(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The FBI is reportedly investigating Wikileaks founder Julian Assange again, even as the U.S. continues to try to extradite him from the United Kingdom for allegedly violating the Espionage Act—the same statute the DOJ is also using to target former President Donald Trump.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Thursday that the FBI sought to interview novelist Andrew O’Hagan about his time working as a ghostwriter on Assange’s autobiography over a decade ago. O’Hagan has reportedly declined to speak to the FBI because he opposes any attempt to punish a journalist for publishing classified material.
Nevertheless, Assange’s supporters are worried about the implications of a renewed FBI investigation.
“It appears they are continuing to try to investigate, which I find unusual given the amount of time that has passed since the investigation began,” Assange’s Australian lawyer, Stephen Kenny, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I would think it is of some concern because we have been working to try to secure an arrangement that would see Julian come home.”
Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton reportedly said it appeared U.S. prosecutors are trying to prepare a new indictment or a superseding indictment against Assange, who was charged under the Espionage Act about three years ago for publishing classified information about U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange was something of a darling among liberals until around 2016, when Wikileaks published more than 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails, exposing corruption in the Hillary Clinton campaign. Because this was perceived to be helpful to Trump, liberals turned on Assange and supported his prosecution.
Assange has been fighting extradition to the U.S. for the last three years.
Trump was reportedly considering pardons for Assange and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in his final days as president, but journalist Glenn Greenwald said that RINOs such as Lindsey Graham threatened to vote for Trump’s impeachment if he issued pardons to those men.
“There was real movement inside the Trump administration to give particularly Snowden a pardon,” said Greenwald, who first published Snowden’s bombshell revelations about the National Security Agency’s secretive domestic surveillance operations during the Obama administration.
“Why would they have initiated an impeachment against a president who within a couple of weeks was on his way out?”
With Trump now also being targeted by the DOJ with the Espionage Act, civil libertarian stalwarts such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have called for repealing the law altogether.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
