Julian Assange to Avoid Prison after Pleading Guilty

Julian Assange, the controversial founder of WikiLeaks, has agreed to plead guilty as part of a plea agreement in order to avoid prison.

As Breitbart reports, a court document from the United States District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands confirms that Assange and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have come to a term that will see Assange plead guilty to one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose national defense information.

He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday morning in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands.

On Tuesday, the official WikiLeaks account on X issued a statement saying that “we appreciate the Court accommodating these plea and sentencing proceedings on a single day at the joint request of the parties, in light of the defendant’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States to enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal U.S. District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings.”

The statement concluded by saying “this is for everyone who worked for his freedom: Thank you. #FreedJulianAssange”

Assange had been charged over his involvement with Bradley Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who gave classified information and documents to Assange. Assange was charged in May of 2019 with 18 counts in a DOJ indictment, which included “unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defense.”

For the last five years, Assange has been held at Belmarsh Prison in the United Kingdom, after British authorities arrested him in the Ecuadorian Embassy where he had been staying, claiming asylum. London’s high court ultimately allowed Assange to appeal his extradition to the U.S., eventually leading to the new plea agreement.

Assange and his website are known for leaking often compromising information about various government agencies and officials, earning him a cult-like status among his followers as an investigative journalist, while detractors accused him of leaking national security secrets that could endanger certain countries and their troops overseas. Assange, once seen as a hero of the American Left for his opposition to George W. Bush and the War on Terror, was vilified by Democrats after he played a role in leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) confirming that the national party was actively plotting to rig the 2016 presidential primaries against the insurgent candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).