Judging Freedom - U.K. Approves Julian Assange's Extradition to U.S.

Episode Date: June 18, 2022

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Hi there, everyone. Good afternoon. Judge Andrew Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 17, 2022. It's about 2.20 in the afternoon on the east coast of the United States. It's about 6.20 in a dark, dingy, miserable London jail cell where Julian Assange has been languishing for the past three years. I come to the microphone and camera to talk to you about Julian Assange because today the Minister of the Interior, the equivalent of the British Attorney General accepted the opinions of the judicial system that he ought to be and will be extradited to the United States. That's a long and sordid and terrible case.

In my opinion, Julian Assange is not only a criminal, he's an American hero. He, along with his friend Chelsea Manning, Manning stole classified materials and gave them to Julian Assange. Julian Assange, who's in the business of publishing materials through WikiLeaks, published them. What did they show? They showed that the United States knowingly killed and laughed about killing civilians in Afghanistan. And it showed many, many other instances of U.S. armed forces, both drone and on the ground, doing absolutely awful things that had nothing to do with the national security of the United States. The public has the right to know it, and we know about it. The government was furious, and the government indicted Assange for espionage. There's no crime here. Under the Pentagon Papers

case, where Daniel Ellsberg stole secrets from the Pentagon, which showed that LBJ's generals were lying to LBJ, and LBJ was lying to the public during the Vietnam War, and the Nixon administration went crazy, and they tried to prevent the publication of the materials, the Supreme Court came down with the famous Pentagon Papers case, which says, if the matter is of material interest to the public, we're not talking about what Joe Biden had for breakfast. We're talking about the people George Bush entrusted with the power of the government to kill. If the matter is of material interest to the public, it doesn't matter how the publisher acquired it. The publication and the publisher is immune from prosecution and from criminal liability. The thief is not immune. Daniel Ellsberg was prosecuted because the FBI broke into the office of his psychiatrist to try and get records about his mental state.

And this became known to his defense team, which reported it to the judge in his case. The judge threw out the indictment, stopped the prosecution, and the government did not appeal. In the Assange-Chelsea Manning case, Chelsea Manning pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 45 years in jail. President Barack Obama commuted his sentence to time served. Her sentence, it was a sexual transition at the government's expense while he was in a military prison. Chelsea Manning, the thief, is free. Julian Assange, the publisher, has been locked up for three years while these hearings go on in London. Now, why should he not be extradited? He should not be extradited because he didn't commit a crime. He should not be extradited because the Pentagon Papers case is crystal clear and is still good law today. There is no crime committed and there is no

civil liability, meaning nobody can sue him because of the publication of material by a person in the media, no matter how they acquired these materials, even if they assisted in the receipt of the materials. He didn't actually steal them, but he received them. No crime, no civil liability. The judge who presided at his extradition hearing did not rule on whether or not he committed a crime. That's not the issue in extradition. The issue in extradition is twofold. One, is this person in my courtroom Julian Assange? Are you the person that the United States government wants? Well, that was really not a dispute. Two, can you get a fair trial in the forum in the court of the country that wants you

as fair as you would get here, meaning in London. And the judge ruled, no, the judge ruled he wouldn't survive to get a fair trial. Why? Because before he was arrested, while he was living in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, which is Ecuadorian property, So the London police could not go on the property to get him. He was the target of an assassination by the CIA, acknowledged by the CIA. So let me get this straight. The United States Department of Justice wants to bring him to the U.S. and the CIA wants to assassinate him. And the British government thinks he'll be safe here. What a farce. What a travesty of justice. Now, this is not the end of the road. There's one more

appeal in the British system, and then there's an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, to which Great Britain is still subject. Please, God, this guy has suffered long enough. He's a hero of historic proportion. He should be free like the rest of us. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.