Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder currently held in British custody, may soon find some reprieve. After five years of living under a U.S. indictment that charges him with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, The Guardian reported that President Joe Biden is weighing a request by the Australian government to drop the case.
“We’re considering it," Biden told reporters Thursday.
The U.S. government has repeatedly sought Assange's extradition so that he could stand trial for his role in obtaining and leaking hundreds of thousands of classified State Department cables and military documents in 2010. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the U.S. Justice Department is considering a deal in which Assange, an Australian citizen, would plead guilty to mishandling classified information, a less severe charge than espionage. Under the current charges, Assange could face up to 175 years in prison.
In 2019, U.S. officials said that in publishing state secrets, Assange had exposed confidential human sources "to the gravest of dangers." Federal prosecutors initially pursued Assange on hacking charges in 2018; an expanded indictment a year later added the 17 espionage counts. Several press freedom groups and human rights watchdogs maintain that prosecuting Assange would have a chilling effect on journalists seeking to expose government wrongdoing.
In February, the Australian parliament, with support from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, voted to call on the U.S. and U.K. to allow Assange's return to his home country. Biden's latest signals have given Albanese some hope that the pressure is working. "I'm increasingly optimistic about an outcome, but one certainly has not been delivered yet," he said in an interview with Sky News Australia. "We'll continue to argue the case at every opportunity that we have."
