Mike’s Musings: Free Assange in 2023

It’s a new year, and I’m counting on President Biden to do the right thing in 2023, when it comes to imprisoned journalist, Julian Assange.
Assange, founder of Wikileaks, began publishing millions of pages of classified materials critical of the United States efforts in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, beginning in 2010 during the Obama administration. The leaked classified information brought Assange a ton of notoriety, but also cost him his freedom. For many years he took asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, unable to travel freely.
In 2019 the Trump administration brought criminal charges against Assange. It has been said the CIA was so fixated on the secrets Wikileaks has revealed that they discussed kidnapping and even assassinating Assange.
When the 2019 charges were announced, British authorities arrested and dragged Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy to a British prison. He remains in that prison today, however the U.S. under Biden is now actively attempting to extradite him to America so that he can stand trial on 18 counts centered around his publication online of secret military and government materials.
Jameel Jaffer, CEO of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said, “It is the first time the U.S. government has used the Espionage Act to go after a publisher…He has been indicted for activity that reporters are engaged in every day and that reporters have to engage in every day to inform the public.”
Five major news organizations including the New York Times that published many of Assange’s exposed secrets, have demanded Biden free Assange. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has met with U.S. officials recently also demanding Assange, who holds Australian citizenship, be released.
Our political figures heap praises on whistleblowers now days. Colonel Alexander Vindman was championed as a hero when he testified about Trump administration secrets during President Trump’s first impeachment hearings. The original whistleblowers, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are American icons, and celebrated for uncovering Watergate.
Yet Assange, who simply cracked CIA and government emails and utilized information from U.S. military whistleblower Chelsea Manning to publish his exposes, is not considered a hero by our government, but a person that deserves life in prison.
Jaffer and others see Assange’s revelations protected by the first amendment and plea with the Biden administration to stop their extradition demands.
“At the end of the day, I find it hard to believe that the Biden administration wants this case to be its press freedom legacy, and it will be its legacy if they continue to pursue it. That will overshadow everything else when it comes to press freedom,” added Jaffer.
I wholeheartedly agree. Assange should be considered a hero for uncovering classified information that doesn’t make the U.S. industrial complex look good. In this country one of our greatest freedoms is the first amendment. Assange exercise his right, but instead of our government offering praise, they have chosen to invoke the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used for publishing classified information.
Stop with the nonsense and release Assange now. Let him live freely in the United States or Australia, with his family without repercussions.