West Michigan's Morning News
Julian Assange a Free Man
So, I remember something about American lives being endangered by the leaking of this information, but WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, now free. This is West Michigan's Morning News. Steve Kelly, Brett Bakeda, Tanya J. Powers with Fox News Radio in New York this morning. Tanya, thanks for doing this today. Sure. Thank you for having me. Walk us back, will you? This is like a 14-year legal battle. Where did it all start? Well, this all started in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified documents, tens of thousands of cables and war logs and other classified documents with military secrets in them. This was quite a big deal, if you'll remember, in 2010 when this happened. Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks. He is the one who obtained and published the information. He's not the one who got it that was someone else who has also done time for their part in all of this, but as far as the Assange stuff, he's the one who published it. He has now had a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice. This has, like I said, gone on for quite some time. He was the first journalist to be charged under the Espionage Act. He also in this plea deal had to admit to a single felony count. Now he had been initially charged, I believe, with 17 counts of, you know, then there was a conspiracy count, there were 17 counts. There was a lot of stuff, basically, that he was charged with relating to the publishing of these documents, which is, like I said, that's where everything stems from. A couple of days ago, we hear from the Justice Department there has been a plea deal, which I think surprised a lot of people because, you know, I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about Julian Assange in recent years. I don't know if other people had. He's been in a prison, one of the harshest prisons in the U.K. for the last five years after he kind of got crossways with his bail, apparently, they revoked his bail there, and he had been at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years before that kind of holed up because he was fighting extradition to the U.S. He did not want to be brought back to the U.S. He could have faced something like more than a hundred years in prison if he had been brought here and tried. So he had been in Sweden for some time, kind of warred as welcome there. He kind of, like, you know, went from place to place to keep from, you know, being taught by the U.S. Now during the plea agreement and during the hearing, which was, by the way, in the Northern Mariana Islands, he did not come to the U.S. mainland for that. He went to a U.S. district court there for the plea deal, and then this morning in the last, I think two hours ago, literally, he landed in Australia, which is where he's from, as a free man. The judge, in this case, in the hearing for his plea deal, basically said, "Okay, two things. This involves timing." If it was 2012, the judge said, "No, I would not be inclined to agree with all of this." Since he has served time between 2012 and now, the judge sentenced him to time served, basically. The other thing was that the government had said, "Okay, there was no physical victim in the crime that he has, you know, has been punished for." They said that they did not have any, you know, confirmation, no proof, no information that would lead them to believe that anyone was physically harmed, hurt, killed, or any of that, as a result of the documents being published. He, by the way, also has to destroy classified information given to WikiLeaks as part of his plea deal, as well, but he was given, you know, he basically had to admit to a single felony count. His plea deal was done, and the years-long saga of all of this has come to a close. And you mentioned the U.S. Department of Justice. It said he can't even return to the United States without our express permission. So he's in Australia now, where his family lives, and we'll let you know what happens next. Tonya J. Powers in New York this morning. Thanks for your time today. Sure.