Judging Freedom - Gabriel Shipton: Julian Assange’s Brother on British “Justice”

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Gabriel Shipton: Julian Assange’s Brother on British “Justice”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 21st, 2024. Gabriel Shifton is with us today, direct and live from London, England. whom all of you have heard me speak and heard our guest speak extensively lately. Yesterday and today were the final oral arguments in his final appeal in his efforts to prevent extradition to the United States to be tried for a crime which, in my view, he didn't commit and under the law is

impossible for the government to prove. But the government of the United States of America, starting in the Trump administration and continuing into the Biden administration, is determined to prosecute him. Gabriel, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us. You are a filmmaker by profession. You're accustomed to seeing uncomfortable things and putting them on film. What did you see and witness when you visited your brother last? Well, in the prison system and this endless process,

this endless legal process has been wearing him down inside the prison. And to see somebody who I've known over the years who's um you know been so strong in the in the face of you know overwhelming uh adversity when he's publishing all these secrets and information uh under you know in the ecuadoran embassy where he spent seven years uh you know monitored uh inside that embassy but continuing to publish to see him uh you know inside a prison inside a maximum security prison it's heartbreaking you know it's heartbreaking it's his younger brother uh going and going visiting him and watching him deteriorate over the years and become just more and more just deteriorating

and being crushed by this endless legal crisis. Is he held in a facility where he has interaction with other human beings or is he isolated? He's in his cell most of the time, Judge. He's in his cell most of the time. In his current setup where he is, it's a maximum security facility. There's no communal areas in the facility, so he spends most of his time inside his cell. That being said, he does have communication with his family.

He sees his two small children once a week, five and six-year-old boys, and his wife, Stella. And he gets phone calls to my dad, John, and to his wife and his legal team. So he has this connection with the outside world that is his lifeline. He gets the support from his family that keeps him going inside, keeps him fighting uh and if he's extradited that that you know that'll just get cut off like that uh there will he'll be put into uh potentially put into sam's special administrative measures where all his communication uh will be limited uh and he'll be put essentially in solitary confinement which is what they do to these uh you know national security espionage act cases uh we're going to run a clip of your brother from 2018 an interview on cbs news's 60 minutes you tell me if the the brother that you saw last looks and sounds

anything like this bradley Manning is a hero. We should just say it very, very clearly. We see him as someone who we have a shared destiny with, as someone who's alleged to be one of our sources. We have some kind of duty of care for him, absolutely. And that Neo-McCarthyist absolute hysteria, calling for my assassination, calling for the kidnapping of our staff, putting bills into Congress to declare all our staff enemy combatants

that could be assassinated at will. I saw it. I viewed that as redneck rather than real. Well, it wasn't just the rednecks. That's the problem. If you know these people, when they consider something as that serious, then all options are on the table. At the time that interview was made, the Secretary of State was a man named Mike Pompeo. Mr. Pompeo is also a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who made it known that in his capacity as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he authorized plans to assassinate your brother. So there's no exaggeration at all in what your brother is

saying. And of course, the Bradley Manning of whom he speaks is the person who actually stole these military secrets, offered them to the New York Times. The New York Times didn't return his phone call, and then offered them to your brother. In my opinion, your brother is a national and international hero of extraordinary magnitude and courage. But the British government, whether it's conservative or labor, and the British judicial system, once known for its independence but no longer are lapdogs to what the American government wants. You have spent the past two days in the courtroom. Your brother was not there. Why was your brother not there for what might be his last hearing in London?

Well, he wasn't well over the last two days, Judge, so he didn't attend in person and he didn't attend via video link. So that's really concerning to us as his family, and just more of that evidence that this system is, you know, wearing him down, making his health, you know, really deteriorating his health and making it so it's much harder for him to actually defend himself. So that's why he wasn't there. He was unwell. I'm not sure exactly what it was. He has had adverse health events in the past in the prison. He had a mini stroke inside that prison. So just hoping that it wasn't something like that. But very interesting that you brought up ex-Secretary of State,

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, because in the first day of the hearing, this is the first time the defence has actually been able to bring up those plots and enter them into Julian's defence. There was a long section about the political nature of the charges against Julian because there's a carve-out in the extradition treaty saying that you cannot be extradited for a political offence or political charges. And so there was a long presentation on Mike Pompeo,

how he, when he was director of the CIA, a long presentation on Mike Pompeo, how he, when he was director of the CIA, created this new legal language designating WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence agency, and how that sort of fed into the CIA so they could begin clandestine operations against WikiLeaks without congressional oversights. And they spoke to those plots that you mentioned earlier, the plots to kidnap Julian, the plots to rendition him from

the Ecuadorian embassy to the United States, the plots to kill him. And one, I think the most interesting part to me is that the plot to rendition Julian came, was discussed at the DOJ with, you know, Pompeo's CIA. And the DOJ responded by saying, you know, what are you going to do with him? You know, once you get him here, you know, we don't have any charges in place. You know, you can't just put him in a black site. Wait till we get some charges in place and indictment in place, and then we can get him out of the embassy. And that's exactly what happened. You know, the DOJ was weaponised against WikiLeaks, against Julian, and he was judicially kidnapped in 2019 and has spent ever since

been in a maximum security prison. But today, the today, the prosecution had a chance to speak to those claims of the defense and that and they didn't address them at all. So they just let all those accusations against Mike Pompeo and against the political nature of this prosecution, they let those stand. Are the prosecutors in the courtroom American prosecutors from the American Department of Justice, or are they British prosecutors? No, they're British prosecutors, but they're working for the CPS and the U.S. prosecutors. So there was U.S. representation in the courtroom today and yesterday who, you know, interact with these prosecutors as they're putting their cases to the judge. Gabriel, I'm stunned at what you told me, because in American oral arguments,

if the defendant makes an argument and has facts to back it up and the government doesn't challenge those facts, the court has to accept the facts as true. Now, that is a basic principle of law. I'm going to just guess. I don't know. I'm going to guess that that's also a principle of law in the British system since our system was created on the model of the British system as it existed 260 years ago. But I don't know. Chris, I want you to run the very beginning of the tape we ran. I want to say something about Bradley Manning, and I want the viewers to be able to see who he is. We'll just watch the first few seconds of the clips where it shows the soldiers.

Bradley Manning is a hero. We should just say it. Very, very. The fellow with the eyeglasses, Bradley Manning, is the person who actually stole this information and gave it to Julian. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the law, you're going to say, well, he received stolen property. Well, yes, he did. But for a journalist, that is absolutely protected under American law. The leading case is the Pentagon Papers case, where the late, great Daniel Ellsberg stole 7,000 pages of documents from the Defense Department, gave them to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I won't go through all the details and maneuverings legally that happened, but the end result was an opinion by the Supreme Court of the United States, commonly called the Pentagon Papers case, which is a six to three decision, saying that the publisher of information that is of material interest to the public, when he publishes it, when he receives it, holds it, publishes it, is free from civil and criminal

liability, immune from civil and criminal liability. The government's answer to that is that Julian helped Bradley Manning hack the government computers. There is zero evidence for that. There was no communication between them. They didn't even know each other until after the New York Times stopped returning Bradley Manning's phone calls. Bradley Manning was tried and convicted of espionage, was sentenced to 45 years in jail, and jail underwent transitioning. Her name is now Chelsea Manning.

After a five-year sentence, President Obama commuted the sentence, and so Bradley Manning is now free. He went to jail for some other unrelated made-up thing, but that was only about eight or nine months. He's now a free person. Your brother's potential pardon, Gabriel, was discussed between President Donald Trump and me his last week in office. I thought at the end of that telephone conversation that I had talked to the then president into pardoning your brother and Edward Snowden. And then the president changed his mind and he sent me a message. You did have me talked into it at the end of the phone call, but there were 15 people on the call. The other 13 didn't say a word. I didn't know there were 13 other people listening to the call, though 13 didn't say a word i didn't know there were 13

other people listening to the call though i didn't come down with yesterday's rain i know when you talk to the president other people are listening and a bunch of them sort of ganged up on him and talked him out of it i don't listen to the judge he thinks the constitution means what it says and we all know better so it was a a close call, but it didn't happen. Well, I think, I mean, Tucker Carlson reported, Judge, that the president got a phone call from McCarthy, not McCarthy, the Senate leader, the Republican Senate leader, saying, yes, Mitch McConnell, that the impeachment

wouldn't go well for him if he, you know, pardoned Assange and Snowden. So I think that that was a report that I heard from Tucker Carlson. I had not heard that, but it wouldn't surprise me. By the way, that's called a threat under American law, but that type of stuff happens all the time. You have spent two days in the courtroom. This is not an American trial or even a British trial where there are witnesses on the stand. This is lawyers for your brother making arguments to two judges. This is lawyers for the government making arguments to the same two judges. Was there much interaction between the judges and the lawyers for your brother? Did the judges ask them, your brother's lawyers, questions? Did they seem to

respond positively to the statements your brother's lawyers made to them, to the arguments that they advanced? Yeah, they were interacting with Julian's lawyers in the courtroom, asking for more information, more clarity, some further documentation. They seemed, you know, I've watched some julian's hearings and and the judges can uh you know that in the in the past have been totally dismissive uh of julian's defense and and a lot of the arguments that have pulled forward but uh there was uh there was a different feeling in in this court particularly when the uh prosecution were presenting their arguments. That's when it became like something I'd never seen before in Julian's hearings, where the judges were pushing back on the prosecution's arguments.

Usually, if the prosecution is almost telling the judges what to do and the judges are nodding along, yes, yes, good plan. But there was a bit of pushback, particularly today, which I'd never seen before. And I'm put down to sort of mounting political pressure and the mounting pressure from the media that is surrounding Julian's case. Just last week, the Australian Parliament voted overwhelmingly to a motion calling on the US and UK to bring this to a close

and bring Julian home. So I think that would have been heard loud and clear in the UK. There were 1,000, 1,000 or maybe 2,000 people outside the court protesting. And the media coverage here in the UK has been a bit different this time as well. There's been a lot more media interest around the case. So I think the judges, you know, my feeling is that the judges are taking notice of some of this political pressure that has been mounting up over the past years since Julian last faced the High Court. We have a nice clip of you addressing the crowds outside the courthouse, either yesterday or today. Here it is. Hi, everyone. This is amazing. What an incredible turnout. I'd love to see everybody here tomorrow as well. This is really heartwarming and really gives us a lot, inspires us to keep going as Julian's family.

As John just said, last week the entire Australian Parliament voted on a motion, a motion in the Australian Parliament that two-thirds of the parliamentarians voted in favour of, including the government, including all the cabinet ministers, defence ministers and all of the crossbench. And that motion said very specifically that Julian is an award-winning Australian journalist, that Julian is being persecuted, is being held for exposing the misconduct of the US in its wars abroad, and that the UK and the US should bring this to an end immediately so that Julian can be returned home to Australia. This case, this treatment and this case, this persecution of Julian has made the UK and the US an embarrassment

on the world stage. It is their shame. And they can bring it to an end simply by letting Julian go and re-establishing themselves as human rights advocates that can be powerful around the world. So free, free Julian Assange. Now, that was yesterday. Now, your brother is an Australian citizen. It's quite significant and profound that the Australian parliament, liberals and conservatives, would vote so overwhelmingly to return him. The British government, of course, is as political

as here. The Tories temporarily, or at the moment, in power, don't look like they're going to be in power much longer. Do you think that there will be some influence on the ultimate outcome here because of this heartwarming vote by the Australian Parliament? Yeah, I really do, Judge. The Australian Parliament and the Australian Government are the only ones who can actually represent Julian diplomatically in a diplomatic or political negotiation or outcome that is secured for Julian. So having the parliament backing up the calls of the prime minister, the Australian prime minister has made clear to the Biden administration that he thinks enough is enough and that

there is no purpose being served by Julian being kept in prison. So now having the backing of the parliament gives our prime minister a bit more momentum to actually go and speak to the Biden administration and really advocate more strongly for Julian, just like he has with the Chinese government when he's getting Australian journalists back from China or Vietnam which we've done recently which the Australian government has done recently so really pushing them to really advocate strongly with the Biden administration and the United Kingdom to bring this to a close because I don't think Julian can win in these

courts you know these courts have been these courts have been what a sort of tool of oppression or persecution of Julian they have been willingly willing participants keeping him in prison being as you said earlier you know being the poodle know, being the poodle of a weaponised Department of Justice that brought this, you know, out-of-control Espionage Act prosecution because Mike Pompeo went off the deep end. And so you've got those, I don't think he's going to win the courts. I think it's going to be political and it's going to be political pressure

and the political cost has to outweigh the benefit for the charges and for Julian to be free. Well, you know how many of us feel. I was privileged to be asked by your brother's legal team to cut a tape. And I looked in the camera, much as I'm doing now, and directed my tape directly at these judges, from an ex-judge to sitting judges. I don't know if they saw it. I don't know if it will resonate with them, but we're all doing our best. Please tell your brother he's in our prayers, as is his family and yours. And who knows? The clouds are dark right now, but a sun might be right behind them. Thank you, Gabriel. I'm getting goosebumps on my arms.

Thank you for all you do. God love your brother, and God bless him. And God bless you. Thanks so much, Judge. I love the great work you do, too. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. When I got up this morning, I didn't think I would be doing this,

but Gabriel had reached out in the middle of the night and said, I'm here. And once the proceedings in the courtroom are over, I'd love to chat with you. I know you all appreciate it. I'm sorry. I got a little emotional for a while. It's just horrible that governments do this. It's sad, sad repellent that they do it and get away with it. Well, they're also getting away with killing in Gaza. And we'll

be talking about that with Phil Giraldi in just a few minutes, three o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!