On the 1st October 2020 Assange Defence posted this recap
What expert witnesses said:
Fellow journalists, academics, and professors testified that the Espionage Act charges against Julian Assange are unprecedented and would mark the end of First Amendment protections on journalism everywhere. Assange is charged with obtaining, receiving, and publishing government documents, activity that investigative journalists engage in every day.
Why it matters:
To extradite someone from the U.S. to the U.K., the prosecution must prove “dual criminality,” that the crime alleged in the United States would also be an offense in the United Kingdom. Furthermore, Article 4 of the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty says, “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense.”
Relevant testimony
- Mark Feldstein: the First Amendment protects a free press, leaks are essential to democracy (day 1)
- Mark Feldstein gives historical context for WikiLeaks’ journalism (day 2)
- Prosecution cross-examination misleads on the charges
- Trevor Timm: These charges would ‘radically rewrite’ the First Amendment
- Carey Shenkman: Espionage Act is an “extraordinarily broad” political offense (day 8)
- Carey Shenkman: Espionage Act instills a “chilling effect” (day 9)
- Ian Cobain: Only leaked docs confirm what governments cover up
- Jameel Jaffer: Assange indictment gravely threatens press freedom
- Daniel Ellsberg: “I totally disagree with the ‘good Ellsberg / bad Assange’ theory”
Read more:
- Julian Assange’s Indictment Aims at the Heart of the First Amendment (The New York Times editorial, May 2019)
- Media analysis of Julian Assange’s superseding indictment (Courage Foundation, May 2019)
- The ‘Assange Precedent’: The Threat to the Media Posed by the Trump Administration’s Prosecution of Julian Assange (Courage Foundation, March 2019)
- The Assange Indictment Seeks to Punish Pure Publication (Lawfare, May 2019)
Original Article and Excellent coverage and Summaries of the Assange Hearings at Assange Defense