DRAD’s Chip Gibbons Appears on Democracy Now! to Break News of Assange Legal Victory

On May 20, 2024, the UK High Court granted imprisoned journalist Julian Assange a rare legal victory. Our Policy Director Chip Gibbons was in the courtroom. He had been credentialed to cover the proceedings for Jacobin.

When the High Court announced Assange had been granted the right to appeal his extradition, Chip raced outside to join a live broadcast of Democracy Now! Standing in front of the Royal Courts of Justice, Chip explained to viewers back in the US what had literally just happened:

So, in February, the Assange defense applied to appeal on nine different grounds. In the U.K. legal system, you have to be granted permission to appeal. The High Court said they could potentially appeal on three of those grounds, unless the U.S. made satisfactory assurances. The one ground was about the death penalty, and the defense agreed today that the death penalty assurance was satisfactory. The remaining two grounds, which they’ve now been granted leave to appeal on, meaning the U.S.’s assurances were not satisfactory, stem from a comment that Gordon Kromberg — Kromberg is a prosecutor in the Assange case. He also prosecuted Daniel Hale. He was involved in the Sami Al-Arian prosecution. He’s a notorious figure for his abuses of civil rights and civil liberties, said that the U.S. could argue that Julian Assange does not have First Amendment rights because he is a foreign national. This raised two grounds for appeal, first that Assange would be prejudiced, either at trial or sentencing, due to his nationality, and that if he could not rely on the First Amendment, that violated his right to free expression under the European Convention.

I will note that in that ruling, the U.K. High Court ruling in March did not find that prosecuting Julian Assange for exposing war crimes would violate his free expression rights. And while they raised the death penalty issue, they also have asked the defense no longer to bring up the CIA plot to kill him, because if Assange is extradited to the U.S., then the CIA loses the reason to assassinate him.

So, Assange’s defense basically had both their hands tied behind their backs and were given only the most narrowest of narrow grounds of appeal in what is the press freedom trial of the century. And against all odds, they have prevailed today, saying the U.S. assurances on the First Amendment, on nationality are not sufficient. 

Chip later filed a more in-depth account of proceedings for Jacobin. It marks Chip’s fourth report in the national press on the Assange extradition this year and the second filed from London. Of the ruling, Chip wrote:

Assange’s victory should be celebrated by all those who value press freedom. Assange, however, is not out of danger. The two judges ruled Assange a right to appeal, they did not rule in favor of the arguments. And the arguments Assange’s lawyers can raise are still extremely narrow.

The Assange extradition has been filled with twists and turns, which makes it impossible to predict what will happen next, made all the more confounding by the High Court’s seeming indifference to many of the fundamental press freedom and human rights issues at stake. The March ruling read very much like the High Court judges wanted to rubber stamp the persecution of a journalist, but the United States and UK lawyers blundered so badly as to make that impossible. Now those same judges have issued a stunning rebuke to the United States. Could judges who believe prosecuting Assange for his journalism does not violate his free expression rights block US extradition, given that the United States may not allow him First Amendment rights as a foreign national?

While we might not know what happens next, Chip outlined to Amy Goodman how this prosecution could be ended:

 The person who can stop this is Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. They could drop these charges today. They keep claiming, “Oh, this is the Justice Department. We don’t want to politicize the Justice Department.” But this is a political prosecution. The choice to bring charges against a journalist for exposing U.S. war crimes is the choice to bring a political prosecution. It was a political decision when Barack Obama refused to bring the case, and it was a political decision when Trump and Sessions and Barr chose to bring it. And, you know, Biden can sit there and say he’s not like Trump, he believes in democracy, journalism is not a crime, all of those sorts of things, but those words are extremely hollow so long as Biden continues to make the political decision to continue this Trump-era persecution of a journalist whose only crime is exposing war crimes, abuses of power and state criminality.

Chip had previously been in London this year for the February 20-21 Assange extradition hearing. In addition to writing an account of the proceeding for Jacobin, he was honored to address the crowd outside the courthouse and film interviews with Breaking Points and Al Jazeera English’s The Listening Post.