consumer of independent news and the first place you should be going to is Consortium News and please do try to support them when you can. It doesn't have its articles behind a paywall, it's free for everyone, it's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades. I hope that with the public's continuing support of Consortium News it will continue for a very long time to come. Thank you so much. Contrary to some serious money. Welcome to CN Live, season two, episode 15, drama in the court. I'm Joel Aurea, editor-in-chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Boss. The first week of the resumed extradition hearing of the imprisoned WikiLeaks published at Julian Assange is over and there was drama throughout the shortened week. It began on Monday with the last-minute acceptance of a U.S. superseding indictment by magistrate Vanessa Barreza, followed by the rearrest of Assange on a new extradition request from the United States. After that, there was a last-minute request by the defense to allow more time for them to prepare for this new indictment. That was denied by Barreza. On that first day, 40 civil society groups had their remote video access revoked by Barreza. Consortium News has been able to follow every moment in the courtroom via remote video. On day two, the government revealed a strategy to focus only on released WikiLeaks documents that contained the names of informants. Prosecutor James Lewis QC said Assange was not being charged with releasing any other documents, which brought an outburst from a Julian Assange inside his glass cage of nonsense. Barreza warned he'd be removed from the trial if he did that again. Reading from the indictment, the defense showed that it was indeed nonsense, as Assange was being charged with possessing and disseminating an array of classified materials, not just those restricted to naming informants. While there is no statute against revealing informants' names, as there is for unmasking a government agent, for instance, the prosecution argued that an informant's name is defense information and thereby protected by the Espionage Act. The government here seems to want it both ways. They're appealing to the public in the media and saying Assange isn't being prosecuted for possessing and disseminating classified materialized journalists do routinely, but only because he's an ogre and release names of informants endangering them, which is not a crime. The afternoon of day two saw the wilting of a defense witness, journalism professor Mark Feldstein, under a barrage of bullying questioning by Lewis. On day three, defense witness Trevor Tim, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who will be joining us in this webcast, dismantled key elements of the government's case, pointing out that Congress voted down a bill to criminalize revealing informant's names, meaning it was not against the law. Lewis was reduced to trying to undermine Tim's credibility because he did not include a statement from a U.S. assistant attorney which said Assange wasn't a journalist and wasn't being prosecuted for publishing. Tim responded that he did not rely on government press releases and instead studied the indictment to determine that the assistant U.S. attorney was wrong. Day four, Thursday brought more drama as the hearing was adjourned until Monday because of the coronavirus scare. A member of the prosecution team had to be tested, the result was negative and the court will resume Monday morning. Joining us to discuss these events and the legal strategies involved are journalist Stefania Maurizzi. The Italian journalist who has partnered with WikiLeaks to publish some of its biggest releases and whose freedom of information requests exposed corruption surrounding the Swedish process against Assange. And by Alexander McCuris, a British illegal analyst and editor of The Duran who has particular insights into the UK justice system. While we wait for Trevor Tim to join us in a few minutes, we have about eight minutes, I'd like to do a lot, lightening around with both of you, Stefania and Alexander to give you two to three minutes each to give me your impressions of the first week. It's not exactly the association game so whereas for example I'd say Lewis and you'd say bully but I want you to give me a very succinct idea. Let me start with you Stefania, you watched the proceedings via remote access. What did you take away from the first week? So first of all Joe, I think the first week was rather good for Julian Assange. I was really shocked about the decision by the Judge Vanessa Baraitse to allow the second superseding indictment. This indictment was served at the last minute. It was made public at the end of June and at that time Julian had no access to his lawyers. It was notified, it was notified to the court at the very last minute and that superseding indictment really makes no sense to me because it introduces no charges but it tried to depict Julian Assange as an hacker for basically for some facts going back to 2011 which were fully investigated. They resulted in basically a sentence where some young hackers basically under the FBI entrapment basically were charged, put in prison for 10 years, some of them like Jeremy Hammond and those documents which basically I analyzed for many months with WikiLeaks as a media partner, WikiLeaks revealed important information in the public interest and there is no doubt about this. For example those documents about Strutford, the private intelligence company, US private intelligence company, were revealing how the Strutford company was monitoring the activists who had basically who were trying to defend the victims by the union car by the Bhopal incident in India. So it was definitely information in the public interest. Assange was never ever charged for those facts and there is no evidence whatsoever that he was involved in the hacking. He received the materials as any journalists from sources. So I mean for me that indictment makes no sense apart from the fact that they are trying the US government and is trying to depict Julian Assange as an hacker to make his journalistic protection weaker and weaker. They argued that he's not a journalist at all which is very dangerous because we should not allow the government to say who is a journalist and who is not. So from my point of view the US is doing what is the US is doing is very dangerous for journalism is trying to depict Julian Assange as an hacker. He's trying to criminalize just the fact that we're receiving these documents and obtaining classified information which we we do all the time as reporters. He's trying to argue that the fact that he help allegedly help Chelsea Manning to log herself into the US computers so that she could protect their identity as hacking when you know I mean you have been a journalist you know that we do all sorts of things to protect our sources. We called them one of the first thing I was basically trained as a journalist was how to call a government official without creating phone metadata. I mean in order to protect identities of my sources so we do these kind of tricks all the time. It's part not just of our profession but also of our ethical requirement to protect our sources. Bring Alexander in and we may have four more minutes. We'll come back to you Stefania. Of course. I too think obviously from a somewhat different perspective that I think the first week actually has not gone badly for Assange and I'll say why. I mean what we have seen from the US authorities and from the Crown is a continuously shifting position. What they're trying to do is firstly they're trying to shift away from the idea of Julian Assange being a journalist because they realize they're in a very difficult position if they accept that he is a journalist and they're trying to shift away from that and they're also trying to shift away from the essence of this case which is however you package it it is a clearly political case. Now we're going to hear from Mr Tim's more about that I've no doubt but it is clearly a political case so they're trying to refocus it. They started with a first indictment which is all about you know Assange helping Manning in a way that was clearly intended to help Manning conceal his identity and this is something the journalists do but it could be presented in a kind of way as a criminal case and of course that didn't really work because the legal opinion in the United States people like Alan Dershowitz, Andrew McCarthy came and said this is too incoherent it doesn't really make much sense and so they then moved to the Espionage Act and the trouble with the Espionage Act allegations is that they look very obviously political so now we have yet another indictment it's the second superseding indictment but it's the third in the series which is now trying to shift back towards more obviously criminal allegations which are involved with you know helping people carry out hacking they don't look very convincing or substantial in themselves they are based on a person who doesn't look like a very good witness he's got a record of criminal activity and dishonesty and besides I'm not even convinced that some of them are actually crimes so they're struggling to actually it seems to me put forward a coherent case at the same time they're getting witnesses and the prosecution the crown is trying to cast doubt on whether these witnesses are experts which they obviously are it's trying to sort of bully them but it cannot ultimately it seems to me shake the evidence these expert witnesses are giving which is one he is a journalist two what he is doing what he did what he's accused of doing is what journalists do and three that this is a politically motivated case so what we see is this strange behavior from Mr Lewis he tries to bully and shake the witnesses I personally don't think that looks very good or very convincing and of course he relies to a inordinate degree on the affidavit of Mr Cromberg who is of course the US government's attorney so of course he is saying in his affidavit all the things he is saying I mean he is obviously not an independent or impartial witness you cannot it seems to me use the the witness of a lawyer in the case to try to refute the expert opinion of those who are actually experts if this was a conventional case I would say it was starting to look as if it was in trouble it's not a conventional case there's lots of politics and all sorts of things going on behind the scenes I'm I am however more hopeful after this first week perhaps not so much in this first instance hearing but perhaps on appeal but I have to caution that you know there are lots of things that are problematic already about these proceedings and if the government wins on such a fragile case everybody should realize that the position of journalists is in great jeopardy because if they can win on these flimsy grounds against this journalist they can win on equally flimsy grounds against all journalists thank you Alexander we have uh Trevor Tim with us now we're going to bring him in in just a second Trevor can you hear me I can oh nice to be here thank you so much for joining us we know you only got a very few minutes and we're each going to take a crack at you we'll have one question each and I'm going to start it off by saying I mean even though you didn't see the previous testimony you seem very well prepared for Lewis's tactics on the question of the informants that we've up and writing and saying since the beginning of this indictment that there is no statute against revealing the names of indictments it would have been listed at the top of the indictment and it's an interesting argument that Lewis made it was the first time I understood what the government was doing that they consider that the informants names to be defense information and therefore protected by the espionage act but I wanted to and then when you brought up that the fell legislation by Lieberman it criminalized that revealing the informants in fact proof right there was never a crime I want to know if you were surprised the government this is my question is going down this route to try to appeal to the public on the one hand by saying and to the press that we're not we're not uh prosecuting Assange because he's not a journalist and not for uh possessing and disseminating class or information but only because he's revealing names of informants which you say which you clearly point out is not a crime is is that a surprise to you that they're using this strategy and how far can they go with it well it was interesting to see that they were trying to emphasize at least in my testimony what was not in the indictment they made a big deal about pointing to the justice department's press release around this case saying that Julian Assange is not a journalist we're not prosecuting journalists but then when you read exactly what they have in the indictment which is the actual case before the judge what they are doing is essentially criminalizing what journalists do all the time I mean I think there's there's three parts to this that are are quite disturbing number one in a few counts they are saying that merely by the fact that that Julian Assange obtains this information not that he spoke to sources not that he was asking for information but the the the literal fact that he had these documents in his possession is a crime and you know we know for a fact that journalists of all stripes of all in all sorts of newspapers around the country routinely have classified information in their possession because sources have given it to them in one way or another you know these charges didn't deal with publishing but we can get to those in a second the second set of charges is about the fact that Julian Assange obtained these documents by either asking for them publicly saying you know we would like to sources to send us information on government abuses of power or illegality or corruption and then potentially saying the same thing along the lines to Chelsea Manning in private now we know that these actions are also very similar if not the same to what journalists do all the time and so they're you know essentially trying to pretend because they don't think that Julian Assange is quote unquote a journalist that that these charges wouldn't apply to to regular journals when we know in fact that they would and then you know we get to the third set of charges which is the actual publishing of the informants names now you know we should back up here and say that in these first two set of charges that i'm talking about the obtaining of the documents and the speaking to absorb to obtain the documents those cover the entire tranche of Chelsea Manning documents so not just the documents that have informants names on them but the thousands and thousands of documents that journalists around the world have reported on but when we got to the publishing of you know journal or the informants names the prosecution didn't want to talk about the legality there they wanted to talk about whether i thought it was responsible to publish these names and you know instead of kind of playing into their games i kind of turned it on back onto them saying you know that's not the question in this case at all the question in this case is is not whether i think Julian Assange was responsible for for publishing those names you know and the the question before the the court was whether or not that was illegal and violates the law and you know we know for a fact that Joe Lieberman attempted to pass a bill in 2010 called the shield act that would have explicitly made this illegal congress chose not to pass that law and in my mind that tells me two things number one that congress did not think that that was illegal at the time and number two that they didn't think it was worthy to make legal after the fact so you know in my mind you know these three aspects of the case are quite dangerous to journalists everywhere and in my mind all three are patently unconstitutional Stefania yes i mean i i completely agree with what Trevor is telling and you know it was also really bad that they they try to to play with words about the fact that the case is definitely not political and they were they were trying to argue that basically it's not true that the obama administration had uh uh hadn't charged Julian Assange and the reason why he was not charged was because he was in the embassy which is ridiculous because the first uh the first the first indictment the first charges were brought by the Obama administration by the 21st of December 2017 and Julian wants inside the embassy so i mean it's complete nonsense so i mean i think uh i agree with Alexander that they are struggling to make a coherent case a coherent prosecution and they realize of course that basically what they are doing with the we love extremely serious consequences on journalism investigative journalism because this kind of thing we do this kind of things all the time all the time all around the world and of course they are trying to depict it him as an hacker so i mean this is what they are trying now yeah absolutely i'm sorry go on well yeah i mean i was just gonna say just to add on to that yeah i mean um the i think the prosecution was essentially trying to hide the ball with the court um they are trying to make this about everything besides what the actual charges are um the Julian Assange has been indicted under so you know they're trying to point to the press release that uh says that Julian Assange is not a journalist in all of the background uh kind of color in the indictment they are trying to paint Julian Assange as a hacker even though um even if Julian Assange did have a hacker background uh you know many decades ago um it's really irrelevant uh to the charges uh related to Chelsea Manning where he you know he clearly was acting as a journalist um and they are are you know trying to focus the case on one single charge out of 17 or 18 charges related to this you know purported failed conspiracy to violate the CFAA which is another weak charge but they are essentially trying to to use this as a fig leaf to bring all of these other charges um onto the books so that they can essentially criminalize all these journalistic behaviors and you know I hope the the court can see through it um but you know when you have the the awesome power of the U.S. government behind you um they can you know often manipulate things uh in a way that makes things look either worse than they are or safer than they are uh when we're talking about whether the judge can extradite Assange or not um and so hopefully it got across my testimony how how dangerous this potentially could be if it goes through I'd like to bring in Kevin Gastola who's receiving a lot of praise for his tweet during the first week of court action Kevin is the managing editor of shadow proof Kevin welcome to CN live can you uh floors yours to ask him uh Trevor question yes Trevor uh I wanted to hear from you on what the prosecution was raising because it wasn't unique to you they've used almost the same blueprint for almost every witness that has taken the stance thus far and we've only had uh uh four witnesses uh three of them who dealt with the issues that you deal with which are our press freedom and potentially you might be able to include the political opinions aspect of the case uh and you know I wondered how you felt about how they were invoking the federal rules of prosecution as if that's somehow evidence that there wouldn't be political bias within the justice department I thought that was rather absurd because those are just guidelines that are out there for prosecutors to follow we've also seen them using the indictment as evidence even though we know as journalists that we are not supposed to take indictments at face value because those are not examples of evidence and you know thirdly along the same lines I would I would say how did you feel about this sort of pickle they were trying to put you in of being unbiased quote unquote unbiased where you know they were trying to trap you into acting into feeling like you weren't following the rules of the court and presenting your evidence because you weren't incorporating the prosecution's line of reasoning into your answers because I would point out that you know if we're really focused on being unbiased it's not like the prosecutor is going above and beyond to factor in the the evidence or the the realities and facts that are within the own within the defense's case and so I think it should go both ways that if if defense witnesses are expected to be unbiased then the prosecutor in presenting their questions should also factor in things that are provable and real within the defense's case yeah absolutely I mean first of all Kevin it's great to see you it's been a long time uh and thank you so much for for all your excellent coverage and CN's coverage too I mean it's been um you know this is uh unrelated to your question but it's it's been you know fairly depressing to see the lack of mainstream coverage in this case especially after uh all of the major newspapers in the United States um you know talked about uh when these charges came down how um what a clear and present danger to the First Amendment these charges were yet we've seen you know almost almost zero mainstream coverage so uh you you know thank you for carrying that flag uh for everybody I was uh the reason I was able to follow um the first few days of testimony before mine again I wasn't allowed a video link even as a witness uh was because I was I was able to follow your tweets um but but back to your question um you know the biased uh question was uh quite humorous in in my mind first of all I was an expert witness for the defense um you know so you know obviously um my opinions uh were going to gel with theirs certainly you know I made those opinions based on the facts in the case um but you know they were at one point you know questioning me about uh the fact that I have an organization that advocates for press freedom and uh because of that uh I am somehow biased or that I may be biased because I myself might be worried about prosecution if this case goes forward because I talked about in the courtroom how um I myself have called for documents to be leaked um so I thought you know I thought that was quite absurd and you know they seem to give up on that angle um after about five minutes because I think they saw that it was uh it was going nowhere um but interesting thing that they're doing uh it seems with all the witnesses is is trying to go back in time and and talk about what uh like The Guardian and The New York Times editors um were saying about WikiLeaks at the time and uh you know certainly The Guardian uh some of The Guardian editors and some of The New York Times editors um didn't get along with Julian Assange and um and uh at the time at least in some cases you know criticize their editorial judgment so the the prosecutor for example made me read back a joint statement uh that these newspapers made around the time that that the informant's names uh got released and you know that's that's all well and good they're allowed to do that um but I also think it was quite misleading I mean uh you know they were essentially again trying to change the question before the court uh they were saying that The New York Times thought that that Julian Assange was being irresponsible but um uh you know the U.S. government doesn't get to decide uh who's a responsible a responsible journalist and who is not and what the prosecutor you know conveniently left out was that all these newspapers that made this statement at the time uh have also made uh statements in the past year saying how dangerous this prosecution would be um to them as journalists um and how they were uh you know vehemently opposed to it uh and so I I made sure to to point that out to the prosecution uh you know right after he he made me read this statement Alexander please yes I mean I've got a actually a fairly simple point first of all can I just say Trevor I thought you I mean I have I didn't see your evidence I don't have a link but everything I've read about it suggests to me that you gave your evidence exceptionally well and you did not let Lewis shake you which is what he seems to be trying to do but it seems to me that the fundamental problem that Lewis has is that they have to try to argue that Assange in some way is not a journalist but they can't really say why they can't say what it is about him that he means that he is not a journalist so they're having all these problems they're struggling to reconcile all the various allegations that they're making about him they they have these various indictments they say different things they have to go outside these indictments and bring in state press statements and things that Mr Cromberg said and you know things about you know irresponsible actions that you might or might not have committed because ultimately if he is a journalist then this whole thing this whole case becomes for them extremely difficult now that that is my impression of it so it's it's at this attempt to try and get away from the fact the acceptance that he is a journalist and their inability to acknowledge that if he is a journalist he has done nothing which is either illegal and certainly not anything that he should be extradited for yeah well thank you for that first of all but yeah so you know this was was was definitely kind of one of their main tactics like i said they made me read the justice department press release which you know i i told them i thought was was essentially meaningless but my point to them was was actually you know i i didn't want to get into an argument with them about whether i thought Julian Assange was a journalist or not because i again i think that's actually besides the point it actually doesn't matter if the justice department or anybody else considers Julian Assange a quote unquote journalist what we do know for a fact was that he was engaging in journalistic activities in the actions that he is charged for and really that's all that matters because you know the first amendment you know has a clause in it that guarantees press freedoms but it doesn't say we guarantee press freedoms for full-time journalists who are issued a press pass by the US government it says we we guarantee these these rights to everybody and so that means whether you're a full-time journalist who works the New York Times whether you are a live streamer on the street who's never been employed by a news outlet before in your life or you know going all the way back to the founding of the country the anonymous pamphleteers that were so influential back in the the 17 and 1800s and so you know they're again trying to hide the ball here they're they're you know trying to pretend that if Julian Assange doesn't fit within this job description then that he doesn't get the rights that other journalists do and it's my opinion and the opinion of many others that that's just not how the constitution works and it was it was funny to me to see that in in other in other testimony it looked like they were trying to to catch the witnesses and not understanding how the indictment works where with me they were like oh actually ignore the indictment and and and focus on this this other stuff it was the other amusing part was that they were you know completely ignored a big section of the charges they didn't want to talk about the what was in my expert testimony was which was a long explanation of how journalists are always interacting with sources you know journalists don't normally you know certainly sometimes it happens but you don't have documents magically dropped off on your doorstep in a neat little pile where you can write your whole story without ever talking to anybody else ever again you know what happens is somebody gives you documents you go back to them for more information you ask for clarification you potentially ask for more documents you then go to other sources to try to corroborate this you ask them is this true the source may tell you yes it is true or they may say no actually this is how it works i'll tell you those sources might give journalists more documents that's just how journalists work of course journalists are talking to sources all the time and what the US government is doing is is is saying that that Julia Sange was engaged in conspiracy by doing exactly this and so they didn't want to talk about that at all they just left those charges you know completely alone even though that was basically the entire basis for my for my expert testimony so again you know i just think what they are trying to do is is is hide the actual nature of their case here and you know we still have a lot of witnesses to go so i hope they're not successful but you know they're also adapted their game so we'll see how this goes Elizabeth yeah Trevor i'd like to ask you about just briefly about how you see this case moving forward do you have any hope for a successful defense um you know i think to be honest it's a it's an uphill battle you know i can't say that i'm optimistic but i do know that the defense team is is incredibly capable and confident they have expert witnesses coming up with all sorts of levels of expertise i'm particularly excited for for Daniel Ellsberg's testimony which should be happening hopefully in the next week or two i'm not sure if it's it had to get rescheduled and i'm not sure exactly what day it's on but i think that could be incredibly powerful but you know the important part is that the defense i think is is or the legal team is is doing a very comprehensive job and that's incredibly important because you know they need to get all the evidence kind of on on the record in this trial period for down the road for the appeals because they're not going to be able to bring in new evidence in the appeals and i think you know in in and i'm just speaking generally here i don't i'm i can't claim to be an expert in in how the uk court system works but you know if we take the u.s for example it's it's sometimes hard for lower level judges to make decisions of this magnitude where they end up going against the government and those decisions often come in the appeals courts or or the highest court uh in the uk and so um you know it's certainly possible that the july sange can win now but i think um you know he has several appeals available to him and that may ultimately be where hopefully he he ends up victorious trevor before we let me go let me let you go i wanted to ask you one question there's been one challenge to the espionage act constitutional challenge on the first amendment 1919 shunt versus the u.s and the supreme court upheld the espionage act as not being unconstitutional so that section he is still in there a sange did certainly possess and disseminate classified information technically speaking he committed a crime but of course everybody who reads the newspaper or has the email that we colleagues release is also committed that time do you anticipate another challenge at some point if he's brought to the united states if he's convicted so that this could become an even larger case so that the espionage act can be once again challenged on the first amendment grounds if this case actually gets to the u.s and you know honestly we might be years away from that because julien sange has several appeals available to him all the way from the uk at high court to i i think he can even go to the european court of appeals or the european human rights uh court um but uh if this case gets to the us absolutely i mean i think it should go all the way to supreme court because it is a foundational first amendment issue and the you know the the supreme court case as you mentioned a hundred years ago actually don't even think those apply anymore they they haven't been explicitly overruled but they've essentially been overruled implicitly by a series of supreme court rulings over the the next 50 or 60 years you know the last time that the supreme court weighed in on the espionage act was was the panagon papers case and they weren't deciding this exact issue they were they were talking about censorship versus prosecution but if you go back and read some of those uh judges opinions i mean it's pretty clear that that many of the judges then thought that this law was unconstitutional um and certainly this is also why the government has never brought these cases these charges before the government knows that this law is unconstitutional the government lawyers know that um that's why you know in my testimony i brought up half a dozen times that that uh reporters have been threatened uh with prosecution under the espionage act but the government never follows through they want to be able to use those threats but they never actually want to do it because they know that the the statute is going to be struck down um and then you know this is a combination of the trump administration um you know not caring about uh potential constitutional issues or those uh norms that have been established for for decades um and the fact that they have a rather unpopular uh defendant uh that's unpopular with both political parties that they think um they can potentially squeeze through without that type of scrutiny that would normally happen if this was a reporter for the new york times um but so that's a long way of saying that that this is um would absolutely um uh be a major case that would potentially go all the way to the supreme court uh if it was in the united states i do think we're years away from that happening um even when it gets to the us it would take years to get to the supreme court um and uh but i'm i'm hoping that it doesn't get that far but we'll see can you stick around for another question or two uh yeah i got i got i got time for one more Kevin i'll give you another crack please thanks well so you know trevor you've been tracking this very closely through organization i know you go back 10 years i'm wondering if you want to comment on something who i know was your mentor james goodall um when you were going through law school i know you got to work for him and uh he's made a very salient point i believe about how they're prosecuting this they want to say that uh he is able to be prosecuted under the espionage act while not granting him the first amendment rights protections that would come from being prosecuted under that act and i think that's an important point to make here um he also in a conversation i had with him had a comment about what happened with this case that came through the southern district of new york uh john codle ruled um in a case involving the democratic national committee that it is protected under the first amendment to publish hacked materials the dnc had challenged uh had argued that wiki leaks had committed some kind of uh an attack or i guess it was defamation or slander against the dnc by publishing the podesta emails um and so it's my view that that becomes kind of a controlling kind of law potentially that has some relevance to the defense if they had a trial here in the united states do you have any comment on this dynamic here of the case how the first amendment interacts with the espionage acts yeah absolutely i mean i think uh a few people have made the remark uh like mike pompeo for example the trump secretary of state that julien sange doesn't have first amendment rights because he's not a u.s citizen um you know mike pompeo clearly has no idea how the law works um that's just not true if you are being prosecuted in the u.s uh you have first amendment rights full stop it doesn't matter where you're from or who you are or where you were born um and you know that's not even in dispute um you know there's clear uh supreme court precedent on this case um the u.s government uh isn't even going to attempt to make that argument at least i think at least i don't think that they're that stupid um uh but you're right so uh you know this is a this is actually um uh 10 years ago i got to spend a few years working for james goodale so james goodale is the former general counsel of the new york times he was actually the their general counsel when the pentagon papers case happened um and uh you know he's been one of the the staunch advocates for the right uh of wiki leaks uh to publish this information and has talked about for a long time uh for how this case threatens the rights of journalists even though journalists a lot of journalists that should say dislike julien sange or um you know find his tactics um uh you know unsavory it doesn't matter in this case um you know the the current uh general counsel for the new york times or associate general counsel david mccraw has made this exact point he has said uh that there is even if you uh you know find julien sange just tasteful or uh can talk about the differences between the new york times and wiki leaks under the law there is no difference and that's what we're worried about here um the way that the espionage act is written uh it doesn't carve out an exception for for certain journalists um it is applied uh to everybody equally and i made this point in the court i was essentially said that you know not only would uh every reporter who worked on these documents essentially be guilty but every every person uh even in this courtroom who reads these documents because they physically have them in their hand they are obtaining these documents if you take the newspaper and you hand it to your friend to say hey check out the story or you're on twitter and you post a link um that means that you're also committing a crime by transmitting them well it is just an incredibly incredibly broad law um and again this is exactly why the u.s government has never attempted to go after a a private person under this law before is because you know you look at it for five minutes and it's it's it's absurd um and of course a judge would hopefully find it unconstitutional uh you know but here we have the u.s government trying it anyways uh savannah and alexander like to give you both another opportunity well i mean i i please please please no no savannah you go first go no first you okay well i you know i i i think the way i would describe my mood after the first week is perhaps not optimistic but actually more hopeful can i just explain one thing though about the appeal process if this loses at this level this this first instance level he has a right of appeal to the high court and that would be a very long very prolonged very you know powerful um hearing with probably uh several high court judges members of the judiciary it would be it would be an important hearing the the next step up is to the supreme court of the united kingdom i think that the european court of human rights is too remote unless the european the supreme court itself decides to refer parts of the case to the european court of human rights which it might very well do so either we are looking at an appeal process it will be very strong i think that as i said he's got many more grounds of appeal now than it looked to me as if he might have a while back because i don't think the the crown and the u.s authorities are responding to the points that are being made very well i don't think they really have a clear idea of how they're going to get to that point of being able to establish that there is a proper case upon which he can be extradited upon on these indictments now i was not in the court i haven't seen you know the body language of all people involved i haven't heard the tone of the judge i can't speak about that but going back to those decisions which the judge made on the first day of last week i do get the sense that she herself maritza is starting to sense that this thing isn't going entirely according to plan i think a decision to refuse a postponement for the defense to respond more in more detail to this new superseding indictment was interesting and i think her a decision to restrict even further the degree of reporting of this case was also interesting and of course it suggests to me that as i said she feels that this thing is slipping out of control and doesn't also know quite how to proceed i just wanted to say also one very last thing which is that trying to argue that the whole case now is about disclosure of the identities of informants not only is contrary to what the indictments say it looks to me frankly desperate i cannot imagine that anybody who is aware of these proceedings including maritza who's the judge and certainly not the high court judges who will consider this will believe that and i will also say that i think not only will they not believe that but the very fact that lewis is making comments like that shows that he too understands that this isn't going according to plan so as i said hopeful not optimistic good grounds for appeal so as for me i i completely agree with alexander with trevor that i agree that the the defense is doing well and the us is not doing well at all they are criminalizing journalism they have they struggled with this case because they realize that it's very very difficult to characterize the weak leaks and juliana sange work as different from what we do all the time as journalists at the same time let me tell you that based on my experience five years experience in dealing in getting trying to get the documents about this case using the freedom of information act and litigating uh the my freedom of information act in sweden uk us australia for the last five years i'm not optimistic about the uk courts because i have seen how the uk authorities have behaved in this case so having a look reading the swedish documents so i mean i got this document and these documents are about not just about the swedish prosecution authority but also about the crown prosecution service which is the very same agency in charge of this extradition case so the the crown prosecution prosecution service was the agency in charge of cooperating with sweden about the swedish case assisting their prosecution and it's the very same agency in charge of this us prosecution so i know uh due to this work how the crown prosecution behaved in this case and i'm not optimistic at all because i have seen how they behaved in the swedish case i have seen the pressure on the swedish prosecutors to have juliana sange in london in this kind of uh quagmire for the last nine years putting pressure on the swedish prosecutor now to go to london to question him not to drop the case when back in 2013 the swedish prosecutors were considering to drop the case and the uk prosecution service was telling them don't you dare get coffee and i know how they were telling to the swedish prosecutor don't believe this case is just an extradition case like any other so based on this based on the fact that the crown prosecution service destroyed the the documents even if the the case was still ongoing still very controversial and high profile the crown prosecution service destroyed the documents about this case while still ongoing and to this day i'm still fighting to get any explanation why these documents were destroyed we are still at the tribunal asking for official information of when they were destroyed what these documents contained how many and why they were destroyed so i'm not optimistic about the uk courts i don't know what happened next i don't know whether this case will basically be will go to the european court of human rights but i'm not optimistic about the uk tribunals and courts unfortunately based on this work on the documents official documents which have allowed to reconstruct the case factually and basically i'm not i'm not optimistic and we love any fair treatment unfortunately. Kevin would you like to ask another question and grab as long as you can hang out here well i suppose my question would be um you know i understand this case mostly because of my coverage of chelsea manning and to me it seemed like what the united states government was going to be bringing was very nearly a carbon copy of the case against chelsea manning and that they were just going to shift it over and say oh it was actually the publisher who did these crimes and that's to me just seemed to and it's i'm oversimplifying but it seemed like that was kind of what we could say if we were trying to help people understand what was happening and to maybe communicate why it is so alarming because we haven't made that leap before to go from public going after the source um you know what there's there's a couple things i think of as i listened to everyone talk about all of this which is one uh you talking about how their concept of the espionage act is reminds me of what has been written about with how the the documents were uh blocked from access by any federal government employees when they were published how the library of congress and the national archives and the pentagon set up ways in which they couldn't access um it's written about by julia massange in the introduction to the the book that was published about the diplomatic cables uh that in fact during chelsea vanning's case there was a filter on the emails that was pulling out anything related to wiki leaks so they you had you had the prosecution that was completely in the dark on some aspects of the case because it was going into a spam folder um and so my question to you is with this new superseding indictment that we see this fresh extradition request as it morphs away from what we understand as the core of these allegations if we are to believe that that's where it is headed i mean the defense certainly feels like they're trying to move this away from chelsea manning's actions to other actions that are far lesser known and i i'm asking my question to you is how do you feel we should grapple with this is is this bait that we shouldn't take or um as we take as we take this seriously and they start to emphasize alleged hacking or conspiracy to engage in hacking how do we brush up our work in defending freedom of the press so that we defend against those more general allegations yeah it's a really good question because you know in the superseding indictment it's it's you know i'm not uh i'm not an expert in criminal law but it's the first superseding indictment i've seen where they didn't actually add any new charges and that might have been because of the extradition rules they're not allowed to or something like that but what the only thing that they did do was add a bunch of background that had nothing to do with with almost all of the charges except for one and this background is essentially trying to paint julia sange as as some sort of hacker it was actually interesting to me i thought that they were going to use that to try to totally shift the case because you know when you look at the chelsea manning stuff this is um kind of classic journalistic behavior they never asked me any question about anything beyond strictly the the chelsea manning interactions which i was rather surprised by and you know i think that that anybody covering this case should just keep their eye on the ball and the actual charges in the indictment rather than kind of this background color which really has almost nothing to do with with every chart except maybe arguably one and so the charges related to the chelsea manning disclosures remain exactly the same they're the ones that i described earlier involving the receipt of classified documents the talking to a source is giving them classified documents and the publishing of them all activities that of course um journalists engage in all all the time so you know i think the government is is going to try a bunch of tactics to kind of hide the ball with me they were trying to ignore some of the counts maybe down the road they're going to focus on all this background information um while not focusing on any of the counts it's it's hard to say um but i think the the real upshot from the the superseding indictment is that none of the counts have changed so all the problems that everybody said existed a year ago still exist and that's i think what i'm most most worried about unfortunately i have to take off now but but thanks so much for having me here it was a it was a great discussion and then hopefully i can come back soon well trevor 15 minutes turned into 45 and we're really grateful for that thank you so much again and again it's great to talk to you about your testimony great thanks so much take care bye bye uh we have uh someone who's asked to join our show and we said yes i don't know if he's in yet but it's kim.com the computer entrepreneur and friend of weekly leaks and really an assange and kim was obviously watching this live webcast and wants to join in is he in yet kathy hello kim can you hear me all right yes i can hear you how are you joe uh very good kim good to hear you now we want to see you because you only see i don't have a camera on this pc because uh you know they're watching this is a clandestine interview that's fine we understand uh well what what did you make of the first week kim i followed the entire hearing i've been reading all the documents uh all the indictments superseding indictments and a lot of the evidence that was presented so i'm pretty much uh up to date on what's happening i find the developments in the court uh quite interesting the judge is very bad at hiding her bias and i think um it is pretty clear to any observer that what's happening in the court is not really how a fair trial uh looks like now here's one thing that i think everyone is missing and i haven't seen it in any of the articles uh that were written by the media and even the observers in the court and that's what i would like to point out i think what the us is attempting here is not actually achieve the extradition they know they are going to fail with this i can say this because i know how the doj operates i've been fighting them for nine years uh their playbook is open to me i understand how they operate the decision was made in the united states government to take julien assange out of play and to punish him by process meaning using this process of extradition to have him silenced for the many years that it will take to run its course we heard earlier it will go through the district court it will then go to the high court and then potentially to the supreme court we are talking about a minimum of three to four years before we even reach the supreme court and then we probably have to wait another year for a decision from the supreme court so this whole process is designed to keep him locked up and to silence him the best strategy that the defense team of julien assange can apply to the strategy is the best counter strategy is to get a new bail hearing argue for a bail with new facts for example that the legal team has a private facility where julien can be under 24 seven guard but with access to his lawyers with access to computers to the internet to the mobile phone maybe even with his family living with them there's nothing that speaks against that and of course the us is going to say well he skipped bail before but surprise surprise he was completely right about his reasons which has now been confirmed by this indictment and this extradition request so he had legitimate concerns about his safety and for that reason was seeking asylum now i believe all of this in combination with the fact that his health is poor that a private security arrangement could be made would allow for a new bail hearing and once you have that bail hearing i believe the district court is going to refuse but then you can fast track the appeal process the bail matter will be heard much faster by the higher courts than the extradition matter so if they can make a compelling case to give julien bail he may be in front of the supreme court within a year and that way his legal team can secure his freedom that is the number one strategy that they have to focus on because while he is locked up in belmarsh and is going through this entire process the us has already won they have achieved their goal of silencing julien assange so the strategy has to shift in parallel to securing his freedom and that can be done i think on a fast track with urgent appeals after the district court says no which i'm convinced it will you can then move straight to the high court and i think the more senior the judges are the less dependent they are on the favor of the government this judge that is currently hearing it will not want to upset her future plans and race rise through the ranks but the more senior judges that have already reached their goals in their careers they may be looking at this and actually saying okay look there are some really compelling arguments here while he should have bail he has no threat to the public or anyone really there's no reason to keep him locked up especially if there are some good security arrangement that make the court feel like he's he's not going to run away and by the way nowhere would be safe for julien assange there's no place in the world where he could run if he skipped bail every country you know will be putting him through the same process and try and extradite him so you know why i wanted to come on is to raise this issue because at the moment as it stands the us has already accomplished what their goal was with this extradition proceeding the obama administration and their lawyers and their doj decided and rightfully so will never win this in any court because of julien is a journalist he's covered by the constitutional protections and that's why they decided not to go ahead what has changed since then now we have a trump administration president trump of course was you know attacked with the with the russia russia story with the miller investigation and later the impeachment what trump really wanted julien assange to do is to bail him out by saying who his source was that's why trump sent an envoy to the embassy in london to the ecuadorian embassy to try and make a bargain and julien refused and said i'm not going to give up my source or any evidence about this and the envoy carried that message back to trump and that is when things turn sour and that is when he instructed his attorney general to now brutally go after julien get him out of the embassy and start the extradition proceedings it is it's a very personal matter for trump and of course it is a political case of course julien is a journalist but the number one strategy right now has to be to get him out of jail because his health is deteriorating his mind is getting weaker and weaker being in the condition set that he is in within the jail the number one priority has to be to get him out and that's all i wanted to say guys well thank you kim um stefania has to leave so i want to give her the floor but first i want to ask a quick question of Alexander about the fact is that Barrett's already denied him bail can he apply uh can his lawyers apply again well in in theory they can i mean you can always apply for bail but you have to show that there's been a fundamental change of circumstances which would justify granting bail after it's been refused now can i just say he should absolutely have been granted bail i mean i think it's an absolute disgrace that he was never granted bail i don't think there's any basis any will grounds for refusing it but i cannot see Barrett's are changing her mind about that i don't think she will grant bail and i'm afraid that appealing that decision Barrett's decision to refuse bail to the high court will probably take longer than going through these proceedings that we're going through at the moment and then going from those proceedings to the high court i i'm not convinced it would save time and i'm afraid i'm not convinced it would succeed either because the high court would probably be very unwilling to interfere with a decision by a district judge which could be represented as what the courts in england call a case management decision so it's disgraceful he wasn't awarded bail i am frankly doubtful that he can be awarded bail at the moment after these proceedings are over in the in the magistrate's court when it goes on appeal to the high court then of course an advocate a further application for bail can be made but then of course the problem is if maritza has found against him and says he should be extradited then he's got the problem when he goes to the high court they will say well you know he's actually been uh uh he's he's he's ripe for extradition and therefore it becomes even less appropriate to grant him bail but i think they probably will apply for bail at this stage at that stage but not now that's my own uh assessment of it let me just quickly respond to that uh alexander nice to meet you by the way um so i've set the precedent with this in new zealand we are also commonwealth law as you know i applied for bail three times and i was rejected three times and i got it at the fourth time i went from the district court to the high court and ultimately i secured bail all the defense needs to show that there's a change of circumstances they can create these circumstances by saying we can ensure in a private facility that he will be monitored 24 hours he doesn't have to be in this prison and plus now that the defense has started revealing some of their legal arguments you know they can renew the request for bail saying look there's really no grounds here he is obviously a journalist the high court itself has confirmed that in one of its judgments earlier in julian's case plus um the change of circumstance is also that his health is deteriorating we have many uh you know doctors that have now written reports about his his health and how poor it is and and that he can't even follow the hearing properly that he has no chance to commute with talk with his lawyers so the the new circumstances can of course be created by his legal team and used to apply for bail and then of course once baritza refuses it this can be appealed and it can be an urgent appeal it doesn't have to take as long as an appeal for an extradition hearing would take because it's a very narrow legal matter and the urgency is based on his health and the very long time that it will take for this hearing to actually go through the courts and it is unjust to have someone who's defending themselves you know be in jail for the next three to five years while this plays out in court and the legal team really needs to aggressively attack this strategy keeping him locked up and silencing him because the longer he is locked up the more likely it is that his health will be damaged beyond repair that he may even consider suicide and his mind just going bust so his lawyers really need to focus on securing his freedom and I have done it and that's why I know how the strategy works because I've done it myself they wanted to keep me in jail they fought really hard and they said that I would be the biggest flight risk and here I am nine years later I didn't leave I'm still here defending myself so you know if it worked for me it can work for Julian. Well first of all congratulations on that I encourage you to make two observations firstly unfortunately we have a more conservative legal culture in Britain than they do in New Zealand. New Zealand has a much more libertarian legal culture than we do and secondly I have to say that I think that persuading the High Court that there has been a change of circumstances in this situation is going to be very difficult and I would love to see him out of prison I don't think he should be in detention at all I think it is a disgrace and a shame on Britain and on our legal system that he has been held in not just in detention but in Belmarsh of all places I mean I think that is completely outrageous and that he's been separated from his family but I can see problems and you know I hope the legal team can find a way around them but I can understand why they may they may judge given what I've said about the legal culture here that it may be better at this time to focus on the present proceedings whereas I said I think they're making ground and hopefully those won't be prolonged for very long and when it goes to the High Court they can make a renewed application for bail there with perhaps a reasonable prospect of success let me say one last thing before I take off I hear you this is a very high profile case you know senior judges are always interested in getting involved in very high profile cases that alone when the appeal request arrives at the High Court may trigger whoever is you know the judge at the time making the decision if the appeal should be heard it may make it work simply that this is a high profile case the High Court can engage in it early on there may be people sitting in the High Court right now who are following the proceedings because it is a high profile case and shaking their head about how the judicial system of the UK is currently viewed internationally you know this is a this is a very important case and people are looking at it and the High Court may want to weigh in on if Julian Assange should have bail or not because it is a global media case of very high interest I think the judges there will be tempted to hear an appeal for bail well certainly the High Court judges are going to take this case very seriously when it comes to them and what you said that they are that they are conscious of what is being said about the legal system in Britain around the world is completely true and by all means be aware that you know they do follow what people like us on these kind of programs say about this this is why what we do is actually very important in a case like this Stefania you'd like to go say something before you have to leave yes so first of all I'm not a lawyer so I'm unable to have an informed opinion on whether he can get bail or he cannot get bail I'm very skeptical based on the fact that he was even denied the permission to get out of the glass wall so I'm very skeptical about this I'm very skeptical based on what on the documents I have read from my Freedom of Information Act you have to realize that when he was appealing against the extradition he was fighting the extradition to Sweden the the UK authorities and the Swedish authorities were basically and the UK authorities Swedish authorities were considering whether they could extradite immediately Julian Assange to Sweden without allowing him to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights so this is the kind of environment the kind of situation with the very conservative and hostile legal system and in the UK and I want to tell you that while fighting the my Freedom of Information Act case we Milo Yersenei basically got a statement from the Crown Prosecution Court Crown Prosecution Service which basically is the very same agency in charge of the US extradition case and this agency basically made clear that they are ready to extradite him as a criminal like any other so I'm not optimistic about about their attitude towards this extradition they were very very clear that they are not giving this extradition a different look as they are extraditing a drug dealer a mafia killer and so on so for example they argue that they if I got any documents about the UK and US correspondence that my people of Julian Assange because they had to extradite him in case those documents were about an extradition so they are very very reluctant to look at this case as freedom of the press case they look at this extradition the UK authorities and the UK judges are looking at this extradition as an extradition like any other as if they are extraditing a criminal like any other mafia killer a drug dealer and this makes me very very concerned this makes me very very concerned because this is the most important case about the journalism and about the possibility for us to reveal war crimes and torture so we cannot afford to lose this case because the consequences will be gigantic yes um Kevin do you want to weigh in yeah I mean something that's been striking to me that hasn't exactly come up yet and I mean one if if we don't lose you Stefania before I finish I'm interested in how you feel about how this president against Julian Assange would impact you you being a global journalist because in fact you fit the criteria of people under threat much more than myself because I am a US citizen but in this case we see a precedent being set to go after anyone outside the US who is not a US citizen who has obtained US classified information or who has US secrets and it would seem to you know be that they would like to use the world as a battlefield as they have for the last 15 to 20 years asserted the right to engage in any US military operations around the world that now they would also like to assert the right to be able to control the flow of information and come after any journalist who publishes material that the US government would oppose but the but but with it with that I also point out that this wholesale criminalization of this or this contempt of the institution of political asylum is hugely troubling to me I can't understand how why I suppose I can't understand from a political science perspective from someone who analyzes power and how it works it is possible to understand but I think as just a average human being I think we should remain baffled and aghast that this judge allows these arguments for bail to persist where you treat Julian Assange as if he has committed a crime by seeking political asylum because when you break down what the argument is for keeping him in jail this idea that he would flee these charges is that he would flee to another embassy and would seek asylum from someone who would you know and potentially it could be France it could be Spain it could be Germany it could be any country in Europe at this moment that has politicians that are taking an interest in this case absolutely can mean I mean I completely agree and you know you have to realize that as a journalist who has who has worked on all this publication on all these documents I have published the very same documents and I have done this for the last seven years so I mean I feel completely upset about the fact that I have never had any any problem and Julian had all sorts of problems so it is completely unfair it is completely you know unacceptable even not only professionally but also ethically speaking from an ethical point of view I have published the very same documentation for the last 10 years and I was never questioned I was never put in prison whereas he has never known freedom again his health is basically collapsing and what they are basically trying to do is also to break him down it's very obvious that's why also they put him they keep him in prison so I mean I can I really cannot accept this I really cannot accept that if you publish documents revealing war crimes and we know how many war crimes I could tell you what they revealed about for example the the Italian investigation on the CIA rendition of Abu Omar in Milan how they these documents finally allow to relieve pressures on our ministers and finally six justice ministers refuse to forward the arrest warrant to the US which is unbelievable I mean so if you publish these documents or reveal war crimes there is no place to hide this case basically is about the US is desperate to make this case that if you do this you if you mess up with us there is no place to hide for you you cannot hide in an embassy because sooner or later we will arrest you you cannot escape the justice in any in any way you cannot get asylum the refugee status will not protect you so this is very scary I mean there must be a place to hide if you are a journalist revealing secret documents exposing war crimes and I want I absolutely want to work on this case because I want to find a place and I want that this place this year in our society is not in prison is not in arbitrary detention as Julian Assange is not even in Russia has known them I want that if you reveal these documents and if you publish these documents then you have a place to be protected in our societies because this is what democracy is it must be safe to publish these documents and not to end up in prison not to end up in Russia that's why I'm fighting I mean as a journalist you know Alexander we have Kim still on the line yeah I'm still here yeah on the rate on the radio portion of our webcast sorry I have to leave you I'm sorry I have to thank you you know thank you bye bye Kim you know it's Stephanie just brought up the war crimes and we haven't even been talking about that what was in these documents and how vital that is to this case this is why this is happening the journalist has published information that the US government did not want to get out that's absolutely true that's more than embarrassing it's incriminating it's not just embarrassing and they're going after him and the public would be up in arms if the media actually presented it that way instead of taking the side of the state anybody could answer that I mean there's a lot of at stake here you know I mean the US government was clearly embarrassed by the WikiLeaks releases but when it comes to the war crimes that were shown in in the releases and in the evidence that that WikiLeaks put out for everyone to see one has to remember that the US never signed up to the international criminal court and for good reason because they know how they operate in these wars and that there are of course grounds for them to be prosecuted for war crimes so this is really what this is the US is you know trying to attack anyone who is showing that these war crimes are taking place and that nothing is being done to prevent things like this from happening I mean we saw the video of Kolata where the helicopter pilots were treating this whole thing like a video game and they were all just hot on on trying to kill people you know and this is just one video that we've seen but this is commonplace this is how the US military acts in war and you know for that reason they are not part of the international criminal court because people would be going to jail sanctions would be issued against the United States so what Julian has done is basically the job of the international criminal court you know showing this evidence and calling the US out as war criminals and when you do something like that to an empire as powerful as the United States that controls 25 percent of the global GDP you know you are going to get in trouble and if he wouldn't be in trouble right now it would send the wrong message to everyone who's attempting to do something similar so they really have no choice but to go after him and make an example of him to scare every other journalist not just in the US but globally to ever attempt something like this again so I think raising the international criminal court is absolutely appropriate we had that surface in the proceedings in the last week so I just would briefly recap some of what happened when it was mentioned because in the cross-examination of Clive Stafford Smith the human rights attorney who was the legal director for reprieve he expressed his own belief that the US government might have grounds to target the lawyers for Julian Assange on the basis that they have used to target people who are officials in the international criminal court right now we know that multiple officials in the ICC have been sanctioned by the Trump administration that Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State fully supports this and of course he's been one of the most aggressive proponents of going after Julian Assange and WikiLeaks calling it a hostile non-state intelligence agency and so I think this is absolutely what we need to focus on because on appeal in the ICC we've seen this investigation be greenlit to examine the CIA and its activities in Afghanistan as far as it relates to torture and war crimes to examine the Afghanistan government to look at any militias and the Taliban and the way that they have carried out war as well but to look at these forces that we have supported the US coalition forces have supported and how they've been engaged in torture and war crimes and you know throughout these proceedings we've heard evidence related to how these cables helped to stop the escalation of drone strikes in Pakistan and how a high court ruled against allowing those because they determined that those were war crimes actually in a court of law within Pakistan and that Clive Stafford Smith had a role in making this possible we know that there have been cases like Khalid al-Masri who was abducted and kidnapped a German citizen who was brought to the salt pit in Afghanistan who suffered a rendition and torture and eventually his case went through the European Court of Human Rights and he was granted damages against Macedonia for their role and involvement in this and that WikiLeaks cables played a part in that we know that if you go to Guantanamo Bay that Clive Stafford Smith talked about the detainee assessment briefs and how it revealed the way in which there were only like seven or eight prisoners there who were relied on as informants who formed the massive basis for making cases and fabricating cases against hundreds of detainees who were still being kept at Guantanamo Bay I think this very much has to be the focus and it is a key aspect of the legal team's case against Julian Assange to say that not only are they criminalizing and going after a journalist and targeting press freedom but they are also targeting Julian Assange because he exposed US criminality. Kevin you know it's really extraordinary you bringing all that back when I was hearing that in the court it struck me that this was something unusual to hear in a British court in the strong ally of the US a long detailed discussion of US prima facie evidence of US war crimes Alexander is that something like usual? It is extremely unusual but it is not entirely unprecedented I mean we have had a whole succession of cases in Britain now involving war crimes not so much by the US but by the British military in Iraq and other places and we've had decisions by the British courts which have gone against the British authorities and against the British military none of the very top senior people have been implicated in them but nonetheless those kind of issues have been brought up in British courts so yes it's unusual it is not completely unprecedented and perhaps it will grow and certainly in the high court where these sort of cases tend to end up they become more common I mean to just give one very well known example which is about Britain specifically what happened within the United Kingdom of Britain there has been a very long history now in the British court system of cases relating to atrocities that were committed by British the British military and the British security services in the conflict in Ireland so you know we need to understand that this is not quite as unusual as it used to be and can I also say something of course this case is all about the exposure of war crimes by the United States let us be under no illusions about this this is why Julian Assange is in that dock here in the Old Bailey no other reason they wouldn't be interested in extra dating him if it was just because he was involved in some hacking somewhere that's not even that question wouldn't even arise this is what this whole case is about and this is of course precisely what the crown the prosecution the US authorities are trying to pretend is not the case this is why they don't really want to talk about this this is why they're coming up with all these other little issues which are not really you know fundamental to the issues that have been discussed this is why they're trying to draw away attention from what the indictments say it's in a sense a sort of bait and switch exercise it's what Trevor Timms was talking about you know taking the eye off the ball this is entirely about war crimes it's about nothing else ultimately and this is what makes this ultimately a political trial when you are involved in a political trial how do you defend yourself well there is precedent for this we've seen this in the revonia trial in the leitzig trial in many other trials of this nature you have to pretend in the good faith of the legal system that you are caught up in especially if it's a legally sophisticated system like the one in britain you pretend in its good faith even if you don't believe in it and you rely on the law and that puts the judges ultimately on the defensive because judges are people who are supposed to administer the law and that it seems to me is what the defense team is very effectively doing frankly frankly i was surprised at parades of letklad smith and uh and uh mark summons go on and on about all these details i've covered a trial in the us of some plowshares where they broke into a us air force base and put blood on a b-52 and off and of course during the trial they wanted to give the political motives they had and the judge wouldn't have a word of that did you break in did you damage a government property dan elsberg tells the same story frankly that he could not put a political defense out there he did you steal the classified documents yes or no so i was surprised at parades and didn't say forget all about this did you know we don't want to know all about this uh and that also leads me to the question i need to ask you because craig murray wrote in his incredible account and this is a man who i'm understand is not even allowed to bring a pen and paper into the courtroom and yet he has a photographic memory to reproduce in great detail exactly what has happened he writes that uh james louis didn't is not behaving like a typical british prosecutor that a british prosecutor is calm controlled and doesn't give any respect to the defense only whereas as an american and watching american courts it's the bulldog the bully is what an american prosecutor is now he's being paid he's being paid by the u.s government louis he's given and i i almost feel sorry for him he's given a very weak case by the united states and he's up there during the u.s argument is he trying to play an american prosecutor on tv here what is he actually doing just under american instructions to behave this way what do you think well can i just quickly say i think the reason the barit salide allowed all that evidence to be admitted is goes back to what i said i think she is becoming nervous because the case is slipping out of control so she is worried about taking decisions which perhaps a few months ago when the case was more under control she would have made but coming to louis it is absolutely the case as craig money Murray says that in britain prosecutors are very restrained and very controlled and it's almost like you know you don't come in with a you come in with a rapier and not a casual and by the way that's the kind of approach that tends to work with british juries and with british judges they don't like you know bullying tactics and judges are supposed by the way to protect witnesses from bullying tactics i think the reason louis is bullying witnesses is not because he's copying american court practice i think it is because he has a very weak case indeed and the only way he knows to shape the confidence of these very expert witnesses is precisely to bully them but i come back to what i said at the beginning i don't think that by doing that he has actually shaken any of that evidence which those expert witnesses gave even professor was it felsman who you know was a bit shaken i don't think in yeah i'm sorry i don't think in the end it really damaged the essence of the evidence that that was given so i guess if the tactic is working i think it's counterproductive i think on the contrary it's giving some of the experts like you know who are perhaps more confident in dealing with this sort of thing about more experience in dealing with american courtroom tactics an opportunity to hit back which is exactly what a witness like trevor tins for example was able to do indeed well this open discussion if anybody wants to jump jump in i wanted to ask you uh both of you how or all of you have kim you want to jump in as well uh what how you think the government might the prosecutors might reframe their narrative a little bit after trevor so succinctly basically unraveled their entire narrative well let me answer this for you i can tell you that the crown lawyers representing the u.s are very uncomfortable with this hearing and the department of justice and the u.s government are making a terrible mistake because over the next few years in this extradition context we will hear this over and over again about u.s war crimes what julien assange has actually released and it's not going to have any positive effect for the united states yes they have this single individual who they don't like locked up and silenced but now everyone else is speaking for him the relevance of his disclosures is now under the looking glass and the whole world will hear more and more about it over and over again so in a way they are shooting themselves in the foot and the performance of the crown lawyers in this extradition hearing in the first week was absolutely poor trevor could easily disarm all their arguments and for me you know as an observer to see this it reminds me so much of my case i've really enjoyed my extradition hearings you know pointing the fingers at all the lies from the doj and and showing how they are not even fulfilling their duty of candor which they also don't do in this proceeding so far because the u.s has to disclose to the extradition court the weaknesses in their case they have neither done that in the indictment nor in any of the submissions that they have made they're not talking about how the previous administration decided not to prosecute assange and try and extradite him because the the legal experts found that there's no basis for that they have to they have a duty to disclose that to the extradition court that in itself is a point for appeal and why the whole extradition process can fail because there's obviously no candor here from the united states i was absolutely excuse me actually kim that issue came up repeatedly over the couple last couple of days where louis was trying to say that obama did not decide not to prosecute because he'd left the grand jury open why did they leave the grand jury open because they want to uh someone one response was i think it was from feldstein that perhaps they want to look at co-conspirators or new evidence might come up and in fact the so-called new evidence that came up was from 2010 in this proceeding indictment yeah but it's it's irrelevant what louis says because officials from the previous doj have already admitted that they decided not to go after julian so it's on the record it's not something that louis can can wash uh uh you know to go away the doj officials from that time have admitted that already washington post articles that's right there were two who resigned because they didn't want from the trumpet doj because they did not want this prosecution to go forward but he's trying to undermine that continuing survey saying it's only newspaper report and by the way why didn't you put crumbberg's memo into your expert report you know you're not objective it's pitiful to watch the guy such a weekend he's been dealt louis is not having any fun and uh you know just watching watching this whole thing this is this is going to be the most embarrassing episode in his career and also everyone else who's representing the us in that extradition proceeding it's embarrassing uh and you know if julian was free right now and that is why i made my initial point we could actually have a lot of fun with this you know exposing the us over and over again at every instant of this extradition case and the higher we get in on the in the courts on appeal the more interesting uh the matter becomes the more the general media gets involved so the us like i said is really shooting themselves in the foot but it would only be fun if julian was free and could contribute in his commentary and pointing these things out over and over again what a beautiful gift the us has given us for bringing this extradition proceeding because now we can over and over again point out their illegal activities the only thing that is the the downside here is that julian is still in jail and i think they can get him out within a year if they follow the same route that i have taken before applying for bail over and over again in appealing and you may find a judge that says yes i agree with you he should have bail and once you have that we can turn this whole thing into such a fun event exposing the us empire and that only works if you have the press really reporting that exposure and unfortunately we're not seeing the press cover this case as they should you know we're trying to do our best and the journalists we have on today are trying to do their best but would you all comment please on the way in which the media has completely failed in its responsibility to report on this issue i think i think you have put the word correctly responsibility they've completely failed in their responsibility to report this issue i mean not all of the press and we're the consortium uses the press i mean it is reporting it so but you know if we're talking about the big legacy media the bbc the times the guardian those sorts of things it's very very very sad and very troubling no doubt they will say that they're hiding behind the various you know some judici rules which actually don't apply i mean you can certainly cover a story like this and it's i think a sign of two things firstly obviously the extent to which julien assange has been uh his reputation has been trashed and so he's seen by many people as somebody you don't want to get close to but i think ultimately what he chose and we've discussed this before i think when other in other places and what you know robert harry the great robert harry often used to talk about some parts of the media have got far too close to power and they've forgotten what the role of the media ultimately is which is to hold power in check and unfortunately that is a reality and it's been exposed in a very uh distressing way in this case and of course it's one reason i suspect one some sections of the media are actually hostile to the sound so it's it's it's very terrible but we mustn't you know think that because the the big media aren't reporting this i mean obviously it would have changed completely the dynamic of this case if the media had been reporting it but if it doesn't mean that because the big media isn't reporting it it can't be you know it can't be reported and what goes on in in the court itself um somehow you know it's all inside a hermetic bubbles and the world outside doesn't know i mean programs like this do make a difference i worked for 12 years in the royal courts of justice i know for a fact that they do make a difference so let's not you know give up our hope and say you know because the media isn't exercising its responsibilities properly um you know this is this this this battle is lost it's not lost at all i think in the high court is in the in the court in the hearing ground has been gained and it's important it has been reported as such by you know on forums like this one yeah and i would add that you know alternative press and independent press are really leading on this case in half and in the history of this wiki leaks story we've seen that if i go back to chelsea manning's court marshal the people who were covering this extensively were independent journalists it didn't come from the mass media and in fact it may be better off that you have people like us lead the way in the press in coverage because there are people within these media institutions who do not understand it as well as we do and in fact i have an example that personally happened with me i was invited on to a bbc radio program very early in the morning and the host asked me about the fresh allegations that were included in the third indictment and he said to me aren't there 18 new allegations against julia nasan and i said well no and i brushed that off as just his slip of the tongue and i didn't know where he was getting that and i come to realize that the sky news in the uk actually published in their headline that there were 18 new allegations in an indictment against julia nasan's is absolutely wrong and as far as i know i haven't seen a retraction of that entire story as their coverage for the case is completely misinformation and it means that people aren't going to understand what is happening in this prosecution against julia nasan's and so i would just tell people that if you feel like the new york times isn't covering it or the washington post or the guardian isn't doing it extensively if you go on to any social media platforms or if you just do a basic google search you can find our reporting at shadowproof.com you can find consortium news you can find these other outlets that are actually paying attention and you don't need the new york times in fact i remember when i was doing the coverage for the chelsea manning court marshal that i forced the public editor then margaret sellevin to have the new york times newspaper print a correction because they had reported the aiding the enemy charge argument against chelsea manning incorrectly and so they are constantly getting this wrong not be not only because they have a personal animus against julia nasan's not only because they refuse to accept he's a journalist and treat him like a source or a whistleblower which is entirely incorrect but because they also are not doing diligent work on this matter they are much more interested in other distracting cases or stories that are being put to them by u.s government officials they are much more uh they're they're into these shiny objects that are being dangled but before their faces like uh for example left wing websites are being approached by alleged russian trolls and and things of that nature and they aren't digging into this most critical case and it falls on us to take the lead well that's excellent kevin and very good work we did with the new york times and speaking of the new york times i they're doing exactly what i thought they would do they had a staff written report for the opening of this hearing and they'll have one at the end and if anything extra any happen they're going to use ap and of course the outburst we didn't bring that up the outburst suppresses what's going on and on about the outburst plural of drilling the sands when he only once spoke up in court so that was the tabloid kind of drama that they saw but alexander the u.s press and the washington post has done the same they just ran a a faq the first day and an interview and a story a feature about feldstein our feldstein because he comes from the university of maryland which is in the readership area of the washington post what about the british press of times who is there are there any reporters that are there every day we only know i think of one that's on the list of remote isn't that right i think from the times how is the british press cover this is all well well then i mean if you're talking about the big you know legacy media basically they're not covering it i mean this is the it's exactly the same by the way i mean you know more attention was given to this one outburst that julien sands made then to everything else that has happened over the course of this entire hearing i mean it's it is a complete trivialization of this enormously important case i'm going to say something else which is unfortunately we do not have quite the wealth of independent media in britain that you now have in the united states this there's uh you know media outlets like the canary for example which are very good and they go growing in traction but we don't yet have this culture that you have in the united states of you know lots of independent voices that are able to speak out so as a result this case has not games in britain where it is happening and where these this you know tremendous um you know cruelty to this man i mean you know kim dot com was talking about you know the fact that he's not able to participate actively in his case and the fact that he's in in prison we must not ignore the cruelty of that that hasn't yet i think broken through to the british public in the way that it should because it's it simply isn't being reported here we also have this problem that in britain of course political oxygen over the last year so much of political oxygen was taken up with the brexit baffle and this has been the all-consuming all dominating story around which everything was framed and of course uh the julienne assange case which is so important wasn't i think given anywhere near the attention that it should have been and following up on that just focusing on the public perception of this case in the u.s it seems as if there's on the right there's a false perception that this is all about russia gate that trump's bringing assange over to disprove russia gate and then on the left you have people basically forgetting that this is about 2010 they still kind of are angry at assange about russia gate but they ignore the fact that it's the trump administration that is prosecuting assange you know it's a really sad situation and obviously that's impacted by the media but is that also is that is there something similar like that in the public perception in the u.s it is very similar of course i mean the sex allegations uh did an enormous amount of damage and i mean you know if you go now i mean my my wife kathryn who you know teaches students she's finding very difficult to get students for example to take an interest in this case because they still believe that they still have this idea that there are all these sex allegations and this has done enormous damage to him but you know if you talk to sort of people who are perhaps you know a sage removed from that from that you talk about you know liberal people people in academia they blame julien assange for the fact that donald trump is president of the united states they think that he had something to do with that i mean that is an absurd and completely wrong perspective on this whole thing and of course it is completely short-sighted one it looks at one particular discrete issue and ignores the much more serious and far more important principled issues that that you know underpin this case so there is this lack of sympathy which properly speaking if this case has been reported in a proper way i'm sure that there would be i think with time this is beginning to change and i think that one of the other tragedies in all of this is that i i sensed at the beginning of this year that public opinion was beginning to engage with this this case rather more and then unfortunately the coronavirus and we went into lockdown and people started again to think about other things but perhaps now especially when it goes to the high court the perspective will change again and the long tradition that does exist in britain of support for civil rights for you know for for people's you know anti-imperialist anti-war things some of the things kim dot com was talking about that that will start to surface and people will understand that this is not just during a sanji's battle but it is their battle to it's an open fight we're about one minute from two hours we might want to end it here unless anyone has anything pressing to say it's been extraordinary conversation freewheeling and hopefully informative for our viewers kim do you want in closing i will just say a couple of things number one the mainstream media it's largely controlled and owned by billionaires who have other business interests so they are using their media outlets as leverage to get deals with the government you know better tax rates better laws that protect their area of business of course no one in that field wants to step on any toes because they know that this is a very sensitive matter for the people in power that they depend on to expand their own power so obviously they're not going to talk about this case and that will continue but on a positive note you have to see how much is happening on the internet and i made a tweet about this the other day you can really see online discussion picking up about this people are tweeting from the courts being followed and a lot of people around the world observing this case live over the internet and that's beautiful and that is really where we are heading in the future you know these large media conglomerates that pick their editors based on their political leaning and tell them to shut up when it's not in their business interests to talk about you know or report about certain topics you know they are going out of business i mean one has to admit trump has done us all a great service by continually pointing out that we have a fake news situation around the world even though he does it for his own selfish reasons but he is correct in that and more and more people are waking up to this and they are looking for alternative sources of information so you do have a trend here and i think it's only going to grow in the in the coming years which is of course still going to put a limelight on julien assange's case on the internet so that's that's number one number two i think when we look at the threat that this case is for journalists unfortunately not for the owners of the media companies but for their employees the people who are getting paid by the billionaires to to write their stories once the journalists realize even though their owners don't want them to report about it that they are basically liable if julien assange loses they are liable for receiving information even just processing it they are liable for telling a source how to protect themselves against detection they are liable for asking for certain information to hold the government to account through the means of reporting you know this liability the longer this case goes on will burn itself more and more into the individuals that are the journalists and i think sooner or later they will wake up to the fact that it's not their bosses that are going to go to jail for reporting about national security stuff it's them you know and they will be saying well i need to report about this this is important for me i'm your employee i don't want to end up like julien assange and be in jail just because i received some confidential documents from the government that show war crimes or other crimes or corruption so give this a bit more time we have a perfect recipe here with this extradition hearing of these things coming out and the awareness growing and also one has to remember if julien ever does get extradited we will hear nothing about the war crimes or any of these things that we have a podium for now in this extradition hearing in the united states because there is a different system they can apply all kinds of national security rules and it will be a close hearing we will never even have any observers in there so this whole extradition stage is perfect for us to raise awareness about the methods of the u.s government about the crimes that they are committing around the world and how they are trying to to blame journalists for for us knowing the truth about this now so you know journalists i think over time will realize the real danger to themselves and ultimately i think they will they will speak more about this case and we have seen this in the beginning it was completely silent now you have more and more editorials calling out you have more and more human rights organizations speaking out for assange petitions being raised by very credible organizations every day there are more meaningful organizations joining the fight for julien assange and i have been following this case from the beginning and i feel currently julien has a better standing than he had for many many years because all of this high level support he gets from people that matter and organizations that matter and that is only going to increase thank you ken kevin final word from you yeah yeah and quickly and a final comment i would just say that we shouldn't let the prosecutors engage in revisionism and get us to think differently about history to question what really in fact happened to reference a what is perhaps political cliche we shouldn't be thinking that two plus two equals five i mean is we should believe that barack obama in fact made a choice through his justice department not to indict julien assange and that matters we shouldn't question that as fact in the way that the prosecutors are trying to get defense witnesses and others on the defense legal team to do because it actually matters it is a difference and i myself recognize more than anyone because i've been following i mean no more than anybody here but i myself am very well aware of what obama did and his legacy that has left an incredible effect on press freedom in a negative way the way in which he targeted whistleblowers you know there are people who are friends of consortium news and our media organizations like john kiriyaku and tom strake who suffered immensely because of what barack obama did there's edward snowden who remains isolated in russia but still the very real fact is that there are for several reasons and and some of them are very clear but some of them maybe are more bureaucratic and more to do with professional or careerist reasons perhaps they did not indict julien assange when they had the chance back when they had finished and completed their prosecution of chelsea manning and we really need to continue to ask the very important question of why obama didn't prosecute or indict julien assange and why donald trump indicted and is prosecuting julien assange because that difference lies at the core of why this case is proceeding and it is going to be the key way in which we exonerate to the extent that he needs to be exonerated it's going to go to our efforts to end the character assassination and public mobbing of julien assange alexander please well i i i i agree i i think that this is absolutely true and of course rewriting of rewriting of facts i mean once sees this happen in court cases i mean you know we go inside the four doors of the courtroom four walls of the courtroom and you see how things that we know happened and actual facts and they sort of seem to change and evolve as lawyers get their hands on them we need to understand that there is truth and this is a truth that mustn't be compromised in that way the fact just to say very quickly on the question of whether obama had took a different line from the one that trump did all the indictments date from the time when the trump administration was in office you've never had any indictments under obama and that it seems to me tells the whole story this attempt to claim that there was some kind of continuum and you know litigation going on in the united states the indictments themselves the date of them shows that this is not true but the most important fact we must always you know hold on to is the one that you know was brought up by both kim dot com and by kevin this is a political trial it's a political case it's that's what's causing the prosecution all these problems that's why louis is you know resorting to bombast and bullying and when you have a political case it has a date it has a propensity to come unstuck and that's what's happening if it becomes unstuck that's a good thing but the political stakes obviously in a political trial are always very high and for journalists in this case they could not be fine thank you alexander and i want to thank first of all trevor tim who came on he was a star witness for the defense during the week he also had stafania maritzi time journalist with us and alexander macriss thank you stafania i said to her already kevin gusler thank you for joining us and staying with us all this time special thanks to kim dot com who phoned in unexpectedly and he used to have his import i also want to thank of course elizabeth boss my co-host kathy vogan our executive producer i want to remind everyone that we are doing nightly videos uh each day partisan session we will have next weekend another cn live just like this one with another panel to discuss next week's events and please go to our patreon dot com slash cn live page and become a patron of cn live so until my next uh webcast on monday night and until next week cn live this is joe loria for consortium news and cn live thank you for being with us bye bye