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BREAKING: Julian Assange Reaches Plea Deal, Setting Him Free for First Time in 5 Years!

Julian Assange — WikiLeaks founder and the man we have to thank for exposing Hillary Clinton’s emails — has just reached a plea deal with the United States Department of Justice after spending 5 years in prison.

Assange was originally arrested in April 2019 after spending 7 years in self-exile in London. Since his arrest, he has been held in a high-security prison outside of London.

He has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act — a charge which carries a recommended 62-month sentence. But, since Assange has already spend more than this behind bars, he would go free.

Assange is expected to appear in a Northern Mariana Islands courtroom within the next few days in order to finalize the plea deal.

Check out the breaking news:

Reports say Julian Assange is expected to head back to Australia, where he was born, upon his release. However, many social media users have noted the timing with the upcoming election and it has them speculating.

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Check out these responses:

NBC News has more details on the plea deal:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to plead guilty as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will allow him to go free after spending five years in a British prison, according to court documents.

Assange was charged by criminal information — which typically signifies a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, the court documents say.

U.S. charges against Assange stem from one of the largest publications of classified information in American history, which took place during the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency. Starting in late 2009, according to the government, Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, to disclose tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports about the war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and assessment briefs of Guantanamo Bay detainees using his WikiLeaks website.

Court documents revealing Assange’s plea deal were filed Monday evening in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. Assange was expected to make an appearance in that court and to be sentenced to 62 months, with credit for time served in British prison, meaning he would be free to return to Australia, where he was born.

Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London for five years and previously spent seven years in self-exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — where he reportedly fathered two children — until his asylum was withdrawn and he was forcibly carried out of the embassy and arrested in April 2019.

CBS News added:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act and is expected to appear in a U.S. courtroom on the Northern Mariana Islands in the coming days, court records revealed Monday.

The guilty plea, which is to be finalized Wednesday, will resolve Assange’s outstanding legal matters with the U.S. government. Justice Department prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 62 months in custody as part of the plea agreement, the records revealed, which is on the high end for a single-count violation. Assange would not spend any time in U.S. custody because, under the plea agreement, he’ll receive credit for the approximately five years he has spent in a U.K. prison fighting extradition to the U.S.

Assange, an Australian national, was indicted in 2019 by a federal grand jury in Virginia with more than a dozen charges that alleged he illegally obtained and disseminated classified information about America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on his WikiLeaks site. Prosecutors at the time accused him of recruiting individuals to “hack into computers and/or illegally obtain and disclose classified information.”

He is set to plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information.

What do you think is next for Julian?


 

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