US preparing more charges against Julian Assange - World Socialist Web Site

On Wednesday, CNN reported US federal prosecutors confirmed there is
an “ongoing criminal investigation” of Julian Assange, the 47-year-old
founder of WikiLeaks. Prosecutors also indicated “affiliates” of Assange
are under investigation, this according to another newly unsealed
document.



According to the CNN report, at least one document related to
this investigation has been withheld from the public due to “ongoing
activity.”




The revelation, CNN reported, “confirms CNN and other news outlets’
reporting in recent days that WikiLeaks is connected to at least one
probe that could result in more criminal charges.”




The report confirms the warnings made by the WSWS and others that the
charges related to computer hacking leveled against Assange are merely a
pretext for his extradition to the United States, after which
additional charges would be brought against him.




On April 11, Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in
London and arrested by British officials on the public charge of
conspiracy to bypass a password. That charge dated back to events in the
2011 WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs.
Chelsea Manning turned over more than half a million documents exposing
US war crimes and corruption to WikiLeaks for publication.




The expulsion and arrest of Assange has been accompanied by an
unrestrained campaign of media vilification aimed at transforming
Assange into a non-person, undeserving of democratic rights.




But since Assange has been imprisoned in the maximum-security
Belmarsh prison, public comments made by leading Democrats and US media
officials indicate that charge was not the primary aim of the US
investigation.




Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer tweeted, “Now that
Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account
for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian
government.” Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Eliot Engel tweeted that Assange “time after time compromised the
national security of the United States and our allies by publicly
releasing classified government documents and confidential materials
related to our 2016 presidential election.”




US, British and Ecuadorian governments have claimed Assange’s
extradition is proper because the US is indicting on a single charge:
attempting to help Chelsea Manning bypass a password. But this has now
been revealed to be only the pretext. The real reason the US wants
custody of the whistleblower was stated by Schumer and Engel.




On April 15, the WSWS wrote
that these statements demonstrate the extradition proceedings are being
conducted under false pretenses: “The single public charge is a cover.
The government is planning to interrogate Assange, compel him to provide
testimony and further prosecute him for exposing US war crimes.” (“Stop
the extraordinary rendition of Julian Assange!”)




In December 2017, US prosecutors told a federal judge they wanted to
keep secret the charges Assange might face because learning of them
might have caused him to flee the Ecuadorian embassy. According to CNN,
the recently unsealed documents indicate that a grand jury in Virginia
indicted Assange in 2018 and prosecutors again demanded the charges be
kept secret for the same reason, and added their worries about evidence
tampering and witness intimidation.


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