WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US government’s reported plan to prosecute Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, signals that President Donald Trump is willing to continue the war on whistleblowers which could deter federal employees from exposing abuses, former CIA Officer John Kiriakou told Sputnik.
On Thursday, US media reported that the Department of Justice is ready to file charges against Assange for a 2010 leak of confidential federal documents and a recent release of CIA secret files.
“It is the clearest message yet that the Trump Administration is continuing the [former US President Barack] Obama Administration's war on whistleblowers,” Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on CIA torture practices, stated when asked about the reported charges.
Bringing the Assange case to court, Kiriakou warned, would probably deter potential whistleblowers from exposing every kind of abuse in the US federal government.
Kiriakou said he expected charges against Assange to be rendered in a court in the US state of Virginia, right outside Washington, DC, and predicted that the case would likely be tried before Judge Leonie Brinkema, a hardliner who usually sides with the government.
“My guess is that Assange will be charged in the Eastern District of Virginia, known as the ‘Espionage Court’ because no national security defendant has ever won a case there,” Kiriakou explained.
In November 2010, the Justice Department opened a probe into potential crimes committed by Assange which is still ongoing. Assange applied for asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 out of fear of being sent to Sweden, where he has been accused of sexual assault and rape. Assange has denied all the charges.
Kiriakou gained international recognition as the only person the US government sent to prison for exposing the George W. Bush administration's torture program. After revealing classified information to ABC News in 2007, Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison, of which he served 23 months between February 2013 and February 3, 2015.
