Can this be used to indict other journalists who receive and publish classified information? As if so, this feels like a huge loss, though I can hardly blame Assange for not continuing the fight.
Julian Assange actively solicited leaks of information. That's where the espionage claim comes from.
There's not much precedent on this though and making a plea deal avoids establishing one. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Generally, precedent is established when someone appeals their conviction, and a higher court determines that the conviction is lawful. Higher court decisions bind lower courts, so e.g. if a circuit appeals court says the law is "X", every district court within it has to agree.
Since generally, you wouldn't appeal a plea deal, there probably won't be legal precedent from this.
That being said, I wonder if the USA will informally say "we got Assange; we can get you" the next time a similar situation comes up.
I can't imagine we haven't been saying that since the day Assange set foot inside the Ecuadorian embassy.
Even if you think Assange did more than this, this plea deal is very clearly over passively receiving classified information.
The precedent information is good to hear, thank you.
This phrasing makes it sound like Assange asked "Do you have this?" when the accusations have always been closer to "Can you get me this? Here is how you could go about doing that." That takes it out of the realm of journalism in at least the legal sense.
Did he actively encourage people to do things they didn't want to do, or did people actively seek the necessary advice from him?
Would Assange's problems been solved a single cut out? "I can't answer that but I can put you in touch with people who can."
Any bit of classified information can be reasonably considered in the interest of someone in the public.
Public interest can only mitigate the illegality of what you're doing, it doesn't just magically make the act illegal.
> Did he actively encourage people to do things they didn't want to do, or did people actively seek the necessary advice from him?
False dichotomy.
If you want to rob a bank, and you come and ask me to be the getaway driver, we're both going to hang. It doesn't matter who had the idea for the crime, what matters is that he materially assisted in carrying it out.
Now, if you robbed a bank, and just dropped a million dollars on my porch, that would be a different story. That's the defense journalists use when they receive illegally obtained information.
Flawed analogy.
He didn't help them rob the bank. They asked "what is a good way to get away from a bank robbery." He answered "here are some ideas that have worked in past bank robberies."
And it's not a false dichotomy. The law considers mens rea to be a very important factor. The law isn't a black and white application of imputed standards to our social order. You can tell this because we allow juries to decide what happens in them.
Judges interpret law, and give juries specific instructions for which facts to make a determination on.
In the case of computer crime, the law treats 'getting away with it' as more or less the same act as doing it. Exfiltrating data and covering your tracks is all under the umbrella of unauthorized use of a computer system. Knowingly consulting for a particular instance of it makes you part of the conspiracy.
And so, in your world, if I rob a bank and give all the money to really good charities that measurably make peoples' live better, it's not illegal?
Or if I kill a known pedophile/child rapist to keep them from hurting more children, is that not illegal?
Is that what you believe? If so, why bother having laws at all? We just need to ask our modern-day Solomon -- akira2501, that is -- if something can be justified, and as such, is legal. Or am I missing something?
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/new-york-times-co-v-...
As the last paragraph points out, not a clear victory for the free press, but the Assange prosecutors know this case very well and you are absolutely right that they want to avoid another one.
Further: Assange wasn't simply charged with "receiving and publishing classified information"; he was charged with being instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first place.
>Further: Assange wasn't simply charged with "receiving and publishing classified information"; he was charged with being instrumental in that information being exfiltrated in the first place.
Those charges were (presumably) dropped as part of the plea, and his plea did not mention them. The plea is only about receiving and publishing.
The "overt acts" part you mention is over Title 18 793(g) which basically says if two people work together in one part of a conspiracy they're both guilty of any actions their partner made.
By way of example: the murder-for-hire accusations against Ross Ulbricht were listed "overt acts" in his conspiracy charge.
>By way of example: the murder-for-hire accusations against Ross Ulbricht were listed "overt acts" in his conspiracy charge.
Yes, the supposed murder for hire was something he wasn't charged with and wasn't mentioned in his sentencing. It was not a part of his trial.
"Title 18" is almost the entire federal criminal code. Saying "a specific clause in title 18" is like saying "somewhere, in the entire US federal criminal code, it says...".
As I just said: the murder-for-hire scheme --- which I believe was in fact part of Ulbricht's sentencing --- was an "overt act" in Ulbricht's conspiracy charge.
I had referenced the specific clause, 793(g), in my previous post to you. It is also referenced in the plea. I didn't think I needed to do so again. I can quote the section
>If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
Here: a Ken White article that is almost entirely about how "overt acts" work in conspiracy charges, along with their historical purpose:
https://popehat.substack.com/p/overt-acts-and-predicate-acts...
I still don't see how the plea is about anything else. That if this charge went to trial they may have brought up his supposed violations of the CFAA as some kind of evidence of his conspiracy doesn't really change things.
In both threads, the answer comes down to: the plea agreement says otherwise. Assange has stipulated to his culpability in the conspiracy --- the 793(g) charge you brought up. The plea agreement doesn't list the overt acts that substantiate the charge, and would make clearer the reasoning behind Assange's active participation. But that's because the plea agreement is a stipulation, for which the only evidence needed is that of agreement between prosecution and defense.
The superseding indictment is much more explicit. Had the case ever gone to trial, you'd have seen at its conclusion jury instructions that would have made clear the evidentiary threshold --- the overt acts, what acts qualify, etc --- to convict on the conspiracy.
The case isn’t about Assange simply receiving classified material from Manning.
Why are you quoting that part rather than any of the actual offenses? He undoubtedly conspired with Manning to receive classified documents for the purpose of publishing them, which is what the plea details.
Part (a) even says he "received or obtained" classified documents from a person knowing that they were illegally obtained. It doesn't say he helped with the illegal obtaining.
What you should do here is compare the plea stipulation to the superseding indictment, and note that the "overt acts" of the conspiracy charge refer back to the "general allegations" section. Or: you could go track down any other conspiracy indictment (Ulbricht's is a fun one) and see examples of "overt acts" listed explicitly.
This differs from for example The Pentagon Papers where the material was delivered to reporters after already having been taken. They had no foreknowledge that they would be taken.
By way of comparison, the former US president who is also in current poll results more likely than not to be elected as the next US president is presently alleged to have conducted 40 of these 18 U.S. Code § 793 offences.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_...
Practically, yes.
I've been in situations where there was no precedent, and in asking what would happen if this went to court, decisions were made based on how lower courts ruled. Legal analyses, law review articles, customary practice, etc. all /influence/ courts.
Correct. As a general rule:
- When the "black-letter law" dictates a result (that is, a statute or binding precedent), a judge will generally follow it — unless the judge really wants to achieve a particular result and is willing to do mental-gymnastics rationalizing or to try to get the law changed.
In other situations, judges are typically very busy but they still want to get it "right," in accordance with whatever their personal mental model of life suggests, and they don't like being reversed on appeal. So they (judges) look for support — and try to anticipate possible counterarguments — from a variety of sources, as suggested by the adversaries' counsel battling each other's arguments — each of whom is motivated to help the judge do what counsel want by finding the sorts of things mentioned above.