 All right. So I'm Sandy Baird and I'm introducing this subject of the case of Julian Assange Recording in progress. And I wanted to make the announcement that this meeting is being recorded. Something's happening with the sound. I just had to mute someone. Okay. All right. And so I did want to make that announcement that it is being recorded. It also is being recorded by CCTV or public access television. To be shown at a later time and sent out to a wide audience. So everybody, I wanted to say that. And now I guess Jenna will do something or other, right, Jenna? Yes, we're recording now. Thank you. Okay. All right. So, and I am, as I said, Sandy Baird, this is a, the first recording of this semester of, I think, important topics, legal and political, historical and sometimes cultural events that I believe will serve the public in terms of public education, public information, and just public discussion and debate. This first session is on the case of Julian Assange. And I want to introduce the lead person who's discussing this with us. And that is a colleague of mine, Kurt Mada, who's an attorney in town, and who has done a research on all these important topics that we will be discussing over the course of this semester. He is a legal scholar. He's an attorney here in Burlington, Vermont, and he will be presenting the discussion on Julian Assange, and then opening up the whole idea of a community discussion. So, Kurt, take it away. Hey, Sandy, how are you? Happy new year. Yeah. Happy new year to everyone who's participating. Happy to be on this Vicki program. So, we're going to talk a little bit about Julian Assange. And I think before we can really talk about Julian Assange's personal case. And those folks who don't know much about him but may have heard his name, I think it's important to talk about his nonprofit organization that he founded in 2006, called WikiLeaks. If you don't know what it is, I would suggest that at some point, just to become better acquainted with the issue, you go to WikiLeaks.org, I think it's .org, and see what the website is all about. And basically what it does is it was something that was created by Mr. Assange and a couple of other colleagues of his back in 2006 in Australia. He is Australian by birth. And the purpose of WikiLeaks is to provide original source material, unedited, unadulterated essentially. You know, it's a primary source document that's provided or documents based on the leak. And what Assange's objective in putting up this website was to reduce the time. I'm paraphrasing what he stated originally when the site was first put up. He wanted to reduce the time from which a leak is put out in the blogosphere and the time when it actually gets news coverage. In many cases, leaks are out there of documents, of interviews, and it doesn't take, you know, it doesn't have legs, as the media will call it, as a story for many, many months, if not years in some cases. Assange wanted to change that. He wanted to put out documentation, original source documentation for the public's consumption and put it in the context of a website so people were able to see this right away and actually discuss it on the website and actually get some commentary. So it was going to reduce the time from the actual date of the leak until something became a news story that was discussed. So that was his objective. You know, nothing too revolutionary, something different, you know, in terms of what he wanted to do. So this happened in 2006, the website was put up, and immediately it started getting a lot of coverage because of the source materials. The other thing I just wanted to, you know, I'm not a computer person, and maybe there's a lot of people out there that aren't computer people themselves, but I just wanted to also explain how the website works. So let's say Sandy, you have original source documents of, let's say, you know, the minutes of a Burlington City Council memo between the mayor, whoever the mayor is at a given time and the city council, and you feel that that's groundbreaking and you want to put it out there. So what you would do is you would anonymously, Sandy, take that memo from the mayor and put it in a drop box. Think of a drop box, you know, as we may have thought about it growing up an actual box where you put something, you know, you insert a document into a slot, except in this instance what you're doing is you're doing that on on a computer. You're basically anonymously putting something on a computerized drop box that goes to the website and, you know, allows people to review what you submitted. There is an assessment that's done by WikiLeaks so they don't think, you know, so people don't get access to documents that are completely fraudulent and made up. So they do check for authenticity, but they don't make any other judgments or changes to the documents beyond that. So what it does what's different about this is it basically provides, you know, people that we can call whistleblowers, or just people that want to get something out there into, you know, the ether, regarding what they think is an important topic. It gives them an anonymous forum to put this out, put these kinds of original source material documents out there for people to have, you know, a look at, which is often, you know, when you think about that, that doesn't happen too much. We often get our news, regardless of what your political leadings are, you know, from a very filtered process. And you have a narrative that's created often, you know, it's biased, whether you're on the right or on the left, you get a bias narrative. And, you know, depending on what your personal biases, you'll accept a point of view, a certain point of view. But what Assange's objective here, what's so different about it, obviously, given the fact that, you know, we have something called the Internet that a lot of people have access to, is giving us original source documents. And, you know, as, as exciting as that sounds from a media standpoint, it was, it's been revolutionary from the standpoint of governments, meaning they are not happy about these leaks and original source documents that are put out there. I mean, some of the, just to give you an idea, I'm sure many people watching and participating today know some of the leaks, maybe they don't know their WikiLeaks, but they know the stories. One of the things that Assange did was during the course of the Iraq war, he was able to put out original source memos from the Pentagon that talked about the basically the killing of a couple of Reuters. Journalists that were serving in Iraq, and they were, some of them were working with Al Jazeera, some of them were working with different kinds of media outlets. And these men were, they were men, they were killed in a air raid, in a US air raid, not intentionally, they, it was believed that these were, you know, hostile agents in a, in a, and again in a war zone. But in fact, they were reporters. And then the people that came to collect their bodies, family members, they were killed, including there were a couple of children in this, I don't know why they were children in a van to pick up dead bodies, but there were, and they were killed also. And this story was put out on WikiLeaks with the assistance and I'm going to throw a name out there of someone who has gotten a lot of press. Her name now is Chelsea Manning, and she was a military officer at the time. And she was able to get access to these documents, these original source documents, and put them out on WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks published them. Other notable things I'm going to try to keep this short that that WikiLeaks is published were to that in 2010, there were a lot of State Department cables that were accessed by WikiLeaks through a, you know, an independent source. And they leaked these cables, diplomatic cables between the Secretary of State at that time who was Hillary Clinton in 2010, the Obama administration was in power. And it basically released a lot of very embarrassing information regarding communications between the Secretary of State herself with leaders of a number of countries, including those in the Middle East, where they had very open conversations about things. But these conversations in many cases were embarrassing for the leaders of some of those countries, because they went into areas that these leaders would politically not take a stand on or be embarrassed to take a stand on. And, you know, and it could be quite almost dangerous for them to have certain types of discussions, as well as for the Secretary of State herself. There's a lot of amazing discussions with these leaders about topics that are kind of verboten in terms of, you know, putting them out there with regards to the mainstream media. People would be quite shocked at, you know, the level of candor, but that's how that's how diplomacy works. And what WikiLeaks did was it gave people that access their website and read about it. The idea of how does the, and I'm picking someone's name, I'm not sure if they were the subject of the leak but how does the, the, the premiere of the, of the United Arab Emirates have a conversation with the Secretary of State of the United States and and it would be you know, very, very upfront and they'll talk turkey, which, and I, and they'll talk turkey about a given issue, no matter how controversial it is and maybe it's not necessarily made for consumption by the general public. These were very, very embarrassing leaks that were published and then the last set of leaks I just want to briefly mention is that during the 2016 election. WikiLeaks was able to access communications and memos between the Democratic National Committee and its head at the time, which made it blatantly clear her name was Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Very disparaging comments to make for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, and also, there was a fair amount of commentary with about Hillary Clinton. The reason it was controversial was because the, the, the Democratic National Committee, the DNC was openly in favor of a Clinton nomination, and even to the extent that debate preparation questions were actually sent to the Clinton campaign in the absence of the actual debates between her and Bernie Sanders, giving her an unfair advantage in her preparation for the debates. And, you know, there were subsequent apologies, Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to resign as a DNC chair at the time. This was also quite explosive. So these were some of the leaks that, you know, WikiLeaks had access to. Now remember, they did not access these things themselves, they were not hackers. These were, you know, individuals who had access to these documents, who then anonymously submitted them onto an online dropbox onto the website. So, Mr. Assange became a hated man in many government circles, not just in the United States, but many other countries. He was living in London at the time, and he became a target. At the time in 2010, the former President Trump called for his trial and execution at the time. President, the current President Biden, who was a senator at the time, called him, referred to him as a high tech terrorist, as did many other people that are prominent in our government today from well, she's not involved as much anymore. The former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, referred to him as a terrorist. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, referred to him as a terrorist, as did Newt Gingrich. In 2017, when the new Trump administration came in, even though higher ups in the administration from a press standpoint or media standpoint discussed the fact that they loved Assange and WikiLeaks because they were able to give, you know, publish these juicy tidbits about the DNC's actions in 2016. Behind the scenes in 2017, at that time, the chairman of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, referred to the organization of WikiLeaks as a hostile non-state actor that's supported by state actors. And it's an intelligence service, which basically what it did was a qualified CIA involvement with respect to Assange, even including taking acts against his safety and against the organization. And at the time, the Attorney General, the initial Attorney General during the Trump administration, Jeff Sessions, talked about the initial prosecution of Mr. Assange, the original founder of WikiLeaks. So I wanted to just create a little bit of a background so that folks knew a little bit about WikiLeaks, knew a little bit about Assange, and then wanted to open this up to, you know, a dialogue with Sandy, you know, with regard to questions that she may have about Mr. Assange. Sandy is legal situation now as well as the prospects of his extradition and what would happen to him in the United States where he to be extradited. I said a lot. I can't hear you. Are you muted? Sandy, you're muted. Yeah, I would like you to explain then a couple of things. One, what happened to him as a result? First of all, these were leaks, not from Julian Assange. That's correct. Very important to remember that. Right, right. The leaks came from within the military who was at the time Bradley Manning, correct? With regard to that particular leak, yes. Right. I mean, the other leaks were not classified information. Is that correct? That is correct. All right. So the primary thing that he was prosecuted about was his publication of leaked classified information, correct? Right. And that came from Bradley Manning. True. Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning was prosecuted. Mr. Assange has not been prosecuted. There's been an indictment against him in 2019 that was issued for a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. And for computer intrusion, otherwise known as hacking, because the hacking charge specifically has to do with the fact that the US government, the Department of Justice is alleging that when now Chelsea Manning was able to secure these government documents, these confidential documents or highly classified documents from within the Pentagon, that the allegation is the way she was able to do that is that Assange essentially assisted her in creating a fake username and password so that she could do that. And that assistance that they're alleging is essentially the basis of the entire case against Mr. Assange. The Obama administration also wanted to go after him for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. However, there were questions within within his Justice Department in when Eric Holder was Attorney General, as to whether or not Assange would successfully beat that rap under, you know, the under the guise of press freedoms. Right. And there's also Supreme Court case called Barnicki versus Vopper that was decided in the early 2000s, which basically stated for the precedent of not successfully prosecuting someone who gets materials secondhand, which is essentially what WikiLeaks is and what you just, you know, explain a moment ago, Sandy, that, you know, that particular Supreme Court case, what it stands for is you can go after the person who actually, you know, gets obtains the the the classified documentation, if it's done illegally. You can't go after someone who then later publishes it, as long as they did not have any involvement in the initial illegal acquisition. But the subsequent administration decided to tack on the Espionage Act of 1917 anyway, and they they've assessed that he, you know, he violated it in 17 different manner, 17 different counts, and the prison sentences over 170 years for 17 counts of that and five years, a five year maximum on computer intrusion. That's what that's what Mr. Assange. Okay, can I go back a little bit because yeah. Right. So, so Assange published classified information that was leaked to him and WikiLeaks from the military officer at the time Bradley Manning, and now Chelsea Manning. I saw that, by the way, one of my students showed me what had been released to WikiLeaks, which was a video of an American helicopter, shooting reporters in Iraq, and saying something like, fuck them. I mean, really brutal, brutal video showing essentially what was alleged to be war crimes. Okay, is that the way you understand what happened. That's the way I understand it and in addition to the, to the journalists they also killed people that came later to recover the bodies. Right. Okay, family members. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about with you about then what happened because he currently is in prison in London. Right. In Belmar. In Belmar, it's a maximum security prison in England. Okay, so immediately after it was discovered that he had published this material. Can you tell us what then happened, how did he get arrested, why, and why has he been in prison ever since essentially. Okay, so let's let's just go over that. So, and after that was published in, I'm going to say after, after 2010. So he was living in London as a free person. The government of Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Mr. Assange for sexual misconduct in Sweden. There was an allegation that he sexually assaulted two women in in the country of Sweden when he had spent some time there. The international arrest warrant was issued. The, the government of Great Britain arrested. Mr Assange pursuant to that arrest warrant. And he was placed in a, and he was incarcerated. And he then was able to, he took out bail so he was out on bail in London. And once he understood the gravity of the charges that were leveled against him in Sweden which were eventually dismissed just as an aside. But the gravity of the charges, what he decided to do was he skipped bail and secured asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. So the, the Ecuadorian consulate that's in London, England. He was able to secure entry and then eventually asylum at that consulate and he lived there for a number of years until, until such time that a new government government was elected in Ecuador, it was, I think it's the current government. So it's a little bit more on the right and it's very, it has a very close, a much closer connection to the United States than I think the previous government did. And WikiLeaks at the same time maybe you can question whether or not this was a wise decision, but they reported a corruption scandal that was taking place in Ecuador against the sitting president. President Moreno, who was the, who was the president of the country. That made an enemy of, he made an enemy of President Moreno and somehow some way, the government of Ecuador alleged that he violated the terms of his asylum at the Ecuadorian consulate in London, and allowed the British police to come in and arrest him at that point, British police were able to arrest him based on a violation of the fact that he skipped bail. So there was, you know, they had the bail act of 1976, which is, you know, British, British statute was alleged to have been violated by Mr. Assange, and pursuant to that violation. And during that time frame, an indictment was issued in US courts in 2019. Why didn't he go to Sweden and face the, first of all, there were no charges ever brought, I don't think in Sweden, but why didn't he just go to Sweden and face whatever actions were going to be held against him in Sweden by these women. At the time he announced that he thought that the charges in Sweden and the arrest in Sweden was a pretext and a pathway for his eventual extradition to the United States. Right. And that's what he, that's what he really fears. Yes. Yes. And why, why does he fear that extradition to the United States. Well, I mean, you know, I talked a little bit about the, the indictment that was issued in the spring of 2019 against Mr. Assange, where, you know, there's been 17 counts of the espionage act of 20. So of the, the statutes that are in place that prevent computer hacking, which would give him, which basically would give him a life sentence in prison. Another fear also is the fact that when he was hit, he and his organization were, and I'm going to use, excuse me for looking at my notes, I want to use the right words. Apparently, deemed by the CIA in 2017 as a non state hostile intelligence service, abetted by bad state actors. It opened up the prospect of his. The word bad. Yeah. He opened up the prospect. For his assassination. So he was fearful of his, of his being. Right. Not just a long prison sentence and. Was he afraid of being. So he's afraid then of coming to the United States. That's his biggest fear, correct. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, so I mean, there've been negotiations. So, I'm sorry. There's a little bit of a delay here, Sandy that I don't mean to speak over you. Yeah. Okay. That's quite all right. Don't go ahead. Yeah, there's a, there have been communications between the British courts and the, you know, the legal arms of the, the Department of Justice, the US Department of Justice, because as you may as people joining us may or may not know, that the countries in the European Union and even Great Britain will not extradite an individual. These are countries that don't have the death penalty. Remember, they won't extradite an individual that may be convicted of a capital crime to the United States. In the event that the death penalties on the table for that person. They, the courts in Britain have been in communication with our Justice Department to make sure that when, when and if Mr. Assange comes to the United States, that all possible humane routes would be exercised for his prosecution and potential sentencing in lieu of, you know, in lieu of the death penalty. And, you know, there was, there were assessments made by lower courts in Britain to not extradite him because specifically of his, his health conditions and the prospect of him dying in the United States. And the higher court, the Court of Appeals in, in Britain in December, this is relatively recent news December 10 of 2021, you know, just talking about less than a month ago, decided that he could be extradited to the United States, that the court in Britain, they have sufficient assurances from the US government that Mr. Mr. Assange will be treated in a humane manner. And the high court judge commented that they have nothing to doubt the credibility of the, of an actor such as the US Justice Department's comments on that particular issue. So now he's lost on appeal. However, in addition, after, after the fact that the, the, the high, the British High Court made a decision on his, on the prospect of his, of his extradition, they have now transferred the case. Again, I'm not, I don't claim to be familiar with the British legal system. So this is just, I'm just telling you, you know, what I read. They've transferred the case to a, to the British secretary of essentially, I think it's their version of the Secretary of State. And she, Ms. Perti Patel will make a decision as to whether or not Mr. Assange is going to be this be extradited. So she has the ultimate role in making this decision, even though the court, the court has decided against Mr. Assange, and they have okay extradition. Okay, I have a couple of other questions. So it appears that the crucial decision that's going to be made for Assange is whether or not he's going to face trial in the United States, correct. That is correct. Okay, so what could you explain what an indictment is and how he was indicted? How did that happen in the United States for this supposed crime? Well, I mean, obviously, you know, since he hasn't set foot in the United States, he was indicted in absentia, which means that, you know, in his absence, he wasn't physically here. He was sitting in the Ecuadorian embassy at the time, I believe, when he was indicted for these crimes. And, you know, there's an arrest warrant out for him here in our country, so that once he would arrive at an American airport, you know, on any, in any US state or in any US territory, he would be promptly arrested at the airport and incarcerated right away for these, you know, these alleged grievous offenses against him. So the prosecution has already put out, you know, their case, as I mentioned earlier, you know, that he would essentially be tried for hacking a Pentagon site, which holds, you know, a five year sentence. And of course, the the Espionage Act of 1917, which they've alleged that he violated in 17 different ways, which would give him 170 year sentence, as I mentioned before. I believe they're also arguing aren't they that his publication of this classified information caused the death of US troops is that part of it. You know, I think that's part of those are part of the allegations. I don't know the specifics as to what the what the government's case is with respect to, you know, the death of US troops. But it's something that, you know, again, the, you know, the, the, when the Obama administration was after Assange, I don't, I don't, again, it's important not to play politics here. Every every government since 2010 has wanted to go after Mr. Assange and prosecute him and put him in jail, regardless of, you know, whether we're talking about Democrats or Republicans. Right. However, from just strictly a legal strategic standpoint, the, the Obama administration thought that a violation of the, the Espionage Act of 1917 would possibly fail in a court, only because typically people that have been prosecuted passed for a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, where US government employees are contractors. Just to give you guys a little bit of an idea of past individuals. I'm going to call them celebrities who were prosecuted some convicted some got away with regard to the Espionage Act of 1917 Eugene Debs, the great socialist leader in the early party part of the 20th century. He was prosecuted for violating the, the Espionage Act of 1917 for his anti World War One activities. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were eventually executed, and they were found guilty of the violating the Espionage Act of 1917, and a more recent name that people may be familiar with is Edward Snowden, who is now living in Russia, after he acquired political asylum there. After his leaks of the surveillance system that was put out, you know, by the US, it's the mass surveillance that's taking place on US citizens as well as world leaders. His leak regarding that issue was a point of interest with respect to the government going after him for the violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. He obviously got away, but that was going to be the case against him also. He got away, though, because he got to the to Russia, and there's no extradition treaty with Russia. Right. Any any secure political asylum in Russia. Exactly. And I think he's now probably going to become a citizen of Russia as well. Okay, but what is, what is the argument on the other side for Mr. Assange, what is his argument and what is the argument that his attorneys are making and what is the consequence of this case, essentially the significance of it. Yeah, so I mean, you know, I mean, you bring up a really, you know, really important point. I mean, you know, aside from, you know, the humanitarian context here for Mr. Assange himself. What the case stands for is, you know, protection of freedom of the press in our country. You know, and what the press can report what's considered okay what's not considered okay. His, his, his attorneys are basically claiming that you know he's a journalist. He did not acquire this material by committing any crime himself. These materials were fed to him by potentially other people that you know if you look at a strict definition of some of these statutes such as the espionage act of 2017 and, you know, anti hacking statutes, other individuals violated these statutes, and basically gave Mr. Assange this original content material, which was then published. There are other argument, you know, obviously the freedom of the press as I mentioned the other thing is they're also relying on precedent. I mentioned the Supreme Court case that that was decided in the early 2000s called Barnick versus Robert and that case specifically stood for the reasoning that the ultimate publisher of material that was otherwise potentially illegally acquired is not going to be prosecuted, as long as they weren't involved in the initial acquisition of the material from the confidential or from the classified source. So, you know, I think I mentioned a number of prominent politicians in the United States from both sides of the political aisle that have, you know, openly made comments against Mr. Assange, you know, but I also want to talk about some very notable figures in American, you know, literary film and culture that you know that spoke in favor of Mr. Assange and for the freedoms that he is essentially trying to protect, you know, some notable names are Oliver Stone, Michael Moore went to see him in prison also, and Noam Chomsky has written in favor of Mr. Assange, and the fact that, you know, he stands for the ultimate in freedom of the press in this country and cracking down on him is going to have a chilling effect in the future for any whistleblowers in general, as well as any people that you know leak very important information. I forgot to mention a very prominent name, you know, for some of us folks that may remember the 1970s, Daniel Ellsberg, who was responsible for publishing the Pentagon papers, which gave the country a real, you know, strong indication as to what was actually happening in during the course of the Vietnam War has come out and spoken in favor of Mr. Assange and indicated that the WikiLeaks organization and Mr. Assange fulfill very important function in our society. If we, if we continue to call our society democracy and a, you know, in a free society. Free society right. I'm going beyond the United States when I say I think we maybe have other questions so who else would, who would like to ask a question. I think that there is a question in the chat from James Lease. Is that right. I don't hear him. I will pull that up. Okay, I can, I can say it if you want. Yes, that would be better. Okay, so under the espionage acts very difficult to mount a defense, as I understand it. Yeah. As Julian Assange has been really mistreated for a long time and they threatened and according to the Yahoo news story that came out about a month ago. The US had planned under the Trump administration to actually set up a situation where he could be murdered. And, and so this is really egregious so wouldn't. And this espionage act against a publisher really is unprecedented too. Yeah. James as I mentioned, you know, previous prosecutions under the espionage act of 1917 have been against people that were government employees. And, you know, you could argue had a fiduciary duty to fulfill a certain role within their organizations. Yeah, this man was not never an employee of any entity in the United States. Right. And he had no agreement to not publish any, and he was under no duty in the United States, because he wasn't even a citizen here. Right. Okay, so, but my question is, wouldn't it be a good idea why maybe I should put it this way. Why would it be a bad idea for Julian Assange to get his US attorney to file a case in US court, maybe a federal court, because seeking to declare the, or seeking to an injunction to stop the extradition, because it violates the First Amendment freedom of the press, as applied to a publisher and, and, and go on the offensive. And then only in that case he could raise all the arguments that he won't be able to raise in the criminal case under the espionage act. So one thing and again I don't pretend to be a expert on the First Amendment it's not the kind of work that I do. James, however, a little bit of insight, the interesting thing about the espionage act of 1917. It was, it was litigated very early on in a court on a case went all the way up to the US Supreme Court. It was called, it was called, it was called, yeah, it's called shank versus the United States SCH ENCK shank versus the United States. And what that the precedent from that case was that the espionage act, a prosecution under the espionage act was essentially exempt from First Amendment protections for freedom of speech. So you could not bring that up as a defense. Again, you know, there aren't too many cases in which, which, you know, Supreme Court justices have a published decision, where they say that the first, the US, you know, the freedom of speech doesn't apply in a case, you know, involving publication. However, or, or, or speech, not not just publication, but that that case basically stands for the theory that the US that the espionage act of 1917 is structured so that you can't bring up a successful defense based on freedom of speech. So in terms of his attorneys going on the attack, and tried to trying to preemptively prevail in this case, they've got a major Supreme Court decision that weighs heavily against them, and doing that. So I think, you know, they're, they're, they feel it's more important to try to fight the extradition, because the, you know, the deck may be stacked against Mr. Assange, if he sets foot on US soil. So I'm not, can I just have. Yeah. So I guess my question is, wouldn't that law be okay so in that case it sounds like under the law, you couldn't do it. But what about the constitutionality of the law itself. How do you justify a an espionage act being constitutional as applied to not someone who had a duty to maintain secrecy, but someone who just got the documents. And so why, why shouldn't that person be able to. And so isn't there a case that the law that the boy itself is unconstitutional as applied to someone and Julian inside this situation. I think that could certainly, I think be argued, you know, if I if I weren't to take the stance that, you know that the, that his attorneys should go out on the attack. And I mean, let's, you know, just take, you know, not to get too deep into the weeds regarding the espionage act of 1917, but the purpose of that law. Remember where where the country was in 1917 we were at war with, you know, with with with Germany, you know, during the First World War, the purpose of that act was to prevent any type of interference with the military prosecution of that war against the Germans. And also for supporting any any supporting any kind of homegrown grassroots movement that actually took the sides of any US enemies. So in that case, the Germans during the Second World War, you know, the Ottoman Empire also. So I'm at First World War, sorry. So the objective of that law was basically to make sure that the US could prosecute that war without too much interference against the military and are in favor of adversaries in the United States. So that's why there's a component within it that basically stops, you know, freedom of speech being brought up as a defense I mean, again, not going back too far into history but you know Eugene Debs the big, you know the great socialist activist at the time, you know, essentially he was he was hit with this with this violation because he spoke out against the war. Essentially by speaking out against the war he was providing comfort to, you know, the Kaiser of Germany, the enemy at the time, and and that was a clear violation of this law, providing any kind of aid or comfort to an enemy. Again, going back to the son. Yes, I mean, you know, there could be an argument that there that his attorneys make that you know that this law simply is not applicable here. Basically because he did not have a duty of any kind to any entity or agency of the government of the United States, not being an American and not being within the United States and not having been employed by any American entity. And that he had not been the source of the leak. He didn't that's correct. He public. I guess, and there was, there's case law supporting, you know that I just as you know as as recent as the you know early 2000s, stating that the ultimate publisher is not at fault here. Essentially, right. Okay, Eric has a question. You have to mute you. Okay. Okay. Well, a question. It's more of a comment as a journalist, especially journalists coming from Africa. If a song is locked up here in the US it will send a message because I remember every year the US embassy will invite us to work. We have these trainings about you know freedom of speech. And then here we are in the country that is supposed to defend that freedom of speech. You know fighting it so to me it's important that the organizations of journalists here in the US that strongly things that is the by a gross violation of you know their rights stand up here and I hope that will happen. Otherwise, all the, all the, all the, otherwise, all the dictators. Russia, even though Russia, you know, is nurturing, you know, Snowden right now, known as, you know, this brutal regime will not top anybody now on the, you know, because the US is doing it. I mean, I'm pretty sure. And I'm not surprised. Each other, we don't have no debate in this country, no journalism because everybody's scared about, you know, what the government can do to them. Thank you. Thanks for your comment, Eric. Yeah. So, yeah, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and I know, you know, a couple of independent journalists Glenn Greenwald have made comments. Some of them aren't necessarily big fans of Mr. Assange or WikiLeaks, but they've made comments in favor of not prosecuting him, because it would have a chilling effect on on on the freedom of journalism in the future in the near future. So yes, the case, you know, the case is extremely important for, you know, the freedom of press in this country and freedom of speech going forward. Are there any other questions or comments on Julian Assange. One of the things that I've noted because I have followed his situation in England, and it's very bad. I mean, he appears to have serious mental problems because he has been virtually a solitary confinement pretty much hers and tire stay including in the embassy of Ecuador that he's been at he was not allowed to go outside. The only time I think during that whole period of time that he had fresh air was to go on the balcony of the embassy in London. And the last thing I guess I need to say is that he did what many other publishers have always done and journalists, they publish material and they don't and they do not have, they're not the ones who get the leaks, or produce the leaks, they publish it. And that's what journalists do all over the world. And so I don't understand even the rationale that he has done anything outside of the of the First Amendment, because it appears, it seems to me from your discussion, there's nothing wrong that he didn't. It appears that the powers the powers that be are upset with the content. And they're going to go after the content that was published, and they're going to go after every level of, you know, every level of individual that that was involved, you know, from the actual, you know, if we talk about the, the case of Chelsea Manning, the actual acquirer of the information right down to the publisher to basically root out anything like this happening again. And it's an intentional chilling effect. It's being created. They did they did punish Chelsea Manning to she was in jail for quite a while, and wasn't it President Obama who, who commuted her sentence he didn't forgive her or pardon her, but he did make her sentence shorter correct. That's correct. Yeah. Manning has been out. She was put back in jail for time for not testifying against charge in a grand jury setting. So she was held, I think in contempt of court, you know, but then she's been out again after serving time for the contempt charge. But yes, the sentence was commuted and she is free right now. As we speak in the United States. And I think I just want to run up the I'm sorry, I'll shut up. You brought up the human humanitarian toll on Mr. Asanj in terms of not being able to go outside not being able to, you know, take a breath of fresh air and essentially being in solitary confinement for a very lengthy period of time in a maximum prison now for publishing, you know, he didn't he didn't, you know, you know, kill anyone or steal anything or, you know, physically harm anyone. And it's important to remember I mean, you know, this is a this is a married man who was the father of two relatively young children under 10. Right. So, you know, we, we often forget about these things that you know that there is a humanitarian toll here against the individual. There's one interesting thing yesterday and that is that the President of Mexico, did you see this in the news, the President of Mexico would offer Assange asylum. I did. Yeah, I think President Albert door was incredibly gracious of that man. I'm a half I don't think it will be granted. I don't think the United States would do it, but I thought it was a really unanimous humane decision. Anyway, so any other final questions or thoughts or comments. All right, well thank you very much Kurt and next week for Vicki, we will be presenting a presentation on a very important case called Jacobson versus Massachusetts, which was the original Supreme Court decision in December to support the idea that in the public good, a government could mandate vaccinations. It has a lot of relevance to what is happening today, but thank you again Kurt and I hope to see you soon again with Vicki. Happy New Year everyone. Yeah, you too. Thank you.