The prospect of high-level U.S. intelligence officials being called as defense witnesses in a trial of Julian Assange is sending shivers down the spines of prosecutors.
That prospect arises from the pledge of Assange's chief U.S. lawyer to use an investigative report by Yahoo News on CIA schemes as a basis for Assange's defense. A strong related possibility is that three Yahoo reporters will be subpenaed and ordered by a court to name their sources, who would then be deposed by the defense team.
Yahoo News reporters Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff said they had spoken with 30 former U.S. officials, including some at the National Security Council level, in their detailed expose of a 2017 CIA push to capture or kill Assange, who was still residing in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The CIA, they said, even contemplated shootouts with Russian agents on London's streets to prevent them from interfering in the CIA's "capture or kill" mission.
The Justice Department eventually prevailed and brought the plans to a halt, Yahoo was told.
It is unlikely that former President Trump would be deposed or called to testify as presidents and ex-presidents are considered to be generally immune from such judicial actions. Trump told Yahoo News that he thought that Assange had been treated badly. Yahoo News had nothing on whether the "capture or kill" debate reached Trump.
Thus far, neither Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and Senate majority leader, nor Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat and House speaker, have called for a special counsel to investigate any breach of classification laws wrought by Yahoo's sources. But as the political situation heats up, such calls may be heard, not only from Democrats still smarting from Assange's aid to Trump's campaign but from politicians on the Republican right who agree with the views of former Trump CIA chief Mike Pompeo.
Covert action against Ellsberg cited
Barry J. Pollack, Assange’s lawyer, told Yahoo News in September that if Assange is extradited to face trial, “the extreme nature of the type of government misconduct that you’re reporting would certainly be an issue and potentially grounds for dismissal.” He likened the measures used to target Assange to those deployed by the Nixon administration against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers, noting that the charges against Ellsberg were ultimately dismissed.
Two men who will doubtless evoke speculation are John Bolton, a Trump national security adviser who left his post under a cloud, and Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst attached to the National Security Council who is believed to have leaked anti-Trump information to the press and to congressional Democrats. Were these disgruntled men sources for the Yahoo News team?
Other possible defense moves:
✓ Urge that, before a trial, Assange be granted a reasonable or zero bail bond in order to keep him out of jail so that he can recover from stress -- imposed by long years of lockup -- in order to assist his own defense. The prosecution may agree, on condition that Assange wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
✓ Urge that the case be vacated on ground that Assange has already endured more punishment than the alleged crimes merit.
Yahoo News has reported that:
Begin Yahoo News excerpt
William S. Sessions, President Trump’s “very, very anti-Assange” attorney general, was opposed to the CIA’s encroachment onto Justice Department territory, and believed that the WikiLeaks founder’s case was best handled through legal channels, said a former official.
Clash of priorities
Sessions’ concerns mirrored the tensions between the ramped-up intelligence collection and disruption efforts aimed at WikiLeaks, and the Justice Department’s goal of convicting Assange in open court, according to former officials. The more aggressive the CIA’s proposals became, the more other U.S. officials worried about what the discovery process might reveal if Assange were to face trial in the United States.
“I was part of every one of those conversations,” William Evanina, who retired as the U.S.’s top counterintelligence official in early 2021, told Yahoo News. “As much as we had the greener light to go do things, everything we did or wanted to do had repercussions in other parts of the administration.” As a result, he said, sometimes administration officials would ask the intelligence community to either not do something or do it differently, so that “we don’t have to sacrifice our collection that’s going to be released publicly by the bureau to indict WikiLeaks.”
Eventually, those within the administration arguing for an approach based in the courts, rather than on espionage and covert action, won the policy debate. On April 11, 2019, after Ecuador’s new government revoked his asylum and evicted him, British police carried the WikiLeaks founder out of the embassy and arrested him for failing to surrender to the court over a warrant issued in 2012. The U.S. government unsealed its initial indictment of Assange the same day.
End of Yahoo News excerpt
Even so, Assange's defense is likely to argue that it has a right to any materials and testimony that point to government misconduct on ground that the prosecution case was not lodged in good faith. The fact that the prosecution kept changing the charges, thus shifting the goalpost for Assange's defense, will be seen as reinforcing the "hidden agenda" claim, though judges often will not permit such a claim. But, in this case, the discovery process could easily provide strong evidence validating such a claim.
That prospect arises from the pledge of Assange's chief U.S. lawyer to use an investigative report by Yahoo News on CIA schemes as a basis for Assange's defense. A strong related possibility is that three Yahoo reporters will be subpenaed and ordered by a court to name their sources, who would then be deposed by the defense team.
Yahoo News reporters Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff said they had spoken with 30 former U.S. officials, including some at the National Security Council level, in their detailed expose of a 2017 CIA push to capture or kill Assange, who was still residing in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The CIA, they said, even contemplated shootouts with Russian agents on London's streets to prevent them from interfering in the CIA's "capture or kill" mission.
The Justice Department eventually prevailed and brought the plans to a halt, Yahoo was told.
It is unlikely that former President Trump would be deposed or called to testify as presidents and ex-presidents are considered to be generally immune from such judicial actions. Trump told Yahoo News that he thought that Assange had been treated badly. Yahoo News had nothing on whether the "capture or kill" debate reached Trump.
Thus far, neither Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and Senate majority leader, nor Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat and House speaker, have called for a special counsel to investigate any breach of classification laws wrought by Yahoo's sources. But as the political situation heats up, such calls may be heard, not only from Democrats still smarting from Assange's aid to Trump's campaign but from politicians on the Republican right who agree with the views of former Trump CIA chief Mike Pompeo.
Covert action against Ellsberg cited
Barry J. Pollack, Assange’s lawyer, told Yahoo News in September that if Assange is extradited to face trial, “the extreme nature of the type of government misconduct that you’re reporting would certainly be an issue and potentially grounds for dismissal.” He likened the measures used to target Assange to those deployed by the Nixon administration against Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers, noting that the charges against Ellsberg were ultimately dismissed.
Two men who will doubtless evoke speculation are John Bolton, a Trump national security adviser who left his post under a cloud, and Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst attached to the National Security Council who is believed to have leaked anti-Trump information to the press and to congressional Democrats. Were these disgruntled men sources for the Yahoo News team?
Other possible defense moves:
✓ Urge that, before a trial, Assange be granted a reasonable or zero bail bond in order to keep him out of jail so that he can recover from stress -- imposed by long years of lockup -- in order to assist his own defense. The prosecution may agree, on condition that Assange wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
✓ Urge that the case be vacated on ground that Assange has already endured more punishment than the alleged crimes merit.
Yahoo News has reported that:
Begin Yahoo News excerpt
William S. Sessions, President Trump’s “very, very anti-Assange” attorney general, was opposed to the CIA’s encroachment onto Justice Department territory, and believed that the WikiLeaks founder’s case was best handled through legal channels, said a former official.
Clash of priorities
Sessions’ concerns mirrored the tensions between the ramped-up intelligence collection and disruption efforts aimed at WikiLeaks, and the Justice Department’s goal of convicting Assange in open court, according to former officials. The more aggressive the CIA’s proposals became, the more other U.S. officials worried about what the discovery process might reveal if Assange were to face trial in the United States.
“I was part of every one of those conversations,” William Evanina, who retired as the U.S.’s top counterintelligence official in early 2021, told Yahoo News. “As much as we had the greener light to go do things, everything we did or wanted to do had repercussions in other parts of the administration.” As a result, he said, sometimes administration officials would ask the intelligence community to either not do something or do it differently, so that “we don’t have to sacrifice our collection that’s going to be released publicly by the bureau to indict WikiLeaks.”
Eventually, those within the administration arguing for an approach based in the courts, rather than on espionage and covert action, won the policy debate. On April 11, 2019, after Ecuador’s new government revoked his asylum and evicted him, British police carried the WikiLeaks founder out of the embassy and arrested him for failing to surrender to the court over a warrant issued in 2012. The U.S. government unsealed its initial indictment of Assange the same day.
End of Yahoo News excerpt
Even so, Assange's defense is likely to argue that it has a right to any materials and testimony that point to government misconduct on ground that the prosecution case was not lodged in good faith. The fact that the prosecution kept changing the charges, thus shifting the goalpost for Assange's defense, will be seen as reinforcing the "hidden agenda" claim, though judges often will not permit such a claim. But, in this case, the discovery process could easily provide strong evidence validating such a claim.
No comments:
Post a Comment