 Welcome to CN Live's daily report on the substantial hearing of Julian Assange on the extradition request by the United States. Today was a long day at Old Bailey in London and it went a little over time, so we apologize for our late start. There were fireworks in the courtroom again on day two. We saw an attempt by the prosecution, by the U.S. government, with their British lawyers to narrow the focus of the charge against Assange, simply to documents that he released that had the names of informants that were not redacted. This brought an outburst from Julian Assange whose voice was heard and Consortium News was monitoring directly the courtroom video. We could hear Assange and he called out nonsense that that was not true, that the prosecution was wrong, that he was being charged for all the documents that were released. Getting back to 2010 era about Iraq and Afghanistan, this later was rebutted by the defense attorney Mark Summers who read out in the courtroom parts of the indictment. But the day started with testimony from Clive Stafford Smith, who was an American attorney. He was in the courtroom. He's an attorney who's represented various defendants inside Guantanamo Bay. And an extraordinary scene played out there in a British courtroom in a country that's the strongest ally of the United States, that there is Great Britain. And we heard quite detailed discussion of assassination programs, of torture, of rendition of war crimes committed by the United States. I think this had to make the American officials in the room, certainly the British prosecution lawyers, and most likely Vanessa Barrett's a bit uncomfortable. While this was going on, she was seen typing at her computer, whether she was taking notes or doing something else, of course this was impossible to determine. But she did not seem to be focused on the witness. Because again, this was something you don't really, you don't often hear in a courtroom in a Western country about the crimes that the United States is committed. And these were, of course, based on WikiLeaks documents that this lawyer, Mr. Smith, had used in his defense of his clients in Guantanamo Bay. James Lewis on cross-examination, he then brought up this issue that the documents that Smith had referred to, outlining all of these crimes that WikiLeaks had produced, had released, were irrelevant. They were irrelevant because Assange was not being charged on those documents. So he should never have brought them up. He was only being charged on the very few documents that were, that had the names of unredacted informants in them. This is a thing the US is really pounding on. And those documents were still classified documents. So whether there were only these documents that he's being prosecuted for or not, he's still being prosecuted for classified documents. I see this as a sleight of hand by the United States to try to play both sides of this. On the one hand, they're saying he is not, and in fact, this is James Lewis, the QC for the prosecution, said, and is a quote, Assange is not being prosecuted for publishing. And this is a way to appeal to those critics of this process, which say that the prosecution of Assange is, of course, a prosecution of journalism, the publication of classified material. Not so, said Lewis. It's only about him revealing the names of these informants. And this is something I've written about and spoken about quite a bit because I, in my understanding, there is no statute in the United States, law books against revealing the names of informants. There is one about revealing the names of US government agents. Many of our viewers will remember the Valerie Flam case back in the Bush administration. She was a CIA agent whose cover was blown because her husband had written an article, an op-ed in The Times, opposing the US invasion of Iraq before it happened. And that is certainly a crime, but revealing the names of informants is not a crime about whose statute was mentioned in the indictment of Assange. Every indictment lists at the top of it all the statutes that the defendant is allegedly broken. But there's nothing in there about an informant. But finally, Lewis actually explained what the US means by this. He's saying that the names of informants are defense information that's protected by the Eskinage Act. It's a bit of a stretch, but at least I have some understanding now what the government is thinking. The fact is, though, that on rebuttal by the Mark Summers, the defense attorney, Summers got up there and read out the actual indictment. And it's clear that he's being charged with state department cables, the Iraq rules of engagement around the collateral murder video, and generally defense information that is protected that Assange has released. So it's clear that the entire indictment is not just narratives of those documents about the informants, but about all the classified information that Assange published. And what the US is trying to do again is to show that, hey, they're really concerned about the First Amendment. They're not going after him for publishing that. It's only because he's an ogre and he's a bad guy and he revealed these names, these dangerous names. Now, Lewis on cross-examination also brought up this book by David Lee and Luke Harding, two Guardian journals about WikiLeaks. And in that book, they published the password to the unredacted archive of the entire archive that WikiLeaks had given to the Guardian. And there was a password to encrypted file and this password could be used by governments and could decrypt that and they would then learn the names of informants. And in fact, it was when that happened and WikiLeaks became aware of that that they decided they would release the entire archives after it had already been exposed by the Guardian journals, so that those informants could see their names and go to safety. On top of that, we have statements on video, which I have linked to on consortium news. That's on our YouTube channel of Mark Davis and Australian journals who was there in the bunker in the Guardian with Julien Assange, with the editors of the Guardian, who were then always on the phone with the New York Times and the Spiegel, the other partners in the release of that material. And Mark Davis says, and he offered himself as a witness for this extradition process. He's not been called yet as a witness, but he's often testified that Julien Assange was the only one who was concerned at that time with the names of the informants and that he did an all-nighter on the Friday before the Sunday night publication to try to redact as many as he could. So that really needs to be put into this court because this idea that Assange was reckless about the informants is not true. The Guardian was reckless for some reason publishing that password. And yet here we have the U.S. government's British lawyer trying to say that Assange wasn't even being prosecuted for publishing, only for publishing these documents. And I think that that speaks to the public relations nature of this entire U.S. case, which is trying to smear Assange again as someone who's a really bad fellow and they endangered people's lives. And in fact, we didn't hear this in the court from Mark Summers, the defense attorney, but we know from Robert Gates that there was no damage done to any but informant that it was only embarrassment for the United States. We also know in the Chelsea Manning trial, I think it was also established that no one was damaged by the leaks that Manning had made to WikiLeaks. In fact, these very documents with names of informants in them. So there's no material evidence that any inform was ever harmed. That's not stopping the U.S. from pursuing that line in this court to try to convince the British government to send Julian Assange to Eastern District of Virginia and Alexandria. So yes, there's also the issue of the dinner that Lewis tried to bring up that at this dinner in London with the partners, with the Guardian editors and the Spiegel people, but Assange allegedly said, you know, if the informants die, it doesn't matter, they deserve it. There shouldn't be informants. Now, John Gates was an editor at the Spiegel at the time who was at that dinner and he has said publicly that that is not true, that Assange never said that. But that came from this book from David Lee and Luke Harding. And Gates is on the witness list next Wednesday. So we're going to hear from him about what happened at that dinner. And also at one point, Summers tried to ask Smith and redirect examination about the, I'm losing my train of thought here, about Luke Harding, about his fabricated articles. Of course, he didn't say what it was, but I think Summers was referring to, of course, the article that Harding's name was on, which said that from page during the Guardian that Paul Manaford, this was during the Russiagate mania, had gone to see Assange three times in the Ecuadorian embassy. Guardians never retracted that. They've never provided any evidence. There's no video evidence. It's been denied by everybody involved. And I think that's what Summers was referring to. And that got Vanessa Varate's back up a bit, and she cut him off, and she wouldn't let him go further with that line of questioning about the fabrications of Luke Harding. And at that point, Summers dropped this story and didn't go further and explain what I did earlier about how Lee and Harding revealed the password. So this is only the second day, so that might definitely come back up again, I think. Now Summers on redirect read from, yes, I said that already, but he also explained clearly that he's not, Assange is not being charged only on these documents that have performance names in them. Now I have to go to the painful part of today's session, which was in the afternoon, the continuation of testimony of Mark Feldstein, who was a professor of journalism. He was first examined across by the defense. It's a defense witness. And he made some very good points about what is the practice of journalism in terms of encouraging, controlling, pressing your sources to give you more information, or even to do something that may be illegal, to get the information that is necessary to expose government wrongdoing. Robert Perry, who was the founder of Insorted News, wrote an article back in 2010, when this was happening, when the Obama administration was considering prosecuting Assange, that he himself, as an investigator reporting, he was one of the best the U.S. has ever produced with his own contrary revelations. That Bob Perry would often encourage his sources to commit a small crime, i.e., take a government document, and then release that to prevent larger crime from being committed or exposing with crime, like a war crime, that's been committed. That's exactly what Assange did. And Feldstein was good in explaining that that was absolutely routine journalist to practice what Assange has done. But it was on the cross examination where things really went badly for Feldstein. Louis, Mark James Lewis for the U.S. side, he's obviously a very skilled prosecutor, but I'm telling you, the mercy rule should have been called at some point. A referee would have ended that fight a long time ago, because Feldstein was on the ropes, he could not respond to questions. He didn't even remember points he had made in the direct examination. It was a cross to forget for the Assange team. He withered. He never explained, for example, that Chelsea Manning under the Nuremberg principles was obliged to reveal crimes committed by the United States government. But this is not a crime, that journalists didn't even go back to his earlier points, that journalists do this all the time. And Feldstein was asking him all kinds of legal questions that he had no way to answer. And I think he was just taking advantage of a man who was totally unprepared for this cross examination and tried to get points on the record in this court that he'll be using later on that were really painful to watch because it was just an extraordinary bullying prosecutorial move. And this is what happens in these courts. And Feldstein was not prepared for that. And I think that this was, frankly, a shame because he, it was pretty much a victory for the Assange team. And yes, well, I'm just going to note here about my producer that Summers did mention briefly that the password was published by Lee in that book, but I don't think he fully exploited that. But I presume that he will later on in this court case, the Feldstein thing did not end soon enough. And it went on and on and maybe Vanessa Berets could have cut it off because they went over time. On redirect, Summers tried to get out of Feldstein a few other points that were of interest and importance about what he'd said about this being journalism and routine journalism, but Feldstein was kind of shell shocked at that point and couldn't even respond to the question from his own side. So this is what happened today and we've got three more weeks of this, but we see where the U.S. government's going. I think that for them to pound this issue of informants being endangered, that seems to be where they're going here and then trying to protect themselves from the charge that they are violating the First Amendment with this prosecution. In fact, that was a big part of the back and forth. If I could call it that between Lewis and Feldstein, that in fact the U.S. is not violating the First Amendment because Assange participated in the crime, the crime of hacking by conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack. And of course, as he did say at one point, Feldstein, to his credit, that journalists conspire, if you use that word, conspire, then journalists conspire with the sources all the time. That is absolutely routine. And he also tried to hammer him, Lewis did, on the issue of whether this was a political prosecution or not, because in his written testimony and in the report that was produced for the court, Feldstein says this was a political prosecution. But Lewis was being just a generous and narrowing the definition of political and just electoral politics, trying to say that how would this help why did Trump do this that he think was going to help him in his campaign? And was it directed from the White House? That in Lewis' thinking, it was only a political, this is only a political prosecution. If Trump tells the Attorney General, you got to prosecute this guy. And Nixon came up in the direct examination of Feldstein that Nixon, in fact, on his tapes, we hear even using some colorful language as Nixon did to say to go and prosecute people and we have to make the destroy the New York Times and stuff like that. So there's precedent for that. And then FDR, which is interesting that came up, tried to prosecute a journalist in Chicago, but the grand jury did not return the indictment. And Lewis used that as an example to show that the grand jurors are a barrier to a political prosecution. Well, that is just a totally different case. And it doesn't really apply to Julian Assange's case. In my view, politics is more than just electoral politics. It's about policy, but upholding US policy, their foreign policy, what we're dealing with here. And when Mike Pompeo, and also the reputations of American officials and the United States itself, this is deeply political because it deals with policy and political reputation. And this is what I think was wrong of Lewis to just talk about electoral politics. When you look at Pompeo and the speech he made or sections from the revelations of WikiLeaks and to destroy an enemy, this is the motivation. And I think that falls under the category of politicization. Also, they could be looking for proper conspiratives. But the fact that the grand jury continued was a big issue for Lewis in showing that you cannot say that the Obama administration did not want to prosecute Assange. They did want to prosecute Assange, but they did not. And the reason given by two high DOJ officials to the Washington Post, and that became a contentious issue about how much of this Washington Post article, Feldstein actually quoted in his report on how much he didn't, Lewis trying to undermine his status as an independent, impartial expert. In fact, he was saying he was not an expert. He was only giving an opinion. So the fact is that the Obama administration did not prosecute. He was trying to say that in the end of the day, that's the proof that they did not want to prosecute. And they couldn't because of the issue of prosecuting other major media for doing the same thing Assange does. I think the first time I saw a smile on Mark Feldstein's face was when Vanessa Baraitza said that court is adjourned. He was quite relieved. And it was so was I, to be honest with you, watching that. So tomorrow starts day three. We may have Daniel Ellsberg as a witness. We may not, but he's on the list. And that should be interesting because Pentagon Papers came up today as well. Nixon. So we will go back into that. These are the general themes that were dealt with in today's session. And until Feldstein's meltdown, it looked pretty good for Assange because I think they demolished this idea that the only documents Assange is being prosecuted for, the ones that mentioned the informants, and that issue is going to be key to this substantive hearing over the next couple of weeks. The issue of the informants and what Assange did or did not do about that and whether that is actually a crime, it's not on its own. It is a protected part of defense information that Espionage Act protects. But to say that they're not going after and for publishing, well they're going after for publishing those documents that had informants names in them. So they are prosecuting him for publishing. That was key to today's testimony about what journalists do, whether Assange has done that and whether he's committed a crime or not. So this obviously has not been settled after day two. And we will see you tomorrow, hopefully at our promise time, 12 noon, east and five British time, but the court did run over and we will pick up this tale tomorrow. For CN Live, I'm Joe Laurier reporting.