Bruce Wolpe, columnist, former Congressional staffer and Julia Gillard chief-of-staff, had a worthwhile piece about Assange in Granny Herald.
There is a rising tide of opinion that Assange should walk out of HMP Belmarsh, where he is languishing while appealing attempts to extradite him to face charges under the US Espionage Act, 1917.
Wolpe contends that it would be an “uphill battle” for the Biden administration to wave the magic wand and drop the charges. There are a number of factors at play, not least of which is a looming election accompanied by tough rhetoric about prosecuting the recent security breaches by a member of the National Guard, Jack Douglas Teixeira.
Also, Democrats don’t much like Assange, because he published emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, hacked by the Russians – one of the reasons the country allegedly ended up with sexual batterer Trump.
Importantly, no US court has ever ruled on whether a publisher can be punished for violations of the Espionage Act.
The Pentagon Papers case was quite different. It was about prior restraint, whether the government could enjoin the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing.
The case did not decide whether publishing illegally obtained information was punishable, although in the process of deciding on prior restraint, the majority of the Supreme Court in obiter remarks did say that news outlets could be punished in these circumstances.
See Justinian for more on the Assange case
Imagine, for a second, what the hacks sitting on today’s Supreme Court might say about the need for punishment.
Quite possibly the precedent of David Hicks will float to the surface. Citizens were complaining that Hicks had been banged up by the Septics in Guantanamo Bay for too long. He was there from 2002 to 2007 after being captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and sold to the Americans.
The Howard government used Hicks as their terrorist pin-up boy. However, things started to unravel after it was revealed that he had entered a plea bargain under duress to a charge of “material support for terrorism” – an offence that didn’t exist at the time he allegedly committed it.
Later, a US appeals court found that material support for terrorism was not a war crime triable by military commission.
Indignation about the case was mounting and Little Winston Howard
negotiated an arrangement with Washington to bring Hicks back to Australia to serve nine months of a suspended seven-year sentence.
He was released under a control order in December 2007 and the order expired a year later.
This political face-saver could be the model to rescue Assange from the Gulag.
Charge of the Cossack
The fallout from the derailed Canberra rape case involving accused Bruce Lehrmann gets stranger by the day.
Bizarrely, it has opened a new chapter in the “culture” wars. Alt-right warrior Planet Janet Albrechtsen has told her loyal reader the Nasty Party staffer should not have been prosecuted and it’s all the fault of the #MeToo movement.
Bruce Lehrmann: good. Brittany Higgins: bad.
The criminal trial is a distant memory and now we have a Board of Inquiry, under the baton of retired Queensland appeal judge and crash pilot Walter (The Cossack) Sofronoff.
Albrechtsen at the Catholic Boys Daily is issuing stern lectures about integrity and trust in the criminal justice system and that everyone should stop using “victim-centric language” – a theme later picked up by defence counsel Steven Wybrow.
Drumgold is a piñata for newsroom trogs – made all the easier because the evidence before the inquiry does suggest he went off piste on a few occasions, including:
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