Assange Will Never Get a Fair Trial in the US
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
17 November 18
An assistant U.S. attorney in the federal Eastern District of Virginia on
November 16 accidentally revealed that Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange
has been charged with unspecified federal crimes; those charges have been
sealed. The disclosure came in an unrelated terrorism and child pornography
case. In response to a media inquiry, the assistant U.S. attorney asked a
judge to keep Assange's charges sealed, saying, "Due to the sophistication
of the defendant, and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure
is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.. The
charges need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested."
There are several aspects to this "accident" that are setting off alarm
bells. First, it's news that Assange has actually been charged with
something. The speculation is that the charge is likely to be multiple
counts of espionage. The government will argue that Assange is not a
journalist and is not entitled to journalistic protections. It will argue
further that Assange did exactly what the 1917 Espionage Act describes as
espionage: "Providing national defense information to any person not
entitled to receive it." (I have argued over the years that the Espionage
Act is so overly broad as to be unconstitutional, although it has not been
challenged through the federal system up to the Supreme Court.)
The issue here is that it is highly unusual - unprecedented, even - for a
foreign national (Assange is Australian) to be charged with espionage when
he did not steal the information. He was simply provided the information,
which he then made public. Assange says that he was just a journalist doing
his job, and no administration has ever charged a journalist with espionage
for doing his job.
Second, this inadvertent disclosure confirmed that Assange has been charged
in the Eastern District of Virginia - the so-called "Espionage Court." That
is just what many of us have feared. Remember, no national security
defendant has ever been found not guilty in the Eastern District of
Virginia. The Eastern District is also known as the "rocket docket" for the
swiftness with which cases are heard and decided. Not ready to mount a
defense? Need more time? Haven't received all of your discovery? Tough luck.
See you in court.
Third, I have long predicted that Assange would face Judge Leonie Brinkema
were he to be charged in the Eastern District. Brinkema handled my case, as
well as CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling's. She also has reserved the Ed
Snowden case for herself. Brinkema is a hanging judge. She was appointed to
the federal bench by Ronald Reagan after serving as a federal prosecutor.
She was then elevated from administrative judge to trial judge by Bill
Clinton, under the patronage of former Republican senator John Warner.
Brinkema gave me literally no chance to defend myself. At one point, while
approaching trial, my attorneys filed 70 motions, asking that 70 classified
documents be declassified so that I could use them to defend myself. I had
no defense without them. We blocked off three days for the hearings. When we
got to the courtroom, Brinkema said, "Let me save everybody a lot of time.
I'm going to deny all 70 of these motions. You don't need any of this
information to be declassified." The entire process took a minute. On the
way out of the courtroom, I asked my lead attorney what had just happened.
"We just lost the case. That's what happened. Now we talk about a plea."
My attorneys eventually negotiated a plea for 30 months in prison -
significantly below the 45 years that the Justice Department had initially
sought. The plea was something called an 11-C1C plea; it was written in
stone and could not be changed by the judge. She could either take it or
leave it. She took it, but not after telling me to rise, pointing her finger
at me, and saying, "Mr. Kiriakou, I hate this plea. I've been a judge since
1986 and I've never had an 11C1C. If I could, I would give you ten years."
Her comments were inappropriate and my attorneys filed an ethics complaint
against her. But that's Brinkema. That's who she is.
Julian Assange doesn't have a prayer of a fair trial in the Eastern District
of Virginia. The only thing that can save him is jury nullification.
Technically, jury nullification is illegal. That's when a jury acquits, not
because the defendant is innocent, but because the law itself is wrong. The
Espionage Act is wrong. Julian Assange is a journalist. He should never have
been charged with a crime in the first place. While the judge that will
likely hear his case may disagree, a jury might agree. And it should.
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John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the
sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage
Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a
result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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