Biden says US is considering Australia’s request to drop prosecution of Julian Assange
CNN
President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House Wednesday that his administration is “considering” a request from Australia to drop charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House Wednesday that his administration is “considering” a request from Australia to drop charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. In February, the Australian Parliament approved a motion calling for Assange to be released to his home country of Australia. Asked Wednesday about Australia’s call to end Assange’s prosecution, Biden told reporters at the White House, “We’re considering it.” CNN has reached out to the National Security Council for additional comment on the president’s remark. US authorities say Assange, 52, put lives at risk by publishing secret military documents and have for years been seeking his extradition on espionage charges. Assange is being pursued by the US for publishing confidential military records supplied by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 and 2011. In 2019, prosecutors in Virginia charged Assange with 18 offenses including one charge of conspiracy to attempt to hack a computer in connection with the 2010 release of classified military material obtained through Manning and 17 additional counts under the Espionage Act. The prosecution alleges that Assange goaded Manning into obtaining thousands of pages of unfiltered US diplomatic cables that potentially endangered confidential sources, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The CIA has sent the White House an unclassified email listing all new hires that have been with the agency for two years or less in an effort to comply with an executive order to downsize the federal workforce, according to three sources familiar with the matter – a deeply unorthodox move that could potentially expose the identities of those officers to foreign government hackers.