New charges filed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange quickly drew alarm on Thursday, 23 May, from media organisations and others. The groups are concerned that the Justice Department is charging Assange for actions that ordinary journalists do routinely in their jobs.
Department officials said they don't view Assange, who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, as a journalist. And they say his actions strayed far outside what the First Amendment protects.
Some questions and answers about the new charges:
What Exactly Do the Charges Say Assange Did?
An indictment made public last month charged Assange with only one count, conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a Defense Department computer password.
The 17 additional charges unsealed Thursday go further, accusing him of one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history. The new charges rely on the Espionage Act, which dates to the World War I era and is designed to protect the handling of classified information. Prosecutors say Assange asked for and received hundreds of thousands of secret government documents including military reports and State Department cables in violation of the act.
How Do Assange's Alleged Actions Compare With What Other Journalists Do?
The documents say Assange illegally solicited classified information and ignored government warnings that some of the material could be damaging to national security. The Department of Justice says he published identities of people working with the government without regard to the consequences, something officials say professional journalists would handle differently.
But Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in an email that the government's charges "rely almost entirely on conduct that national-security journalists engage in every day." That includes cultivating sources, encouraging sources to share information about government policy and conduct, and receiving and publishing classified information. He called those activities "crucial to investigative journalism, and crucial to the public's ability to understand government policy and conduct."
"I don't think there's any way to understand this indictment except as a frontal attack on press freedom," he wrote.
What Has Been the Reaction to the Charges?
The American Civil Liberties Union and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press were among the organisations and individuals calling the charges a grave threat to press freedom.
"For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information. This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, and a direct assault on the First Amendment," said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project in a statement.
Lisa Lynch, a communications professor at Drew University who has written about WikiLeaks, said the Obama administration had considered but then backed away from using the Espionage Act to bring charges against Assange. She said the Trump administration's decision to do so, adding the Espionage Act to its arsenal of tools to prosecute the dissemination of information, "sets the stage for an unprecedented crackdown on press freedom."
What Does the Justice Department Say in Response to Those Concerns?
The Justice Department, in announcing the new charges, sought to draw a distinction between journalism and Assange's actions.
"Julian Assange is no journalist," said the Justice Department's top national security official, John C. Demers, in announcing the charges, noting that the indictment charges Assange with conspiring to obtain classified information and publishing the names of secret sources that gave critical information to American military forces and diplomats.
"The Department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy and we thank you for it. It is not and has never been the Department's policy to target them for their reporting," Demers said.
What Happens Next?
Despite the new charges, Assange is still a long way from a United States courtroom. He's currently in custody in London after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April. The U.S. is seeking his extradition.
Bruce D. Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said there's a real chance Assange never gets brought to the United States. Even so, the charges aren't meaningless, he said. He described them as also a warning by the Justice Department to potential whistleblowers, a message to sources inside government. It's a "shot across the bow," he said.
Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
(Published in an arrangement with AP.)
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