Assange extradition case goes to UK Home Secretary as High Court rules he can be sent to US for trial
As to the “why is a person who has never signed the consent agreement necessary to have a security clearance can be “guilty” of compromising classified documents he never consented to protect” question I think this is one of the relevant bits:
Among a smorgasbord of US criminal charges described by his supporters as an attack on journalism, Assange is accused of commissioning the cracking of a password protecting US Department of Defence files.
However:
The next step in the case is for the Home Office to decide whether or not to extradite Assange to the US. After that he can appeal to the High Court against the Home Sec’s decision. If he doesn’t like the High Court’s ruling, Assange can go to the Court of Appeal and eventually the Supreme Court, so there’s lots of mileage left in the British legal proceedings yet.
Biden has the power to pardon him but he’s been very clear that he has no interest in dictating which individuals the DOJ should and should not prosecute. And that’s a good thing, especially after four years of Trump treating the department like his own private law firm.
Count 2 of second superseding indictment is indeed conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and ¶19 alleges that Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password for a US government computer. Assange is also alleged among other things to have:
claimed to have used unauthorized access to an Icelandic police computer system (¶42)
directed the hacking of a former Wikileaks employee to erase chat logs mentioning Assange (¶46)
approved a hacking group to work on Wikileak’s behalf (¶49)
suggested hackers focus on getting documents from The New York Times (¶76)
Many presidents are reluctant to pardon very many people early in their presidency but doing zero humans and two Turkeys, despite earlier promises, is a bit disgraceful.
I beg to differ. My problem is less what this does for Assange than what it means for global press freedom. The legal theory being used is broad enough that if applied broadly would functionally end almost all international investigative journalism about all national security issues. Throw Assange under a literal bus for all I care, or ship him back to Sweden to answer for the accusations there, but extradition to the US is a dangerous door to open for all of us.
