The NPR Politics Podcast - Julian Assange, Who Twice Upended Politics, Accepts Plea Deal

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Julian Assange, who has long been imprisoned in the United Kingdom, has agreed to plead guilty to a U.S. felony and will return to his native Australia. His WikiLeaks organization's 2010 publication of military secrets helped to reshape public understanding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.The group later released private Democratic National Committee emails that the U.S. government says were obtained via a Russian cyberattack, as part of that government's effort to tilt the 2016 election to Donald Trump.This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and White House correspondent Asma Khalid.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Alyssa from Denver. I am currently on the way to the park for what will hopefully be a long day of volleyball for my rec league's end of season tournament. This podcast was recorded at 12.36 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, June 25th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I know that regardless of the outcome, I will have had a fun day soaking up the summer sunshine and enjoying time in the park with my friends. It's showtime, baby! I bet it's not 97 degrees there. That's what I was going to say.

Volleyball sounds fun when you're not in the midst of a heat wave. Oh my gosh, for real. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. A long-running saga over the release of U.S. government secrets is coming to a close. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has finalized a plea deal with the United States almost 15 years

after the publication of unredacted documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Carrie, before we get to this latest news, can you just remind me who Assange is and what were in these documents? Julian Assange is a native Australian. In his early life, he was pretty prominent in that country as a hacker. And then he became the founder of a site called WikiLeaks, where he fashioned himself as a publisher of secrets and exposes on government corruption in the United States and around the world. He really came to international prominence in 2010 with the publication of thousands of war reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, revealing sensitive information about U.S. military intelligence operations. And maybe one of the most important things he revealed was a video of U.S. service people in a helicopter

shooting civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters photojournalist. That was something that was of interest to the international community and really what Assange fashioned as a plain old-fashioned expose of government abuses. Yeah. Okay, so let's get to the latest news. What was in this plea deal that was reached? So Julian Assange initially had been charged with 18 charges in an indictment by a federal grand jury in Virginia. But what he appears to be pleading guilty to is just one charge, a single charge

of conspiracy to obtain and disclose information related to the national defense. And this relates to what the government calls an alleged conspiracy between Assange and the former army private Chelsea Manning. Manning was an intelligence analyst who wound up getting a lot of information in the course of her job, some of which she smuggled out in CDs that were labeled things like Lady Gaga. And she was able to disclose to Assange and WikiLeaks, not just these reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also hundreds of thousands of very sensitive State Department cables that really outraged the State Department and some of its diplomatic partners around the world because it showed some diplomats

unvarnished opinions of its international partners. So Asma, what can you tell me about the White House's involvement in all this? Well, back in April, President Biden told reporters that the U.S. was, quote, considering Australia's request to drop the prosecution of Julian Assange. Australia is, of course, a very close ally to the United States and I would say an increasingly important ally under the Biden administration. But when I checked in with the White House today, I was told that this decision, this plea deal was made by the Department of Justice. And there was, quote, no White House involvement in the plea deal decision. That's according to a spokesperson with the National Security Council. Yeah. And Carrie, I guess like a big question I have hearing all this is like, this has been many years since this first happened.

Like, why now? Like, why was this plea deal now reached? So these leaks started coming out in 2010. What happened is that Julian Assange kind of had an odyssey through the international community. Officials in Sweden initially wanted to talk to him about a rape accusation there, and he went on the lam. He hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years and years and years until he basically wore out his welcome there. And when he wore out his welcome there, British authorities came in and arrested him as part of this extradition process for the American charges. And so Assange served so much time in this British prison waiting to be extradited that it's basically the same amount of time he would have been sentenced to had he been

convicted in an American court. Under the terms of this plea deal, he's going to serve 62 months, which he's already done in the UK. After he issues the plea, he's expected to be sent home to Australia to reunite with his wife and two kids who were conceived while he was in that embassy. And so he has never known his children and his children have never known him when he was not incarcerated. That's how long this story goes back. Wow. OK, well, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more in a moment. And we're back. And Carrie, we should say like the only person initially prosecuted over these documents was the service member who turned them over, as we talked about, Chelsea Manning. And Assange wasn't charged until the Trump administration.

Why did like the charges against Assange take much more time? It's a lot more complicated. Historically, the U.S. government has a lot easier time of things going after the government worker who promised not to reveal national security secrets than the person who publishes those secrets. And in fact, in the Obama Justice Department, they couldn't figure out how to draw a line between what Julian Assange did and what major news organizations do every day when it comes to national security reporting. So they decided not to charge Assange at all. Things took a turn in the Trump administration. New Attorney General Jeff Sessions basically came in declaring a war on leaks and leakers.

And Assange ultimately was charged in Virginia. But, you know, a lot of people, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the ACLU, have said that charging Assange really was a very dangerous precedent for other news organizations. Maybe the Biden administration wouldn't do that, but a potential future Justice Department might. How are those press freedom groups that you mentioned reacting to this latest news? Well, the ACLU put out a statement today saying Assange never should have been charged to begin with. They said exposing government secrets and revealing them in the public interest is actually the core function of journalism. They're glad that, you know, this case did not go to trial and did not result in a trial in the United States.

But they're a little worried about the vital role of reporters and making it more difficult than it needs to be. And also, I think it's also worth reminding folks that WikiLeaks reputation evolved, you know, from those initial leaks about Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars there. But ahead of the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks also got a lot of attention because it published lots of private emails from the Democratic National Committee. Can you tell us more about that since that was also a couple of years ago? because it published lots of private emails from the Democratic National Committee. Can you tell us more about that since that was also a couple years ago? This was in the summer of 2016 before Hillary Clinton officially accepted the Democratic Party's nomination. Wikileaks released thousands and thousands of emails. These were private communications between folks like the communications director of the Democratic Party and the national finance director.

And I remember just reporters were like digging and digging through this information. And one of the things that was really interesting is, you know, this was I'm sure some listeners probably remember, this was the Democratic primary cycle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. And some of these emails showed efforts that people thought suggested that Clinton and the Democratic Party was trying to undermine Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders campaign. And so it kind of fit into this broader distrust. But those weren't the only emails. You know, you inched closer to the general election in 2016. There was another batch of emails released with John Podesta, who was a very close Clinton advisor. And over time, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies concluded

that Russia was behind the hack of these Democratic emails that WikiLeaks published. I got to say, I find like the politics of this really confusing because even though Assange was initially charged by the Trump administration, like hasn't Trump also said that he's up for pardoning him as well? Can you, Asma, can you like walk me through like where the politics of all this stands now, specifically when we're talking about Trump and the Republican Party? Actually, it sounds like what you're referring to were some comments that Trump made earlier this year when he was asked if he would pardon Julian Assange. I believe this took place during a podcast interview ahead of his speech at the Libertarian Convention. And, you know, he suggested that decision was under, quote, serious consideration. And so I do think the politics of this all is rather mushed up.

You've heard, you know, some Republicans over the years really talk about the need to crack down on leaks, national security dangers that they feel that some of this creates by having these leaks. But then at the same time, you're hearing that he would have potentially pardoned Julian Assange as well. That may be as much a statement about Donald Trump's Republican Party as anything, because if you talk to longtime intelligence officials and FBI agents and national security prosecutors. Those kinds of people were never big fans of Julian Assange. And frankly, they were offended by these leaks, and they remain offended by these leaks. So it's just another way that Donald Trump is kind of scrambling our traditional understanding of politics these days. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley

Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.