RFK JR: "There Is No America Without A Free Press. There Is No Free Press Without A Free Julian Assange."

I’ll be back at some point this week with a bizarre (albeit brief) recap of my experience at the Libertarian convention. Rubber chicken fixation and all. In the meantime, Lucia Osborne-Crowley examines a popular talking point among the party: freeing Julian Assange—particularly RFK’s committed promise to do so should he become president vs. Trump’s continued silence on the matter. 

Thank’s Lucia!

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One day in early 2010, my friend Jennifer Robinson received a phone call from her mentor and colleague, Australian-British barrister and academic Geoffrey Robertson, telling her – rather cryptically – that he had to come over for lunch that very day. She couldn't understand why, and he wasn't giving anything away. But Robinson wasn't in London that day. When she got back, she went to Robertson's. It was evening. Sitting at Robertson's living room table was Julian Assange. This was the beginning of a 13-year battle, in which she has represented the WikiLeaks founder in a series of legal bids to get him home to Australia.

But on that day in 2011, she had no idea how entwined her life would become with one of the world's most famous activists. What she saw was a friendly, engaged fellow Australian in London who was able to talk to her at length about one of her life's biggest passions: West Papuan independence.

She was late for the meeting, so she apologized to Assange and explained that she had just come from a T.V. interview with ABC about West Papua. It kicked off a long conversation between the two about the geopolitics of the Indonesian region of West Papua. She remembers telling Assange: "I care so much about West Papua, and opportunities to speak about it in the media don't come knocking often, and when they do, you have to take them." Assange immediately agreed. What transpired was a long conversation between the two about the geopolitics of the Indonesian region of West Papua.

"He immediately started chatting to me about the politics of West Papua, about Indonesian occupation, about U.S. cover-ups there," she tells me now. "And I thought: This guy really knows his stuff." It was rare to meet an Australian who could talk about the geopolitics of the region like this, and she was immediately impressed by him.

Robinson and I speak just weeks after she has had a major win in the battle to bring Julian Assange back to Australia and avoid his extradition to the United States on Espionage Act charges. Assange's team won a bid in the U.K. High Court to delay the extradition, and then—during the course of our interviews—U.S. President Joe Biden conceded that he may consider dropping the legacy indictment against Assange.

"It's the right thing for him to do," Robinson says. "It's a Trump-era indictment that should never have happened in the first place, and it's time to get Julian home."

So here we are — perhaps the world's most well-known man, on the brink of finding out his fate. He faces an indictment issued by Trump which accuses him of charges under the Espionage Act, setting of a long battle to try and get him extradited to the U.S. Free speech activists like his lawyer, Jen Robinson, say he should not be extradited and face a potential death sentence in the U.S.

The Biden government has given "assurances" that the U.S. will not execute Assange, but Julian's team are not satisfied and just this week they had another huge win: the High Court granted them a right to a full hearing on the question of whether he should be extradited despite the recent assurances.

The tides are continuing to turn in favor of Assange and free speech. Just last week, High Court judges ruled that Assange could have a fresh appeal over concerns that he would not receive a fair trial in the U.S. if he was extradited.

Assange was granted permission to appeal on the narrow grounds of whether he would be discriminated against because of his nationality.

His lawyers had argued earlier that there was no guarantee that he could rely on U.S. free speech protection at trial because he is an Australian citizen – and the U.S. constitutional free speech protections only cover U.S. citizens.

Last week's decision follows a request by the judges for reassurances from the U.S. on three grounds of appeal in March.

The court had asked for binding commitments that Assange would be allowed to rely on the First Amendment, that he would not be prejudiced at trial because of his nationality — and that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty.

Assange's legal team told the court at the start of Monday's hearing that they had accepted assurances about the threat of capital punishment if he is convicted.

• Assange is facing 18 charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 for publishing secret military cables exposing civilian deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The charges carry a maximum of 175 years.

• Accused of publishing cables and files containing assessments of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, which revealed widespread crimes against humanity.

• Also accused of encouraging leaks by former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning and of conspiring to hack into the Department of Defense computer system and disclosing classified information. President Barack Obama commuted Manning's 35-year prison sentence after seven years before he left office.

Assange and his team argue that he was being prosecuted for his political views, although lawyers for the U.S. say the unredacted documents created a "grave and imminent" risk to innocent U.S. informants in China, Syria, and Iran.

Assange has been forced to hide out in London after seeking political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in the English capital. His case has made its way through courts since the home secretary at the time, Priti Patel, approved his extradition in 2022.

In favorable news: President Joe Biden said in April he was considering Australia's request that Assange be returned to his native country.

TRUMP Vs. KENNEDY: Conflicting Views On Assange

But that's not the only reason the Assange saga is front and center of the U.S. political landscape again: We are—who can forget—in an election year. The man who originally brought the charges, Donald Trump, is running for his second term and will presumably stick to his guns when it comes to pursuing punishment for Assange under the Espionage Act. 

While his opponent and the Incumbent, Biden, has recently started to relinquish his stance on extradition softly and, as I mentioned, has said he is "considering" allowing Assange to fly home to Australia. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration was exploring the possibility of allowing the WikiLeaks founder to cut a plea deal that would see him admit to a misdemeanor offense of mishandling classified documents in return for an early release.

"Mr Assange is being prosecuted for engaging in ordinary journalistic practices of obtaining and publishing classified information which is true and of public interest," Edward Fitzgerald, another of Assange's lawyers, told the court in February. 

Another of his lawyers said there was evidence there had been a "truly breathtaking plan" to kidnap or murder Assange while he was in the Ecuadorean embassy, and former U.S. President Trump had asked for "detailed options" to kill him.

In 2021, Yahoo News reported CIA officials had drawn up options for Trump's administration for "dealing with" Assange while he was in the London embassy.

But of course, we should be interested in more than Trump and Biden. We should be paying very close attention to the candidate who is really stealing the show this election: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

RFK has said repeatedly that the indictment of Assange is wrong and is antithetical to America's commitment to the right to free speech and the free press. Repeatedly, he has called Assange "heroic"'.

On Friday, at the Libertarian conference, Kennedy brought the room into rapturous applause with the following comments:

"President Trump also assaulted the First Amendment and failed to defend press freedom when he continued President [Barack] Obama's persecution and prosecution of Julian Assange," he said. "Assange should be celebrated as a hero. He did exactly what journalists are supposed to do, which is to expose government corruption. We shouldn't put him in prison; we should have a monument to him here in Washington, DC.

"The same is true of Edward Snowden … He's a hero, not a criminal, and I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to do what President Trump should have done. On my first day in office, I'm going to pardon Edward Snowden and I'm going to drop charges – all charges – against Julian Assange."

He vowed that he would both pardon Assange if elected and would dedicate a statue to him.

"Assange should be celebrated as a hero for doing exactly what journalists are supposed to do, which is to expose government corruption."

"We shouldn't be putting him in prison; we should have a monument to him here in Washington DC," he added.

Kennedy went on to say that the "same is true for Edward Snowden, who exposed illegal spying by the NSA," calling the U.S. whistleblower a "hero, not a criminal."

"On my first day in office, I'm going to pardon Edward Snowden and I'm going to drop the charges, all of the charges against Julian Assange," Kennedy said.

In February, he released a video and launched a petition demanding the immediate release and pardon of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"Attacking the messenger is never good policy," Kennedy said. "The government's war against whistleblowers has turned heroes into criminals. Only if we stand together can we protect free speech, which is why I am encouraging every American to sign our petition to demand the immediate pardon and release of Julian Assange from incarceration,"Kennedy said, also in February. He added that he would "that he "will issue an executive order to end all attempts by federal agents and federal agencies to censor the political speech of Americans."

Kennedy has also promised to not only free Assange but to launch a proper investigation into the crimes his leaked publications exposed.

"Other brave truth-tellers include John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, Daniel Hale, Thomas Drake, Jeffrey Sterling, and Edward Snowden. They were trying to return America to its democratic and humanitarian ideals," he said earlier this month.

Additionally, he begged his 2.9m followers on X: "Please SIGN THIS PETITION for the immediate pardon and release of Julian Assange, the publisher and activist who founded WikiLeaks and is now in jail facing life imprisonment and extradition. He's a heroic whistleblower who stood up for democracy and against the surveillance state. It's time we stood up for Julian Assange the way he stood up for us."

He Tweeted: "We Owe An Enormous Debt to Julian Assange."

And in a much longer tweet, he wrote: "The CIA and the Biden administration claim that Julian Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning to "hack" and therefore steal top-secret information. Their entire case is hinged on this. But this has NEVER been proven, and Chelsea Manning has repeatedly claimed this is false and that she NEVER had to 'hack'anything. Manning says that she had full, readily available access to the information she passed along to WikiLeaks. I'm going to pardon Assange and Snowden on Day 1. I'm going to build a statue of Assange somewhere near the Washington Press Club and a statue of Snowden outside CIA HQ in Langley as a civics lesson to the Republic. So, in essence, Chelsea Manning is the one who committed the crime of sharing state secrets and spent 7 years in prison for this. Yet, the publisher to whom she leaked the information is standing trial to be extradited to the United States to face a 175-year prison sentence. Sounds fair… right?"

So, like Julian's lawyers, Bobby Kennedy strongly believes in the values of free speech and its importance to the heart of America. He believes that a hero has been held captive for 13 years by a country that professes to value free speech and fearless journalism. As a journalist myself, I'm with him. What do you think?

Last week, when Assange had his most recent history win in convincing the High Court to give him another hearing on the U.S.'s assurances that he would get a fair trial, Jen Robinson told me this: "The decision from the High Court today affirms our concern that the U.S. is seeking to exercise jurisdiction over journalists everywhere without ensuring they will also have constitutional free speech protection. The U.S. "assurance" offered is, in fact, no assurance at all: it does not guarantee that Assange or any other non-US citizen journalist publishing truthful information about the U.S. outside the U.S. will have First Amendment protection. It provides a temporary reprieve for Julian, but the case is not over. We continue to call on the U.S. to drop the case."