(American Conservative)
Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange, both the most loved and hated man on the planet, has been arrested by British authorities and taken from the Ecuadoran embassy, where he has been sequestered for nearly seven years.
Now it’s “game on” for the the British and U.S. governments, the latter which has opened a not-so-secret grand jury investigation in the United States against Wikileaks. It is highly probable—and what Assange has feared from the very beginning—that Washington will seek to extradite him, and the UK will be only to happy to let him go.
Assange will likely face a court hearing on the British warrant he failed to show up for (he went to the embassy instead, in 2012). The Swedish authorities, which began it all, have long since dropped their warrant to question him on sexual assault accusations back in Sweden.
Why we should fear today’s developments, however, is his arrest could ultimately lead to his prosecution in the U.S. under the Espionage Act—a charge that lawmakers and officials on both sides of the aisle have been calling for publicly for years. Remember, then-CIA chief Mike Pompeo called Assange a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” And, if he is convicted under the Espionage Act, it would be the first time for a member of the media, setting a most dangerous precedent for the safety of journalists to pursue government corruption and secrecy, and a mighty blow to the ability of the First Amendment to protect free speech and a free press. Read more
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