Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/27/24 Gabriel Shipton: Julian Assange is Free

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Scott is joined by Gabriel Shipton to talk about his brother, Julian Assange. Assange agreed to a plea deal earlier this week and is now, after thirteen years in various forms of captivity, back home in Australia. Scott and Shipton celebrate this momentous development and discuss the details of the plea deal.  Discussed on the show: Ithaka (IMDb) Gabriel Shipton is an Australian filmmaker and the half-brother of Julian Assange. Follow him on Twitter @GabrielShipton 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 than 5,500 interviews since 2004. 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 all right you guys introducing gabriel shifton he's julian asange's brother on the line from france how are you doing gabriel yeah i'm well made how are you i'm doing good good to talk to you again it was uh nice to bump into you you at the LP National Convention there a few weeks ago in D.C.?

Yeah, that was great. I really enjoyed being there. Very supportive crowd. A lot of love for Julian. Yeah. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, absolutely. And what's the name of the documentary?

Because I think people can see on YouTube where you and your father, John and myself, all did that presentation down at the Alamo Draft House on South Lamar. I think that's on YouTube somewhere, but I got to remember the name of the documentary so people can Google it. Yeah, it's Ithika, I-T-H-A-A-A. That's free. I'm sorry, man. I got what Biden's got.

I used to remember everything, but now not so much. But, yeah, Ithaca, great documentary about the fight to free Julian Assange. And, hey, it worked. He's free. So, I mean, go ahead and tell me everything on your mind first here. What's going on? Is he home safe? He's with his wife at kids now back in Australia.

Is that right? Yeah, that's right, Scott. He touched down yesterday in Canberra, which is the capital city of Australia after a really long flight. He had to fly from London Stansted to stop over in Bangkok and then to the North Mariana Islands, an island of Saipan, which was a US district. He is a US district that is very close to a Australia and that's where he put in the plea deal before a judge and the judge accepted it and sent it seemed to time served and he was a free man and then back on a plane and six hours to Canberra and now he's in an undisclosed beachside location in Australia. He's gone for a walk on the beach and yeah, slept in a real bed. It's unbelievable. I mean, I still have to.

I don't think I'll fully believe it until I'm back at home holding him in front of me and can touch him and can see him and smell him. So it's pretty surreal. Yeah. Well, that's great to hear that he's having a good time. He certainly deserves a vacation after all of this. You know, it's funny, some friends, I was talking with some friends about sort of the first impression of the pictures of him was like, oh, well, at least they haven't been starving him.

You know, he's got a bit of a gut there. But then I thought, oh, wait, no, you know what? That's because they had him locked in a cell the size of a parking lot. And so he couldn't possibly exercise. So I'm sorry, a parking space. So he couldn't exercise. And so that was why he's a bit out of shape. But anyway.

So glad to see his home. So now on, well, first of all, business. You got to help me get him on the show, as soon as possible. I know Tucker flew all the way across the world, so I'm sure he'll probably get first digs, and Glenn Greenwald is Glenn Greenwald, but I want to interview the guy soon.

I first talked to him back in 2010. He knows me. Yeah, I remember when we did that show with you in Austin, John was talking to Julian, and he said that you've got an unbelievable archive of interviews. So he's, you're definitely on

his radar for sure, Scott, and I put in a word for you. Great. 100%. But I'm not sure when he's going to... Oh, yeah. No, let him surf. Back in the public and...

I understand. I totally understand. No pressure at all. And yeah, in fact, it was cool because what your dad said was... Yeah, Julian says that you've done more than 5,000 interviews, which is true. And it's 6,000 now, but still like the 5,000 mark was just a couple of years ago. So he would have already been in Belmarsh. by the time i got to 5 000 so that means i guess that he's been listening to the show in prison

there i didn't realize they let him have podcasts but that's really cool to know that he listens to the show or to infer that he does there yeah julian i don't know how he would have i mean sometimes uh is stella or my dad or play him some podcast over the phone oh okay yeah so that's That's how he would listen to podcasts while he was inside the prison. I see. Yeah. Yeah. Well, a little bit of a loss of fidelity in the audio quality there, man, but still good enough.

And anyway, whatever. I hope that's true, but it's okay if it's not. But I'm just glad to know he's free. So now, but so here's what seems like an important detail, Gabriel. Could you address exactly what it was that he pleaded guilty to? Because this is something that everybody's really been on pins and needles about. for a very long time it was essentially pleaded guilty to journalism to communicating with the source publishing classified information possessing classified information one charge under the espionage

act and you know it was you know the claiming of that there's a coordinated conspiracy between him and chelsea manning to you know publish publish information in the public interest it's uh what what what he's pled guilty to it's just journalism it's what journalism do does do it what journalists do every day is uh if you if you read the plea deal that's exactly uh exactly what he's pled guilty to but so he did not plead guilty to all the charges in the superseding indictment only to the things that he actually did which weren't really crimes but things that he actually did not the things that they accused him of that were lies like he had help Manning hack into the computers and all of this stuff. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And so the, you know, the hacking charge, which was always bogus, like they had to take that out because they have absolutely no evidence to prove that Julian even attempted to hack into anything or that even was communicating with Chelsea Manning in regard to that allegation. So that was totally gone. They boiled it down to one espionage Act charge, which just says that all the other charges were just totally superfluous, you know, that over-baked this indictment totally, and they were willing to settle for one espionage act charge, one espionage act charge, and that outlined what they call the criminal conspiracy, which is the criminal conspiracy, a noble conspiracy between a journalist and publisher

and a source to publish information in the public interest. And then he got, the deal was it would be for time served. And so the judge agreed to that sentencing recommendation and gave him time served. Interestingly, the judge in the judge in the Mariana court said that there was nobody actually harmed. They could not find anybody harmed by the. these leaks. Contrary to the claims of those at the State Department and others, the judge admitted

that there was nobody that they could find that was harmed. And also in the plea deal, they actually outlined that they could not find any victim of this so-called crime. Is that right? Okay. I mean, that's so important because, you know, we always would cite the judge in the man in case and also the confessions of former secretary of defense gates but now you're telling me that the government stipulated in the documents here and the judge also agreed that no one was harmed in this leak yeah that's right the judge the judge agreed and uh i think the judge judge was almost sympathetic with julian it sounded it sounded like that there's a lot of transcript online uh which uh people

should check out. Oh, great. I think so, but on Stella's Twitter account from the judge. Okay, I'll make sure we get that up at anti-war.com, pronto. Yeah, yeah. So the judge sounded, you know, almost sympathetic to Julian and Julian's plight, probably because they made them come into the court. I don't know how many, how busy they are on the island of Saipan. there were certainly a lot of people there who were pretty surprised to see Julian Assange rocking up at that courthouse. Yeah, well, it's so funny that America has a federal courthouse in Saipan over there in the Marianas, which isn't that where that trench is over there on the other side of the planet?

What the hell? Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's lots of military bases there, too, you know, Guam, that Guam area. So it's pretty heavily developed in terms of, you know, the military industrial complex. I was like, Saipan, does that even exist anymore? And then I realized I was thinking to Saiam, which is like Thailand, right? The King of Sayam or whatever. Like something that Mr. Burns would refer to on The Simpsons because he's from the 19th century, you know?

All right. Okay, so look, it's important. And I'm going to try to get him on the show. I'm not sure what's happening. But old Greenwald, he's a lawyer. And I heard him explain, a constitutional lawyer back in his previous life, and I heard him explain that a plea deal cannot set a precedent. But there's still a pretty bad chilling effect here in a sense that this will make. There's no legal precedent set here.

But this would be the first time, I guess, that the government got away with punishing someone under this broad of an interpretation of the Espionage Act. so it does set us up for further squabbles in the future here yeah it wasn't it hasn't been argued in the courts you know the the prosecution they took they made this unprecedented indictment and eventually i guess you know they in in terms of getting a conviction they they won i mean did you see james clapper james clapper said came out and said oh this is the result that we were looking for julian wouldn't have got much time anyway we've got a conviction and we should be happy we should be happy about that so yeah he said he's paid his dues which sounds like yeah in other words pre-trial punishment that they just got away with

inflicting all this on him without the trouble of having to go to trial and win a conviction that's exactly right terrible terrible hey guys i've had a lot of great webmasters over the years but the team at expanddesigns dot 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 expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Thomas done such a great job on putting together a

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Don't get me started. I got a whole list. Okay, now another part of the plea deal was he had to agree to delete the WikiLeaks, or at least, no, not everything, but just the Manning leak from Wikileaks.org. Is that correct? I'm not sure about that, actually. I haven't looked into that part, but you could be right. I would have to just double check that. Okay.

Yeah, he's free to travel. He's free to travel, you know, around the world. Obviously, the United States is out of bounds unless he can apply to enter the United States, though. Apply for a visa, but he has no restrictions on his travel. He has no restrictions on speaking to public or any sort of things that he might do in the future. He cannot be prosecuted for anything before the date that this plea was entered. So anything that he, any of the work that he's done with WikiLeaks cannot be prosecuted or he cannot be indicted for any of that work now.

So I think that's a, that's in terms of, for Julian I think that is, that is very, very, that is a positive thing now. But he doesn't have any of that hanging over his head, at least from the US jurisdiction. Man, that's got to be such a relief. I mean, they have been after him for so long. And was it WikiLeaks or it was somebody else that posted the documents that finally showed the pressure that the Americans put on the Swedes? They're like, what do you mean you let him go? You dummies, this was our chance.

You go and you pursue this, right? Yeah, that's right. Those documents that expose the, I guess what you'd call corruption between the Swedish prosecuting service and crown prosecuting. service don't get cold feet they said yeah was the quote from the email this is this don't get cold feet this is more this is about more than a usual extradition don't you know when the swedes were trying to pull out of the of the investigation because it was always a preliminary investigation that julian was never it was the longest running preliminary investigation

in swedish history julian was never charged so it was a sort of another corruption of the legal system to keep Julian, to keep Julian detained. And a lot of the emails from the Crown Prosecuting Service, from the UK prosecutors, there was a big Freedom of Information Act effort, and they had to come back and said, oh, these emails have all been deleted by accident. And they were all the emails relating to Kea Stama, who is now the Labor candidate for prime minister who looks like he'll win the election. He was crown prosecutor at the time. And all these emails that got deleted were in relation to his trips to Washington when he was crowned prosecutor when Julian was kept in the Ecuadorian embassy. So, you know, I think it's

quite revealing of what might have been in those emails, the fact that they mysteriously disappeared. Well, maybe one day they'll end up on wikileaks.org. And, I mean, has he told you, do you know he I think we all just assume he plans on taking the helm again right there's nothing in the plea deal that says he promises never to run wiki leaks anymore so presumably he's the director again and it's on right yeah I'm not I'm not sure I don't know I think you know Kristen Harrison's still the editor in chief uh I'm not sure what Julian plans to do but there's nothing stopping him from going and and doing uh WikiLeaks again I haven't had a chance What a great day. This is great.

I haven't really chatted to him about it, but I'm sure, you know, he's devoted his life to, you know, bettering mankind and using technology to help humanity. And he's always stood up for justice and he's always had this voice that, you know, people want to hear from him. People want to know what he thinks about everything, about a range of subjects. And he has that impact on the world. and I don't think that's going to change. He's definitely going to keep fighting the good fight in one way or another, but we're all waiting to see what form that takes. But he's got to get better first.

He's got to take some time now to just come to terms with what life is now. He's much older than when he first went into detainment 13 years ago. The world has changed. a different place. I was listening to his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, say that when they were at the airport, he said, oh, I haven't seen a horizon in 13 years. And I thought, you know, bloody hell. The things that Julian has to come to terms with after being locked up for so long, he's going to need a bit of time to get better. Yeah, absolutely, man. Totally understandable. all right and by the way on the if if it's right that he really has to delete the manning files

while all those are out to the world anyway and of course um there's torrent files on the pirate bay and so forth that can never be stopped i don't know exactly how to find those but i'm making sure i'm already talking to my guy that runs my uh websites for me we're going to make sure if if in fact they're deleted we're downloading everything now and making sure that if they are in fact deleted then we'll just set up libertarian institute dot org slash wiki leaks slash Iraq slash Afghanistan slash Gitmo files and slash State Department cables and just make sure that all that stuff is still available for everyone. I know I've actually had a lot of trouble looking for mirrors of WikiLeaks because

sometimes they've had some technical difficulties and I'm looking for files that I can't find and things. And I think there was kind of a big fad of putting up mirrors of WikiLeaks, you know, back 10 years ago and most of those ceased to exist now. so we'll definitely need some I'm sure a hundred people got on it immediately as soon as that that news came out that that was part of the deal

so I'm sure it'll be fine one way or the other but people and people should really know it gets lost in the story a lot of times but this is the most important leak of the century all the stuff in those State Department cables and the Iraq and Afghan war logs and the Guantanamo files too

is just huge and there's so many important stories that are traceable back to the State Department cables, as they're known, or the WikiLeaks files. There's so much that we deserve to know, those important truth about the sins of our government that came out in that. It was the greatest thing for Manning and Julie and both to have done that.

So, you know, people should take a look through those files. It's incredible the way the State Department weanies talk to each other a lot of the time. And now, I'm sorry, I know you're in a hurry and got to go. So let me just ask you real quick then about these documentaries that you're making that have you in France right now. Well, I'm at a documentary market in France.

I've got a few projects. I can't really talk about them, unfortunately. One's about independent journalism. And the way, you know, this flowering of independent journalism, like people like your show and many others that happened, I think as part of Julian and WikiLeaks's legacy, really, that, you know, independent journalists were able to access the WikiLeak archive. They were able to do reporting in a sort of decentralized way

and use the tools of the internet to put out their podcasts, put out their blogs, you know, tweet and connect directly with audiences. And I think it's a really important story and we want to put it in a movie so that journalism students and younger folk out there can see that there's a viable future for them outside of, corporate media and outside of the legacy media, which is a corrupting influence on the information landscape, if you ask me. So that's just a little brief insight into one of the projects we're working on, but I can't say much more. That's great, man. That's great. It's good

to see that you've been radicalized by the whole situation and join the independent media yourself here, man. We're very happy to have you. Yeah, that's right. That's good. Assange and Company over there at the WikiLeaks. All right. Well, listen, congratulations. And please pass all my congratulations to Julian. And I'm so happy to hear all the great news, Gabriel.

And really appreciate your time on the show, man. Yeah, cheers. Cheers. Talk to you again soon. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com. Anti-war. dot com, Scott Horton.org, and libertarian institute.org.