon Papers to the press.

Times v. United States is generally considered a victory for an extensive reading of the First Amendment, but as the Supreme Court ruled on whether the government had made a successful case for prior restraint, its decision did not void the Espionage Act or give the press unlimited freedom to publish classified documents. A majority of the justices ruled that the government could still prosecute the Times and the Post for violating the Espionage Act by publishing the documents. Ellsberg and Russo were not acquitted of violating the Espionage Act; they were freed due to a mistrial from irregularities in the government's case.

In March 1972, political scientist Samuel L. Popkin, then assistant professor of Government at the University of California, San Diego, was jailed for a week for his refusal to answer questions before a grand jury investigating the Pentagon Papers case, during a hearing before the Boston Federal District Court.<18> The Faculty Council later passed a resolution condemning the government's interrogation of scholars on the grounds that "an unlimited right of grand juries to ask any question and to expose a witness to citations for contempt could easily threaten scholarly research."

Although the entire Pentagon Papers study has been published by various sources starting with the Times in 1971 and ending with the National Security Archive in 2002, the work remains classified.

[glinda]

12. There is one huge flaw here and that is to accept ANY move to send him here. He will be harmed if he

is sent here. This is very bad news. Do you really think that the Judge will not be appointed by the Government interests? Our system of laws has shown how far we have fallen as a Country.
It is a huge and horrible mistake to send him here.

[TorchTheWitch]

15. why would he be harmed?

Manning hasn't been harmed, he's just in jail. And between the two of them, the US is FAR more pissed off at Manning than Assange.

Sure the US has gone down a bad road when it comes to justice and treatment of prisoners, but to imagine Assange would be harmed if he was sent here is just nuts. We didn't even have top identified terrorists sent here to be harmed. Did you forget about Gitmo? That we finagled the laws so we could send suspected terrorists off US soil and deny them prisoner rights and did the harm in secret? And those were people suspected of wretched terrorist crimes, not people who killed their neighbor or robbed a 7-11. To believe that we secretly went so far off the rails and we're now torturing and killing people in gulags on our own soil is just wacko. Bad enough that Obama decided that upon his own personal decision that anyone he considers a big enough threat to the US can be assassinated. He certainly isn't going to be using that pig of a law to off the likes of a virtual nobody like Assange. Assange is a mere annoyance compared to all the people the US would like to bump off. We aren't anywhere near Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia (yet)... if we ever get that far there's no question that you'll really know it.

[pipi_k]

16. He's an idiot and deserves what he gets....

He has probably ensured that future documents and information the public "has a right to know" will be even more secret and unavailable.

Already the Pentagon has banned removable devices...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374167,00.asp


Does anyone seriously think this ISN'T going to escalate? Other government agencies setting up bans on whatever they think may compromise information...


Do people whose homes have been broken into just roll over and say, "Oh well...might as well leave all the doors and windows open so all our belongings can be taken"? No. They take measures to better secure their homes from further invasions because they don't want it to happen again. Big dog. Cameras. Better locks. Suspicion for a very long time, if not forever.


So Julian ASSange may have triggered something really really awful. Because government agencies aren't going to forget and they're not going to just roll over in capitulation to any entities trying to infiltrate them for information. And this could be just the excuse the government and other agencies need to clamp down on many freedoms.

Way to go!

:eyes: