The Biden administration “threw in the towel” over its fight with Julian Assange because it did not believe a Labour government would extradite him, the WikiLeaks founder’s former legal adviser has said.
Geoffrey Robertson KC, who mentored Sir Keir Starmer when he was a young barrister, told The Telegraph that American prosecutors knew they “couldn’t rely on” a Starmer administration to put Assange on a flight across the Atlantic.
Mr Robertson, the head of the legal chambers that has represented Assange in his battle with the US legal system, said other political factors were also at play, including pressure from Assange’s native Australia after a change of government two years ago.
Another key factor in resolving the case, Mr Robertson said, was the support for a plea bargain deal from Caroline Kennedy, the influential US ambassador to Australia.
Assange was released from Belmarsh prison in London on Monday and pleaded guilty to a single charge under the Espionage Act in federal court in Sapian, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, after midnight (GMT) on Wednesday.
He will fly to Australia as a free man and meet up with his wife and children, due to being sentenced to time served.
The deal came after Assange was granted leave to appeal the extradition order on the grounds of free speech, which was due to be heard on July 9. He was being represented by Edward Fitzgerald KC of Doughty Street Chambers.
Mr Robertson, the founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers, represented Assange for several years and believes the US authorities sensed that even if Assange lost his latest appeal, a Labour government would have found reasons to refuse his extradition.
He said: “Even if America was successful, it would depend on the government of the day as to whether he was actually extradited.
“I think they have thrown in the towel because they know, as everyone else knows, that we are going to have a Starmer government next week and they couldn’t rely on a Labour government to put him on a plane.
“So they have reached this deal that allows him to get time served.”
Mr Robertson, who holds both British and Australian citizenship, said it was “significant” that Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister whose Labour Party came to power two years ago, supported the release of Assange.
Questions had also started to be asked in the US press supporting the idea that Assange fell under the protection of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which covers freedom of speech and freedom of the press, a potential unwelcome distraction for Joe Biden in the run-up to November’s presidential election.
Asked about dropping the prosecution in April, Mr Biden said: “We’re considering it.”
Mr Robertson said Ms Kennedy had been a key figure in the saga. Last year, she told the Sydney Morning Herald there could be a “resolution” to the Assange case via a plea deal, which flew in the face of comments by Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, who had rejected pleas for his release.
He also said Assange’s threats to kill himself if he was sent to America might have had a bearing on the case, as Sir Keir, a former human rights lawyer, might have been sympathetic to the argument that sending Assange to the US would have put his life at risk.
Mr Robertson suggested the fact the US had agreed to a court appearance in an unincorporated territory of the US showed “an element of capitulation” by the Americans as it took into account Assange’s refusal to fly over American air space.
The plea deal marks the end of years of wrangling over Mr Assange’s future, which has embroiled the governments of the US, UK, Sweden, Australia and Ecuador.
Mr Biden’s administration has been mulling withdrawing the 18 espionage charges brought by Donald Trump’s administration in 2018 for some time, amid diplomatic pressure from Australia and doubt about how long he would serve in prison in the US. The total sentence could have amounted to 175 years.
On Tuesday, Stella Assange, who represented the WikiLeaks founder before marrying him in prison, said he would ask Mr Biden for a presidential pardon for the one conviction he has agreed to.
She told the Reuters news agency she hoped the US government would eventually wipe her husband’s criminal record clean in the name of press freedom.
“The fact that there is a guilty plea, under the Espionage Act in relation to obtaining and disclosing National Defence information is obviously a very serious concern for journalists and national security journalists in general,” she said.
Mr Trump, who had previously pursued Assange in the courts, has said he is “very seriously considering” offering him a pardon if he wins a second presidential term in November.
Assange has also launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the charter flight from the UK to the Northern Mariana Islands, and onwards to Australia after his hearing.
The plane was provided by the Australian government, but Assange must now pay back the £395,000 cost.
“He will basically be in debt when he lands in Canberra,” his wife said. “We’re going to launch an emergency fund to try to get this money so that we can pay the Australian government back for his freedom flight.”
The announcement of the plea deal reignited the debate about WikiLeaks in Washington on Tuesday.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is running for president as an independent candidate, suggested a monument to Assange should be erected in the US capital “as a civics lesson for the American public about the importance of free speech”.
Mr Kennedy, who is Caroline Kennedy’s cousin, also said Edward Snowdon should be pardoned and allowed to return to the US after spending more than a decade in exile in Russia.
Mike Pence, the former vice-president in Trump’s administration, said Assange “should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” and criticised Mr Biden for agreeing to a plea deal.
“The Biden administration’s plea deal with Assange is a miscarriage of justice and dishonours the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces and their families,” he said.
James Clapper, who was the director of US national intelligence when the Iraq and Afghanistan disclosures were released, said Mr Assange had “paid his dues” and that the plea deal was the right decision.
“There was a damage assessment done at the time – there was concern but I don’t recall direct proof that assets in Afghanistan and Iraq supporting or helping the US were exposed,” he told CNN.
The journalist and campaigner was accused of working with Chelsea Manning, a former US Army soldier, to obtain and release papers relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in what has been dubbed the largest leak of sensitive material in American history.
The WikiLeaks website later released more documents from the Democratic National Committee and from the CIA.
American officials argued that his actions endangered national security and the lives of US personnel working overseas, but press freedom campaigners said the WikiLeaks documents had exposed government wrongdoing and that he should be released.
However, the case was complicated by the fact that Assange lived at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, with political asylum status, for seven years from 2012 to 2019.
The Ecuadorian government refused British police access to Assange, arguing that any officer who entered the building to arrest him would be in breach of the Vienna Convention on diplomacy.
The relationship between Assange and the embassy eventually broke down, and he left in April 2019 to be arrested by British police on charges of breaching his bail conditions from an earlier case in Sweden, and on behalf of the US authorities.
He was sent to HMP Belmarsh, in south-east London, where his planned extradition was further delayed by a series of legal challenges. In 2021, he had a small stroke while in prison.
Assange’s legal team brought a variety of appeals against the extradition order, including that would likely face the death penalty if convicted in the US, in what he argued would amount to a breach of his human rights.
In April, Joe Biden’s administration provided “binding assurances” to the UK government that Assange would not face the death penalty if he stood trial.
Last month, Assange fought off the threat of an immediate extradition to the US while his lawyers worked on an agreement with the American authorities.
