Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/28/24 Kevin Gosztola Explains the UK High Court’s Julian Assange Ruling

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

Journalist Kevin Gosztola returns to the show to provide a quick explanation of the UK High Court’s decision regarding Julian Assange’s extradition hearing. Discussed on the show: “Assange Extradition Delayed: UK High Court Asks US To Offer 'Assurances' Or Face Limited Appeal” (The Dissenter) “Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks” (Yahoo News) Kevin Gosztola is the managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.” He is the author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. Follow him on Twitter @kgosztola. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show you guys on the line i got kevin got stola he writes at the dissenter dot org and he wrote the book guilty of journalism and this is not a rerun from last week this is a brand new episode and update on what is going on with the Assange appeal. Welcome back to the show. Kevin, how you doing?

Hey, it's good to talk with you. Let's start with the hilarious part of your article. They had to change the name of the prison from her majesties to his majesty's Belmarsh prison, which is just great. I don't know. Yeah, because, you know, they still have that monarchy with it. We freed ourselves from, what, 200 some years ago? Yeah.

not that our system is that much different but that's a different interview hey listen um so there's news i won't characterize it you tell me what's going on the news is that the high court of justice although this isn't a very just decision decided that julian asange may have an appeal although they only are allowing about two and a half of the nine grounds for appeal that his legal team presented back in February. And however, they are not going to immediately grant an appeal. Instead, what they did is they handed the, they basically told the United States that these are the words that we would like to hear from you.

So just tell us what we would like to hear and then we will allow this extradition. We won't have an appeal hearing. So tell us that Julian Assange would not face the death penalty if he's extradited to the United States because we're concerned. We believe that he might be exposed to additional charges like aiding and abetting treason or you might add a classic espionage charge. You might say he was spying for Russia, for example. because we see a lot of reasons to believe that when he gets to the U.S., you could tack on charges after he's been extradited because the lawyers who represent the U.S. government haven't said that that won't happen. And then they said, well, he's a non-U.S. citizen, so we're concerned he might be prejudiced due to his nationality due to the fact that he is not from the United States. tell us that he will have First Amendment rights while he is on trial, and maybe we might

be okay with this extradition, and we won't give Julian Assange an appeal hearing. Okay. And then so did the lawyers stipulate anything or the judges stipulate anything about you also got a promise not to murder him? Because I think you write in here that the defense had more evidence about Mike Pompeo, the CIA director's, plot to murder the guy. And that's a whole different kind of death penalty that he apparently does have to worry about. I mean, as the saying goes, their enemies didn't kill themselves. They just wind up dead. Yeah, so this is, this gets to the most absurd part, in my opinion, of the decision.

because what we're discussing here is there was a Yahoo News report in September of 2021 that brought forward a lot of allegations and new details from over 30 officials that were in the Trump administration and had worked in U.S. intelligence agencies. And they spoke about plans to put Julian Assange on a rendition flight or to poison him or to just outright kill him while he was in the Ecuador embassy in london uh now um i really feel like the people who listen to your show should hear the words of the high court and how absurd they are because this is what they said on the face of the allegations on the evidence before the judge and the fresh evidence and that judge they're referring

to is the one from the district court that first heard the extradition request the high court said the contemplation of extreme measures against assange were a response to the fear that the applicant might flee to russia the short answer to this is that the rationale for such conduct is removed if the applicant is extradited again the applicant is assange extradition would result in the applicant being lawfully in the custody of the united States authorities. And the reasons, if they can be called that for rendition or kidnap or assassination, then fall away. What I have just read to you is a court in a country allegedly part of the rules-based international order saying that extradition is a way of saving Assange's life because he

will not be assassinated or put through rendition by the CIA. Because the DOJ will already have them and promise to just put them in Fort Leavenworth or in ADX in Florence, Colorado, rather than Guantanamo Bay or a secret torture blackside in Poland, something like that. They have an assurance. Yeah, right. So all of the secret war plans discussed in this Yahoo article, Pompeo and his minions, and Pompey's not there anymore, But let's say now it's Bill Burns, the CIA are no longer waging their war in the way that

they were. It's been handed over to the Justice Department. And this is all legal. So it's okay. Oh, and by the way, they say that all of this CIA activity had nothing to do with this extradition case. It was entirely separate. The U.S. was trying to protect its national security.

It didn't have anything to do with Julian Assange publishing documents. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's Expandesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level.

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You know, that time that the British courts ruled that, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we know that they were going to assassinate the guy, but we're just saying we don't think that they are anymore. And it's not like he's from the global south somewhere. Okay, he is, but the Anglophone Global South in Australia. He's supposed to be like sort of an honorary member of the club or something, but no. The British penal colony. Yeah, well, I guess it still is.

Took me an extra couple of beats to spit that out, but I did finally utter it. And now, so it's an important point about the superseding indictments that could flow as soon as he lands on American soil. Seems like politically they probably would not charge him with a death penalty offense, but they could just call it a suicide. I think they'd probably perhaps prefer that. And then about the First Amendment, that has really been at issue, right? Because the government has said that, no, the First Amendment does not apply to him. And so now the British court is saying, come on, just tell us that it does,

and we'll pretend to believe it, and then you can have him. Yeah, so this lead prosecutor, Gordon Cromberg, he opened his big fat mouth and made a mistake by telling the court that the United States government could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment. And so this was something that the High Court noticed. And this gets to be complicated when we're talking about whether the U.S. Constitution applies to people who are. are not from the United States. There are actual decisions from the Supreme Court. It may be impossible for the US government

to give the UK High Court the assurance they want. They may say, well, look, you are not from this country. You don't have First Amendment rights. But then that gets to the whole issue of this extraterritorial application of the Espionage Act. And people who are legal scholars who said, well, if you're going to apply a US law to foreigners, then it would seem to me that that person should get the constitutional rights that come with being prosecuted under that U.S. law.

Anyways. I think that's already been decided, hasn't it, when it comes to, like, the Fifth Amendment protections that if you're a U.S. person, then the Fifth Amendment applies to you. In other words, even if you're a foreigner, if it's the U.S. domestic civilian Department of Justice that has their hands on you, then they're the ones who are bound by the Fifth Amendment. It's not your privilege. It's their restriction. Yeah. I'm going to have to do my homework because I believe there might be a recent Supreme Court case that dealt with this issue about a foreigner wanting to have First Amendment rights in U.S. courts. It's a tad bit different from due process rights. But the other thing, just to be clear here, is sometimes when we've had these conversations, we've spoken about how there's no public interest to. defense under the Espionage Act, and you know, you, you, you can't really make much of a First Amendment challenge against the Espionage Act. To my understanding, that's not what we're

talking about here, although that might be what the U.S. government was trying to say, and they should have been more clear. But, you know, this raises the issue, again, that somehow the free speech rights of Julian Assange would be wholly deprived, that he wouldn't have them while he was going through a U.S. trial, and that's of tremendous concern to the high court. You know, one of the few things you can say, they're getting right. They're getting all the stuff with the CIA wrong, but they seem to be putting their finger on an important issue here. Yeah. All right. So how long do the Americans have to respond to this, or have they already, or where are we at on that? They have until the middle of April, and then we will probably

have a hearing on May 20th that that was put on the calendar. So what will happen is Assange's legal team will go in and they'll respond to these promises that are going to be made by the United States. And they'll tell us all the reasons why we shouldn't believe what the U.S. government says. And then most likely the High Court of Justice will say, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the relationship between the United States and United Kingdom is more important than Julian Assange. So we're going to allow this extradition. And by the way, we have to take these assurances in good faith. We can't doubt them in the way that these Assange lawyers have just told us that we should. So it'll mostly be a waste of time for us to have this hearing. And then Julian Assange won't have an appeal. And it'll

have to go to the European Court of Human Rights in order to try and stop this extradition. That is a big, massive open question as to whether that does anything for him. It's almost inevitable at this point that he's going to end up in the U.S. and put on trial. So that's why all the political pressure that can be mustered is that's the objective of Julian Assange, his brother, and his wife, Stella. They're all really focused on this House resolution that has. a handful of republicans as well as democrats signed on to it to demand the justice department drop charges but that's where we are at we're we're really at the point where you know we're just lobbying the justice department to end this case or else a trial happens yeah well and like

with all these the idea of it getting to the supreme court is like uh well great we'll have one last shot at them enforcing the Bill of Rights. Otherwise, it's another massive precedent set against us that will never get back, you know? I saw that guy, Jonathan Turley, the lawyer, give a speech one time about the Fourth Amendment and having the name of the war on drugs. It used to be like you needed a warrant to search somebody's car on the side of the road, even. And the courts just through 10 decisions in a row, dumb that down to cops can do whatever they want to you on the side of the road. And it was all in the name of the expedience of the drug war. Like, what are you going to do?

Drive out to the judge's house in the middle of the night and this kind of thing. But now everybody's got a cell phone. You can just text the judge or whatever. But no, the decision stays. And the restriction on your liberty is permanent. And the grant of new power to the police to oppress you is etched in stone. Same kind of thing here. They went against Assange in the Supreme.

Court on the First Amendment, man, America goes to hell even more worse than before. Yeah, and I would just say that it's frightening to me, given what Julian Assange has gone through, that he might get to the United States, be so worn down physically and mentally. And then I don't blame him, except a plea agreement that will set in stuff. this conviction and give the Justice Department all sorts of power to go after people with this espionage act beyond government employees beyond government contractors to include independent journalists like myself yeah and i wouldn't blame him either the poor guy he deserves to be free i mean that's the whole point here it's completely crazy what they're doing um but you're right

that if he does, that'll be at least, you know, more than half of a win for the bad guy's side there in terms of the precedent and all that. All right, well, anyway, thanks for keeping track of this stuff. I'll let you go, man, but I appreciate you coming on. Yep, thanks. All right you guys says, Kevin Gastola. The book is Guilty of journalism, the political case against Julian Assange. And you can read all this great updates on this and all kinds of other civil liberties type issues at the decenter.

org the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk ninety point seven fm in l a psradyo dot com antiwar dot com scot horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org