President Joe Biden is considering a request for the US to drop its legal proceedings against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who is currently fighting extradition to the US where he faces this 18 federal indictments in connection with his publication of secret military documents.
According to a pool reporter in the Oval Office, Biden’s exact statement was “we’re thinking about it” when asked about the Australian proposal Wednesday mornings. And while that doesn’t mean the US Justice Department will necessarily drop its case against Assange, it does suggest there may be room for compromise.
The request to stop prosecution initially came from the Australian government in February after MPs from the left-leaning Labor Party, along with a member of the conservative Liberal Party, called for Assange’s release. Assange was born in Australia and still has Australian citizenship, although he has not lived there for years.
International observers are concerned that Assange could face the death penalty if he is sent to the United States, a punishment that has been abolished in all rich countries except the United States and Japan. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since 2019 dragged violently from the Ecuadorian embassy in the United Kingdom, where he had lived since applying for asylum there in June 2012.
Assange released secret documents related to the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2010s, including a July 12, 2007 video that showed a U.S. helicopter team shooting and killing journalists. Assange was celebrated as an important journalistic voice at the time, but came under criticism from the left during the 2016 election cycle when Wikileaks helped spread baseless conspiracy theories that Hillary Clinton had masterminded the assassination of Seth Rich, a Democratic staffer who was killed in a robbery in Washington was killed, DC ordered in the summer of 2016. The conspiracy theory was later linked to Russian intelligence, as Gizmodo reported in 2019.
Assange’s case has been championed by former President Donald Trump in recent years, a bizarre spectacle considering it was his Justice Department that first brought charges against the Wikileaks co-founder. In fact, Reuters reported already in February that Trump personally inquired about plans that included the kidnapping or murder of Assange while in office.
But no one should be surprised that Trump would completely change his position to suit the political mood of the month – as we’ve seen with everything from TikTok To abortion.