Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys.
Introducing Trevor Tim.
He is the co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation at Freedom.press.
What a great URL.
Welcome back to the show, Trevor.
How are you doing?
It's always good to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Good to talk to you.
Hey, so listen, there's just incredible news from the last week, two weeks, I guess, on the case of Julian Assange and his imprisonment in Britain and the process to extradite him to the United States.
And I believe it was right around a year ago, right, that they announced that they had indicted him on espionage charges.
Chelsea Manning, by the way, is sitting in a cell right now to this day, right, in contempt of court for refusing to testify against Assange.
And, you know, there's so much partisan everything else in the world going on.
This is not getting the kind of attention it deserves.
But I guess, can we start with Assange in court?
And it seems from all reporting that it was really a spectacle there and there were real concerns raised about the state of his health.
Yeah, absolutely.
So he was in a London courtroom about a week and a half ago.
And from all the reports that have come out in media organizations, it seemed like his health has really deteriorated.
He could barely speak his name or his birth date to the court when they asked him if he could understand the proceedings.
You know, he has been in prison for months now in the UK.
He's had limited access to his lawyers and to just normal visitors.
People who have visited him, including the U.N. representative that focuses on torture, have talked about what a psychological toll this imprisonment has taken on him.
And worse than that even was the judge's decision in this case.
Actually, hold that thought for a second because just on the treatment itself here, this is not a guy who's been convicted of raping anyone or espionaging anyone or anything.
He's essentially, I think, Trevor as far as I understand the equivalent type process, he's in the county lockup.
He is in pretrial confinement because he hasn't even had a substantive hearing on the extradition request.
But they're treating him like he's in supermax conditions, 23 hours a day, total isolation, exercise by himself and all of this kind of thing, like he's Ramsey Youssef or Barack Obama.
You know, absolutely.
It's really a travesty.
And unfortunately, this case, because it is dragging on for so long, hasn't been getting a lot of attention in the U.S. besides when the charges were initially announced.
And this also could go on for several more years.
The Trump administration indicted him under 17 counts under the Espionage Act about six months ago, but the hearing is not until February.
And then the appeals process will likely go through no matter if he wins or not.
And he might be in jail in the U.K. for two to three years under these conditions before we ever find out whether he's actually going to get extradited to the United States or not.
And, you know, the U.N. representative on torture basically stated that this was essentially psychological torture they were putting him through, that his conditions can and must be improved.
And it does seem like this may be some sort of punishment he is undergoing, even though he hasn't actually been convicted of any crime.
Well, so there's a story that actually just hit today that you may have seen, where a U.N. special reporter on torture, Nils Melzer, said that his life is at risk unless the U.K. urgently changes course and alleviates his inhumane situation.
Mr. Assange's continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life.
And this is the same guy, as you're saying, previously warned that this was amounted to psychological torture.
So I know you're a lawyer here and not over there, but are there special circumstances invoked or something for treating him as though he's been convicted of a capital crime when all he's doing is sitting essentially, you know, in a state of limbo going through hearings to find out whether he's even going to be prosecuted?
Yeah, and I think that, you know, some people forget that also, Julian Assange, while he was stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, was also denied access to visitors for the last few months that he was there, including doctors that may be able to help him with any injuries or illnesses that he may have.
So he has been in a deteriorating state of health, according to all the people that are close to him for months or years at this point, and obviously being held in solitary and being denied access to regular visitors and just having this psychological toll thrust upon him is never going to be good for anybody's health, let alone somebody who was already experiencing a lot of these things for a long time.
And it's like you said, I can't claim to be a UK legal expert, but I certainly hope the court or another appeals court looks at the conditions that he is being placed under and forces the government to improve them, because clearly by everybody who witnessed his appearance in court last week, the situation is quite dire.
Now on that, have his lawyers said anything about him being drugged?
With any and I mean that very broadly speaking, I don't mean like in the worst way, like what they did to Jose Padilla, and God knows what, but just, you know, on some whatever, sedatives or any kind of thing, because it seemed like when he was in court, he's trying to remember how to say his name, right?
Which that could be the result of solitary confinement.
But also it could be the result of somebody forcing pills down his throat, you know?
Yeah, it's hard to say.
I haven't seen any statements to that effect, though that doesn't mean that they haven't.
But like you said, like, you know, solitary confinement, whether people are drugged or not, is often very mentally debilitating and will make even, you know, the most mentally healthy people essentially go crazy because it's not a condition that any person should be put under for at all, let alone long periods of time.
And we know that in the United States, they often punish prisoners by putting them in solitary confinement and many, many experts, health experts and legal experts have called it akin to torture and can have really debilitating and long lasting effects.
And so I think that we're seeing that manifest itself in Assange as he was in court a week and a half ago.
Man.
All right.
And then, like you're saying, it could take so long to go through this process to even find out if he's going to be tried on these crazy charges.
And so that's what we got to get to now is this crazy ruling, which you were about to comment on when I interrupted you.
And then the whole just crazy charges in the first place where this foreign journalist is being charged with espionage for publishing something that an American army specialist at the time, I guess, leaked to him.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think that's the other the other issue in this case is that, you know, Assange has been involved in various controversies over the years.
But the the indictment itself that the Trump administration brought down six months ago actually concerns the Manning leaks from 2010, 2011, so almost a decade ago.
And these publications were in many of the nation's leading newspapers, including The New York Times and The Guardian.
And everybody is convinced that they were, of course, in the public interest.
And what is alleged in The Guardian is essentially that Julian Assange received these leaks from Chelsea Manning and that just the process of talking to Chelsea Manning, using encrypted apps to talk, apps to speak with her to protect her identity.
The U.S. government is saying that these are essentially illegal acts, along with the publication of these documents.
And so you can imagine how these types of charges could then be brought against virtually every other national security journalist in the United States.
You know, documents do not just magically fall on journalists lap.
They're often talking to sources, asking them to get them more information.
And when they're reporting on foreign policy or national security, this information is often classified.
And it has been part of First Amendment law in this country for almost a century that journalists have a right to publish this, even if a source potentially broke the law to get it to them.
And that is really what is at stake in this case beyond Julian Assange's personal freedom, is the freedom of reporters everywhere to report on secret government programs the government wishes that the public didn't know about.
Essentially, a pillar of democracy.
And this case should be protested by virtually every reporter, no matter what you actually think personally of Julian Assange, because it's a clear and present danger to everybody's rights.
Hey guys, Scott here for Liberty Under Attack Publications.
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Alright, now, you're a lawyer, so set me straight on whether I understand this right, but I think I do, because we've been over this.
Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act, in fact, does criminalize what any investigative reporter who publishes secrets does.
It's just that they've never prosecuted that, and the courts have never been in a position to uphold it.
And the one time that the government tried to invoke it was in the Pentagon Papers, and the court ruled for a different reason.
They essentially ducked that question and said, well, we're going to ban prior restraint, but we're leaving open whether you could put the publishers of the New York Times in prison for publishing Daniel Ellsberg and Leslie Gelb's history of the Vietnam War there.
And so, their very classified history that McNamara had ordered up.
And so, in other words, essentially what you're saying is that, so far, tradition has held them off, but it hasn't really been put to a test.
And here, they're really, apparently, determined to put it to a test.
And then, one more question I'll add to that, which, you know, I want you to comment about that, but then also, people keep asking me this, and I know I don't understand it.
Under what crazy theory are they claiming to have any jurisdiction over Julian Assange whatsoever?
When he's not an American, and he's not accused of being under American territorial jurisdiction at any time that he did any of these things.
And are they really saying that any country can prosecute any journalist in any other country for any reporting they do on any other country?
Or on themselves for that, so the Russians can indict James Risen for being a ridiculous Russia truther, something like that?
I mean, I think it's a great point.
That's really the international precedent that the United States is essentially attempting to set here.
Is there one already, a precedent on questions like this?
Well, certainly, the United States has not extradited a journalist or a publisher to the United States to be prosecuted.
And it's an incredibly dangerous precedent to set, because as you said, Russia and China and every other authoritarian country in the world will look at this and say, you know what, we're going to do this too.
And we're going to attempt to extradite United States citizens, and if they visit other countries that are friendly to us, maybe we'll snatch them up when we have the chance.
But going back to your original question about the Espionage Act, it's a really good point.
When you look at the Espionage Act, which again was written 100 years ago in World War I to go after spies and saboteurs, it is incredibly, incredibly broad.
Not only if you read the letter of the law would it criminalize common reporting that happens virtually every day at The New York Times and The Washington Post, but it would even criminalize every normal person who is on social media and decides to share a New York Times story that touches on classified information or even reads a story in the newspaper and doesn't share it.
That contains classified information.
This is essentially why this has never been tried by the government.
They have essentially realized that this statute is blatantly unconstitutional, and if they bring a prosecution against a New York Times-like publication, then it will quickly be struck down as a violation of the First Amendment.
Now, what is different here is that the Trump administration, number one, we know that they generally hate the press and have called them enemies of the people and have brought a record number of leak cases, but they see Julian Assange as a uniquely unpopular figure.
Especially in establishment circles, Julian Assange has made a lot of enemies over the years, and so they figure that why don't we go after this very unpopular person under this law, essentially attempt to try to squeeze this prosecution by a judge knowing that there might be some unsavory characteristics to Julian Assange's personality that the judge doesn't like.
Have this prosecution upheld, and then once it's upheld, it would be a lot easier for them to go after all the other journalists that they might have wanted to prosecute but felt that they couldn't because they were worried about the statute being struck down.
So it's a classic case of using an unpopular figure to essentially create a precedent that then affects everyone, and that's why it's so important that it doesn't actually matter whether you think Julian Assange is a hero or you think he's a terrible person or he's made mistakes.
What they are doing here is essentially trying to criminalize journalism and is a huge, huge threat to anybody who cares about press freedom or democracy.
Right.
Yeah, and that's the thing of it, too, is I guess it doesn't seem like a crisis since, as you say, both major political factions have a severe gripe against this guy for one thing or another.
It's only fringe people.
I don't mean to use fringe, but, well, the people who don't really have power and influence that hail him as a hero.
And then, as you say, the people who don't like him for the most part are willing to let him be sacrificed even though it's essentially at their own expense.
But to the average person out there, you might see why they have no idea that this is a crisis.
They have no idea that what you're saying essentially is that if this guy is extradited to the U.S. and he's convicted of espionage for receiving the Manning leak and publishing it at WikiLeaks.org and the courts uphold that, that that is essentially striking out a major clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.
Yeah, and this is the real issue here is that there may have been some media attention to this case.
And frankly, I was pleasantly surprised that many of the mainstream newspapers actually forcefully denounced this indictment by the Trump administration.
But what you have now is that it's been many months since, and Julian Assange is languishing in jail, and the public may have forgotten that this case even exists.
And that only helps the Trump administration and the Justice Department, which is attempting to criminalize journalism, because the longer people forget about this, the longer this indictment is active, the more scared that everybody else will be.
And it creates a situation where there is giant uncertainty about what reporters can and can't do, and the Trump administration can use that to their advantage.
So it's incredibly important that I think that you are covering this on your program right now and continue to cover it.
And I hope many, many other people do, too, because the more awareness that we can raise about this case, the better chance it is that this case falls apart and the quicker it falls apart.
Because like I said, nothing would be more dangerous for journalism in general than this case to go forward and there actually to be a conviction.
It's hard to be too hyperbolic in this situation because it literally would criminalize basic news gathering and publishing practices that everybody relies on every day.
We would essentially all be criminals if this was brought to its conclusion.
Yeah, we all already are.
Hey, but yeah, I see what you mean.
And hey, on the national security beat stuff, the key to the whole crisis, no matter how you look at it.
But now back to this whole international jurisdiction type of a thing.
I mean, there's a thing where, you know, Spain can indict you for war crimes that you commit in Afghanistan or something.
If it's proven that your government won't hold you to account, then there's this international jurisdiction type of a thing.
There's a whole theory of law there anyway.
But when you're saying that this is unprecedented, that they would try to have extradited a journalist from a foreign country to this country to prosecute on espionage charges for publishing, that that's unprecedented.
But does that mean that the whole legal theory is unprecedented too?
Like there is no law actually that they're invoking other than just the Espionage Act and then saying, well, of course, that's a felony.
And so we have a deal with the Brits to extradite anyone who we've indicted for a felony.
And then it's just as simple as that.
Well, there has always been the worry among First Amendment lawyers that this could potentially happen.
And there have been a lot of close calls over the years.
I mean, you mentioned the Pentagon Papers is a great example.
After the Supreme Court case, there was a grand jury impaneled by the Nixon administration attempting to indict reporters at The New York Times.
But that grand jury fell apart.
Along the way in the previous decades, there's been several other cases where various administrations have essentially contemplated doing this.
So one of them involved Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative reporter during the Ford administration.
Dick Cheney was actually on the staff then and recommended that the Justice Department prosecute him for publishing classified information.
Thankfully, the Justice Department did not comply.
The same thing happened to James Risen during the Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration, when he published the NSA warrantless wiretapping stories where the Bush administration was illegally wiretapping Americans without a judicial warrant like they're required to under the Constitution.
Alberto Gonzalez actually implied that they were looking into potentially prosecuting The New York Times.
And each of these cases, the cases have essentially not moved forward because the government deep down, even though they like to issue threats, knows that these cases would be thrown out and that this law would be struck down as unconstitutional.
And so now you have the Trump administration contemplating the same thing.
And yet they have had no problem kind of steamrolling rule of law issues in other areas, like if we're talking about immigration or anything else.
And they have a hatred for or a public hatred for reporters that we have never seen.
And so those two factors have kind of led them to actually take the extra step that no other administration has attempted to do.
Well, I'm still confident that hopefully in the end that this case will be thrown out.
But there's a long road ahead of us and there will be much damage done while we wait for that to happen.
And that's if Assange survives.
Yeah, there's always the possibility that the case survives.
And I'm sorry, I know you have to go early today, but I've got to give you 30 seconds or something.
Say something about Chelsea Manning sitting there right now in contempt of court in the lockup.
Yeah, the Chelsea Manning case is incredibly tragic.
I mean, we know that she has already suffered torture at the hands of the U.S. government, has already spent seven years in jail.
Her sentence was commuted by President Obama.
Yet the Trump administration is on this vindictive warpath to have her testify against a grand jury about things that she'd already testified about in her own trial.
And she has nobly refused to testify and is now sitting in prison or jail herself and is facing $1,000 fines per day.
And the judge has felt no sympathy for her.
And it's really a tragic situation because it seems like there's nothing that folks can do.
But I can tell you there's one thing that folks can do is donate to her legal defense fund because she really needs help.
She's going to have these huge fines.
She needs as much legal support as she can.
And so if folks care about that case, please go find her legal defense fund.
You can get it by Googling her name and legal defense fund.
And that is a small thing that folks can do if they if they want to help in that situation.
Yeah, absolutely.
They can also Google Afghan cables, Iraq war cables.
They can Google State Department.
They can Google WikiLeaks documents reveal and they'll find tens of thousands of important news stories about incredible abuses of power by the U.S. government that obviously and absolutely justified that leak and makes heroes out of Manning and Assange both for all time.
But anyway, thank you, Trevor, for all that you do.
Really appreciate a lot.
Thanks for having me.
Talk to you soon.
All right, you guys.
That is Trevor Tim.
He is the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
That's freedom dot press.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at Libertarian Institute dot org at Scott Horton dot org, antiwar dot com and Reddit dot com slash Scott Horton show.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at Fool's Errand dot U.S.
