WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange expected to plead guilty to felony charge

Julian Assange, founder of anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks, has reached a tentative deal to plead guilty to one charge of violating the Espionage Act for his role in obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, according to court filings.

The plea deal is likely to end a long-running legal saga and a transatlantic tug-of-war that pitted national security against press freedom.

He is expected to plead guilty and be sentenced on Wednesday in Northern Mariana Islands, according to a letter filed by the Justice Department in the remote US jurisdiction on Monday evening. He will then return to his home country of Australia, the letter says, indicating he will be sentenced to the 62 months he has already spent behind bars.

A criminal charging document filed alongside the letter says Assange “knowingly and unlawfully conspired” to “receive and obtain documents ... connected with the national defence” and “communicate” that information to persons not entitled to receive them”.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's plea is expected to end a long-running legal saga and a transatlantic tug-of-war. Photo / AP

Assange, whose snow-white hair became recognisable worldwide, was a polarising figure. Supporters saw him as a courageous journalist whistleblower of government misdeeds, but his detractors saw a pompous self-promoter interested primarily in fame and oblivious to the harm his leaks might cause.

He burst into the American public consciousness in the 2010s, when WikiLeaks began publishing a series of bombshell disclosures. They included hundreds of thousands of secret US military documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables that included candid and sometimes unflattering assessments by US diplomats of counterparts overseas – including foreign heads of state whose help was needed to counter terrorism.

In 2016, he famously published emails that Russian government hackers had stolen from Democratic Party servers and that US authorities assessed were leaked by Moscow in an effort to disrupt the presidential election. He was not charged in connection with those documents.

Assange had eluded authorities for years by holing up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He arrived in 2012 on the run from Swedish authorities, who were investigating him for sexual assault. That case was ultimately dropped, but in 2018, US officials indicted Assange under seal for computer hacking.

Ecuador expelled Assange from the embassy the following year, accusing him of violating the terms of his asylum, and he was immediately arrested by British authorities on the US charge.

Extradition efforts began soon after. But Assange’s lawyers argued he would kill himself if ordered to face trial in the United States.