Espionage Act

Anarchists and America-haters might cheer the release of Julian Assange from his UK prison after striking a plea deal with US prosecutors, but make no mistake: He’s no hero.

Nor is he a “journalist” whose participation in the theft and distribution of mountains of extremely sensitive information deserves First Amendment protection.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday walked free after pleading guilty in a U.S. court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, to a felony charge for publishing U.S. military secrets.

According to documents from the U.S. court in Saipan, the largest island and capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiracy to obtain documents, writing and notes connected with the U.S. national defense and communicating these materials.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from a British prison and was making his way back to his home country Australia on Monday after his 12-year battle against extradition to the United States ended in a plea deal.

The controversial figure has spent the past five years in a high-security UK prison and nearly seven years before that holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, trying to avoid arrest that could have led to life imprisonment.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to one felony charge under the Espionage Act in a plea deal that will allow him to go free from prison and bring to an end a years-long legal saga stemming from his role in one of the largest publications of classified information in U.S. history, according to court documents filed Monday.

Assange will plead guilty to conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate national defense information, under the plea deal, which still must be approved by a judge.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is expected to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge this week as part of an agreement with the Department of Justice that would allow him to walk free after being imprisoned in the U.K. for five years.

The FBI search warrant of former President Donald Trump's Florida home authorized confiscation of every record he ever saw, read or created during his four years as commander-in-chief, right down to scribbles on a napkin.

Democrats are asking for a damage assessment from the intelligence community on the 11 sets of classified documents recovered in the raid, including one marked "SCI", a classification for some of the most sensitive national security information that is normally viewed in a highly secured location.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Saturday called for the end of the Espionage Act, less than a week after the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

"The espionage act was abused from the beginning to jail dissenters of WWI. It is long pastime to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment," he wrote on Twitter.

Donald Trump is under criminal investigation for potential violations of the Espionage Act and additional statutes relating to obstruction of justice and destroying federal government records, according to the search warrant executed by FBI agents at the former president’s home on Monday.

The search warrant – the contents of which were confirmed by the Guardian – shows the FBI was seeking evidence about whether the mishandling of classified documents by Trump, including some marked top secret, amounted to a violation of three criminal statutes.

FBI agents seized classified records from former President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago during the agency's unprecedented raid on Monday, including some marked as top secret, according to a warrant and property receipt unsealed Friday. The documents had earlier been reviewed and reported by Fox News Digital.

Former President Trump is disputing the classification, saying the records have been declassified.  

Federal law enforcement suspected former President Trump had violated the Espionage Act and other laws when it sought and obtained a search warrant for his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to court records unsealed Friday.

The unsealed warrant shows that investigators were authorized to seize any documents or records with classified markings or related to the “transmission of national defense information or classified material.”