Citation[]
Stephen P. Mulligan, Frequently Asked Questions about the Julian Assange Charges (CRS Legal Sidebar) (updated June 7, 2019) (full-text).
Overview[]
After spending nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange was arrested by British police, was convicted for violating the terms of his bail in the U.K., and had an indictment against him unsealed in the United States — all in a single day. Despite the swiftness of the recent action, the charges against Assange raise a host of complex questions that are unlikely to be resolved in the near future. This Sidebar examines the international and domestic legal issues implicated in the criminal cases against Assange.
On May 23, 2019, a U.S. grand jury returned a superseding indictment adding 17 charges against Assange for allegedly violating the Espionage Act of 1917. While the new counts arise out of the same underlying factual events as the original indictment, charging Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917 implicates complex questions over the relationship between the First Amendment and the government's ability to restrict disclosure of national defense information — an issue discussed in this Report.