Publishing is not a crime.
Twelve years after WikiLeaks exposed the dirty secrets of U.S. diplomacy in a massive publication of State Department cables, co-founder Julian Assange remains in a high-security British prison awaiting extradition to the United States. He faces espionage charges that could add up to 175 years in U.S. prison.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has the power to drop the case against Assange immediately. Instead, the Biden administration has continued the effort at prosecution begun under former President Donald Trump.
Assange’s indictment presents a critical threat to the First Amendment and to press freedom in the U.S. and abroad. It sets a precedent that could easily be used against any journalist publishing sensitive information — a major reason Obama’s Justice Department did not pursue the case.
The five major international media outlets that published cables from WikiLeaks are now calling for President Joe Biden’s Justice Department to end its prosecution of Assange immediately.
Will you stand up for press freedom and sign a message to the Biden administration today?
WikiLeaks provided the New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, and Der Spiegel with confidential cables from the U.S. State Department revealing wrongdoing and corruption on an international scale.
While the Obama administration chose not to prosecute Assange for obtaining the secret documents from whistleblower and former American soldier Chelsea Manning, Trump’s Department of Justice did.
Assange was arrested in London in 2019 and has been held in a high-security British prison usually used for terrorists for more than three years. If extradited to the U.S., he could be sentenced to over a lifetime in prison under Espionage Act charges.
Freedom of the Press Foundation has called Assange’s indictment “an embarrassment to basic ideals of justice and to core First Amendment values.” Journalists serve the public and democracy by publishing information that reveals the corruption and wrongdoing of the powerful.
The criminalization of a standard journalistic practice — the publication of newsworthy documents — puts journalists at grave risk and harms the public interest.
