After 12 years of either house arrest or detention as he fought extradition to the United States, Julian Assange may never actually set foot inside an American prison — or the U.S. at all. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the WikiLeaks founder is in talks with the Justice Department about a deal that would allow him to plead to a misdemeanor and possibly be freed from jail in the U.K.
Assange’s lawyers are reportedly negotiating toward a lesser charge for mishandling of classified documents, a misdemeanor that could potentially allow him to enter his plea remotely. If the deal goes through, it would be a major step down from the 18 felony charges he is facing for violating the Espionage Act after he published national-security secrets leaked by Chelsea Manning in the early 2010s. There’s more good news for the controversial dissident and his famous friends: Time that he has served already would likely go toward his negotiated sentence, meaning that Assange could be out of detention shortly after signing the plea. Federal prosecutors have previously stated that Assange would have been facing between four and six years in prison.
Since 2019, Assange has been held in an English jail after British forces raided the Ecuadorian embassy in London; he had been holed up there for the previous seven years, fearing extradition to Sweden on unrelated sexual-assault charges. Those charges were dropped in 2019, the same year the Trump administration accidentally disclosed it was pursuing charges against him. (Mike Pompeo and some CIA officials reportedly wanted to go much further.)
A possible Assange deal arrives as the yearslong effort to extradite him has been coming to a head. Last month, he made a final appeal to block extradition to the U.S., citing his poor health and concerns he would kill himself in American prison. Within the next month, a panel of British judges will determine if Assange is allowed to continue his appeal or if he will be extradited, which would occur within 28 days of that decision. If extradited to the United States, the U.S. has pledged to Australia — a close ally and Assange’s home country — that he could serve his sentence down under, where experts think he would be released immediately.
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