What a rough few weeks it’s been for WikiLeaks founder/Ecuadorian embassy poltergeist Julian Assange: Ecuador told him that if he wants to stay wrapped up in his asylum cocoon, he needs to shut up about politics, clean his own damn bathroom and scoop the poop from his cat’s litter box lest the kitty be given to somebody who knows how to take care of it.
Then last week there were rumours that the US finally, after six long years, filed charges against him for publishing stolen information.
It’s a big “maybe.” The supposition that the US secretly charged Assange comes from a mistake on a court filing that could have been a slip-up or might have been just a copy-paste error.
The “evidence:” the name “Assange” was mentioned in an unrelated court filing in a case from a prosecutor in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Assistant US Attorney Kellen Dwyer.
Assange wasn’t the defendant in the case; rather, that was Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, who’s charged with coercion and enticement of a minor. He’s charged with coercing a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him and to give him sexual images.
In the filing, Dwyer says documents should remain sealed, as due to…
… the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.
Dwyer wrote that those documents would need to remain sealed until…
… Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.
What charges? Have any actually been filed? The Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t say; all it said was that the filing that mentioned Assange had been a mistake. From an emailed statement sent by DOJ spokesman Joshua Stueve to The Guardian:
The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.
WikiLeaks, for its part, thinks it was a “cut and paste” error.
SCOOP: US Department of Justice "accidentally" reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia. https://t.co/wrjlAbXk5Z pic.twitter.com/4UlB0c1SAX
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 16, 2018
The error could have been caused by prosecutors copying and pasting from sealed documents outlining charges against Assange. As The Guardian notes:
Prosecutors are known to copy text from past court filings to make similar arguments in new cases, typically changing names and other relevant details accordingly.
…and, perhaps, slipping up and not catching everything that needs to be changed in the pasted version, including the name “Assange.”
How common is the name “Assange” in the US judicial system? Not common at all. Searching the Pacer case locator turns up five cases, all against one Assange: namely, Julian.
Assange has been living in the embassy since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face charges of rape. He fears that if he were sent to Sweden, he would then be extradited from there to the US to face charges that have never been filed (at least, not to public knowledge) for his role in the leak and publication of classified information.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the US is preparing to prosecute Assange and is “increasingly optimistic” that it can get him into a US courtroom.
As it is, relations between the Ecuadoran government and Assange have gotten ever more tense. President Lenin Moreno, elected last year, has described the unwanted guest as a “stone in our shoe” and said his continued presence at the embassy is unsustainable.
In March, Ecuador punished Assange for political outspokenness – he had criticized Britain and its allies for expelling Russian diplomats – by cutting off his internet access at its London embassy.
In May, Moreno yanked an elaborate, multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support Assange after The Guardian and Focus Ecuador revealed that the country was bankrolling an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even British police.
Prosecution sets a bad precedent for publishers
Regardless of whether you think Assange is a self-promoting, self-aggrandizing puffer fish or a martyred champion for government transparency and accountability, there are many who say that prosecuting him for telling the truth sets a bad precedent. In fact, it’s unconstitutional, according to the American Civil Liberties Union:
.@ACLU: Prosecuting Assange for @wikileaks publishing operations unprecedented and unconstitutional. .... sets dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest. https://t.co/DJY1CfbpEx
— Jamil Dakwar (@jdakwar) November 16, 2018
From a statement made by Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project:
Any prosecution of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.
Readers, where does your support lie? With Assange? With the prosecutors? With Assange’s cat, Michi? Do let us know.
Anonymous
If he thinks his actions are legal, he should go ahead and turn himself in and allow the courts to affirm that. As it is, having to stay in the Ecuadorean embassy for years isn’t that much different than prison, and he doesn’t get credit for time served.
njorl
“Legal” meaning permitted by a particular set of artificial laws. Artificial laws, unlike laws of physics, vary through space and time. Thus, in general, there is an impossibility to divining whether any individual believes all his actions legal that has no reliance upon doubt in the individual’s morality.
Reliance upon courts to affirm one’s knowledge of the full legality of all one’s actions is not something endorsed by the courts’ record. For the innocent individual, the consequences of a court getting it wrong, whether through incompetence or through corruption, are invariably quite negative. Thus, the wisdom of your recommendation is not entirely apparent.
Matt Parkes
Why pick on the cat, he/she is only doing what comes naturally for a cat lol!
Anonymous Coward
I’m with Michi.
John C
If Mr. Assange’s leaks were limited to exposing wrongdoing or things that the public “needs to know” I might be more sympathetic to his cause. As it is, he will publish anything he can get his hands on without regard to the damage it will do (or perhaps relishing that damage). I believe there are legitimate reasons for governments to keep secrets, and I also believe that the need for secrecy is sometimes subverted to conceal less-than-legal activities. In that case, a leak can be a good thing. Assange doesn’t appear to apply any such filter. I would like to see him face the consequences of his actions and see if he can convincingly make an argument that he was acting in the public interest. Hiding in the Ecuadorean embassy (and being a poor guest) only makes him appear cowardly.
DannAgro
Personally I support Wikileaks, but Assange seems to be not a very likeable character, and his connections to the right in the UK, namely creeps like Farage, further undermine his integrity.
But I can understand his reluctance to leave the embassy, even if the charges of sexual assault in Sweden have now lapsed. Who would trust any government not to suddenly produce some sort of charge?
Philip Le Riche
Definitely the cat. No sympathy for either Assange or the prosecutors.
Mark Stockley
Free the cat!
Brendan
It takes a perverse and counterfactual bent to look at the evidence and assert that the USA is willing and able to give J.A. a fair trial by international standards. Obama was not above assassinating American citizens abroad, but he blanched at the idea that a publisher of leaked documents, as opposed to just the gov’t worker who leaked them, would be selectively charged (NYTimes & WashPo no, J.A./Wikileaks yes). Trump doesn’t give a fig about due process or publishers’ rights.
Riggerrob
I upvoted the first comment, but on second thought I don’t trust the government. We all know how they can manipulate things. Just think Stingray and that’s only the beginning. Watergate makes you think a little bit too.
Dig deeper into things
You are a sheep, go to eat your grass.
roleary
Cats are evil.
Put me on the side of the poor cleaners.