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This debate has spanned the decade: Is Julian Assange a villainous hack working in concert with countries that regularly squash a free press? Or is he a symbol of freedom of speech and the public’s right to know?
The debate is back on now that Assange has been arrested in the UK and charged in the US – not under the Espionage Act for publishing classified material, as many press freedom advocates had feared, but under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
On Thursday morning, shortly after Assange was taken into custody, prosecutors alleged that Assange “engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the US Army, to assist Manning in cracking a password” on classified DOD computer systems. Notably, according to this timeline, Manning had already started to download information off the servers. Assange allegedly coaxed Manning to keep going.
One of Assange’s lawyers, Barry Pollack, says the charges just “boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identify of that source. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.”
Others beg to differ. They say Assange is a tool of Russian intelligence, among other things.
Click here for an in-depth look at the still-developing story from all sides:
Ecuador spent over $6 million in expenses to house WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Foreign Minister José Valencia told Ecuador’s National Assembly on Thursday.
Ecuador spent more than $5,800,000 in security expenses from June 2012 to September 2018 and roughly $400,000 in medical, food, laundry and legal expenses for Assange, Valencia said.
Valencia said the embassy reduced the security expenses in 2018 from $1,000,000 a year to $600,000 a year.
Ecuador’s Foreign Minister José Valencia revealed more details about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s behavior while he lived at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Valencia told lawmakers that Assange’s physical and mental health were “seriously declining” after living inside the Embassy for nearly seven years and that the prospect of keeping him at the embassy indefinitely would have increased the risk of his health deteriorating further.
Valencia said Assange’s behavior was “aggressive” and he had “improper hygiene practices.”
Speaking to the country’s National Assembly today, Valencia said Assange had been riding scooters, playing soccer indoors and insulting embassy staff. He also said Assange was using loud speakers at 1:30 a.m.
Assange also tried to block security cameras inside the embassy and accused staff of spying on him on behalf of the US. He installed his own cameras and unauthorized equipment at the embassy.
He was given a Wi-Fi password to use the internet, but he declined it. He was using a cell phone that was not registered with the embassy.
Assange claimed he was kept in isolation, but he was receiving guests regularly – friends, relatives, reporters and WikiLeaks staff, Valencia said. Assange also made false claims in his naturalization application documents, according to Valencia.
President Trump, when asked if he still “loves” WikiLeaks, told reporters in the Oval Office that he knows “nothing about Wikileaks.”
Trump added that the determination will be made by Attorney General Barr.
“I know nothing really about him,” Trump said of Assange adding, “that’s not my deal in life.”
“I don’t really have an opinion,” Trump asked when reporters continued to ask questions on Assange.
What Trump has said about WikiLeaks before:
President Trump has a history of supporting WikiLeaks before he was President, saying at one rally in 2016: “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.”
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham spoke this morning about President Trump repeatedly praising WikiLeaks, saying: “He’s not an American citizen so he can’t be a traitor but I have absolutely no use for Julian Assange … Whatever comes his way he deserves.”
Asked again if the President should have praised WikiLeaks, “That’s up to the President.”
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Thursday celebrated the arrest of the Wikileaks founder, arguing it’s “great for the American people.”
Manchin, along with nine of his Democratic colleagues, had signed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence last June, expressing concern about Ecuador providing asylum to Assange since 2012.
“I think it’s very good for us to finally get him on US soil so we can investigate. We can basically cross-examine; we can find out the facts that only he knows and his connections and how he basically distributed his information,” Manchin said.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of Republican leadership who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this when asked about Trump’s repeated praise of WikiLeaks when he was a candidate.
Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa said the revocation of Julian Assange’s asylum is “incredible,” in an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest today.
“It’s incredible. We cannot imagine something like this. It’s against international law; it’s against the institution of asylum; it’s against the Ecuadorian constitution, especially because since last year, Julian Assange has had Ecuadorian citizenship,” Correa said.
Correa was in power when Assange requested asylum. He told CNN he agreed to shelter the Australian WikiLeaks founder “not because we agree with what he did” but because “it was very clear that he didn’t have the opportunity to have a fair lawsuit, a fair process in the US.”
Correa laughed as Quest read out a list of Assange’s supposed violations as outlined by Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno earlier Thursday.
Correa added that Moreno has never seen eye to eye with Assange since assuming the presidency in 2017.
In addition to allowing UK police to enter the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Assange, Ecuador also announced his citizenship had been suspended effective from Wednesday, according to foreign minister Jose Valencia at a press conference.
In case you’re wondering WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stayed in his self-imposed exile at Ecuador’s London embassy for six years, nine months and 24 days.
Or 2,488 days from start to end.
He entered his diplomatic bolthole on June 19, 2012.
(Perfectly useless knowledge unless it crops up at a trivia night.)
Speaking to journalists in a scrum outside Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday afternoon, Jennifer Robinson, a member of Julian Assange’s legal team, said they had been proven right in regards to their previous warnings that Assange would face extradition to United States for his “publishing activities” since 2010.
Robinson added her client was formally notified his asylum would be revoked by the Ecuadorian Ambassador this morning.
US Justice Department officials expect to bring additional charges Assange, according to a US official briefed on the matter. It is unclear when officials would bring such charges.
The years-long FBI investigation into Assange transformed in recent years with the recovery of communications that prosecutors believe shows Assange had been been a more active participant in a conspiracy to hack computers and violate US law, officials say.
The Justice Department had struggled for years with the question of whether Assange and WikiLeaks should be treated as journalists and publishers. News organizations similarly published stolen classified documents, some even worked with WikiLeaks to get access to documents and publish stories.
The view among prosecutors began changing late in the Obama administration, in part due to new evidence the FBI believed showed Assange was not entitled to journalistic protections.
In 2017, the WikiLeaks publication of stolen CIA hacking codes helped propel the case against Assange, according to current and former US law enforcement officials.
Read more below:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now facing up to 12 months behind bars after being found guilty of breaking his bail conditions when he entered the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012.
A date has yet to be set for his sentencing at London’s Southwark Crown Court.
Assange has been remanded in custody until his May 2 extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court.
The UK’s Home Secretary Sajid Javid addressed the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon for the first time since Julian Assange was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested.
Javid told members of parliament that both the UK and Ecuadorian government had “become increasingly concerned about the state of Mr. Assange’s health.”
The first action of London’s Metropolitan Police was to have him medically assessed and deemed fit to detain, he said, adding that Assange had received access to doctors while holed up within his diplomatic shelter.
Javid then outlined how court proceedings would play out: Under UK law, following the provisional arrest, the full extradition papers must be received by the judge within 65 days. The extradition request must be certified by Home Office before going to court, Javid said.
“I am glad the situation in the Ecuadorian embassy has been brought to an end,” Javid said in closing. “It is right that we implement the judicial process fairly and consistently with due respect for equality before the law.”
Apart from the odd special appearance from the Ecuadorian embassy’s balcony, Julian Assange hadn’t been seen outside in seven years. It was a moment that global news organizations were desperate to show their audiences. In the end, the only media outlet with video of the moment was an outfit called Ruptly.
Founded in 2013, Ruptly – which has carved out a niche for itself by recording events around the world and selling the footage to other broadcasters – is a subsidiary of Russian state-backed media outlet RT.
Laura Lucchini, Ruptly’s deputy head of news, said its staff had been recording events outside the embassy 24/7 since at least April 5.
According to the Guardian, after it started to seem in recent weeks that an arrest might be imminent, big UK broadcasters had formed a “pool” arrangement to take turns staking out the building. If something happened, the footage would be shared among the pool members.
That effort appeared to have been abandoned when the arrest failed to materialize. The BBC, ITN and Sky News did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ecuador’s Interior Minister María Paula Romo says Julian Assange’s asylum was revoked because there was sufficient evidence that he was meddling in Ecuador’s internal affairs in an effort to destabilize the government.
Romo also reiterated President Lenin Moreno’s remarks that Assange was consistently violating embassy residency rules, and specifically called out how he would put feces on the walls.
“For several years now, one of the key members of the WikiLeaks organization and a person close to Assange has lived in Ecuador,” Romo said at a press conference Thursday.
This member “works closely and has traveled with Ricardo Patiño to Peru, Spain and Russia.”
Patiño was chancellor during the government of former president of Correa, who was in power when Assange was granted asylum.
CNN has reached out to Chancellor Patiño. Previously Patiño defended the innocence of Assange saying his fight was a “fight for freedom of expression.”
Two Russian hackers are also suspected of meddling in the attempt to destabilize the government and their information will be delivered to the Office of the Attorney General of Ecuador, Romi said.
“We are not going to allow Ecuador to become a hacking center and we cannot allow illegal activities to take place in the country in order to harm citizens or other governments,” Rome said. The authorities did not clarify whether these people have been detained or only identified.
The interior minister said that “in the next few hours” the government of Ecuador will provide additional evidence that justifies the decision to end Assange’s asylum.
During former President Correa’s government and while Patiño was chancellor, “they tolerated things like Assange putting feces on the embassy walls and other behaviors far from the minimum respect that a guest can have,” said Romo.
More details around Julian Assange’s dramatic ejection from the Ecuadorian embassy are emerging.
A lawyer for the US government revealed arrest officers went to the embassy at 9.15 a.m. local time (4.15 a.m. ET), where ambassadors met them. The ambassador then revoked Assange’s asylum and met with him at 10 a.m. (5 a.m. ET). The lawyer said officers tried to introduce themselves, but Assange barged past them in an attempt to return to a private room.
He was eventually arrested at 10.15 a.m. (5.15 a.m. ET) but resisted and had to restrained, leading to the dramatic scenes of British police hauling him by force out of the building.
After being lifted into the waiting police van, he was taken directly to a police station where he was formally arrested.
Watching the video of his arrest earlier, I was shocked to see how much Assange has aged. His tall frame bent over by the police dragging him out. He looked desperate and cornered. He was not the confident, daring – and often calculating – transparency activist I once knew.
The last time I saw Assange was just after he claimed asylum in the embassy, nearly seven years ago. He was in good health then and fairly optimistic that he could still run WikiLeaks from the embassy.
He told me it was like living on a space ship. His friends worried about his health and bought him an exercise machine. Celebrity guests would sometimes visit and that would make a big splash in the news. But it was a lonely existence, and friends brought him a kitten to keep him company.
And then there was the 24-hour police surveillance outside the embassy. I cannot fathom the toll it must have had on his physical and mental health.
Assange had always maintained that he was not afraid of facing allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which is what the original arrest warrant was for. He was more concerned that it was a ploy – he called it once a “honey trap” – to get him extradited to the US on charges of espionage.
Remember that – before the DNC leaks, before allegations of Russia collusion, before Trump’s declarations of “I love WikiLeaks!” – Assange and WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified documents leaked to him by former Army private and whistleblower, Chelsea Manning.
That was unprecedented. It made WikiLeaks what it is today. And Assange was convinced that the US government was coming after him, that a grand jury had issued a sealed indictment charging him with criminal acts.
Today, it seems, Assange was right.
An Interpol “red notice” issued by the US Department of Homeland Security in the name of Julian Assange has been in circulation since at least March 2011, according to a diplomatic source with first-hand knowledge of the document.
The source said the red notice did not mention any charges in particular at the time.
What is a red notice? It is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action, according to Interpol. It is not an arrest warrant.
Back inside the courtroom, one of Assange’s lawyers argued that he did not surrender for bail back in 2012 because he would never have received a fair trial and was thus forced to seek asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy.
The judge appeared to dispute this and called the Australian WikiLeaks founder a “narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest.”
The judge found Assange guilty of breaking his bail conditions and ordered him to appear on May 2 for an extradition hearing. Until then, he said Assange would remain in custody.
The hearing has now ended.
When 47-year-old WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finally left the Ecuadorian embassy after seven years, the focus was largely on his appearance and what he was screaming as he was bundled into a police van.
But eagle-eyed observers noticed that as he was hauled away, he was clutching a book titled “Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State.” According to the Amazon listing, it’s a collection of interviews with the American literary legend, who chronicled major cultural shifts in the United States.
The book, according to Amazon, details “the historical events that led to the establishment of the massive military-industrial-security complex and the political culture that gave us the ‘Imperial Presidency.’”
When Assange sat down in a London court in the past hour or so, he still had the book with him, and made a show to the media of reading from it.
Assange has appeared inside the courtroom at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court. Wearing a dark suit with his hair tied back and crisp white beard, he gave a thumbs up to the press.
He appeared calm and confident as the judge asked him where his lawyers were.
