WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, ending a yearslong legal battle and allowing him to return home a free man for the first time since 2012.
He entered the plea Wednesday morning at a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth north of Guam, The Associated Press reported around 9:45 a.m. local time (7:40 p.m. ET Tuesday). WikiLeaks said Assange was expected to fly to Australia, where he was born and is a citizen.
Assange — who published a trove of classified documents that embarrassed several governments and which the U.S. government says threatened national security and aided adversaries — reached a plea deal that resulted a 62-month sentence — time he has already served.
“I believe the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction with each other, but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances,” Assange said in court, according to Thomas Mangloña II of NBC affiliate KUAM of Guam, who was at the hearing.
Assange did not answer reporters’ questions as he entered and left court.
The Justice Department said Assange and WikiLeaks through their leaks seriously endangered the lives of those who have helped the U.S. around the world.
Barry Pollack, Assange’s U.S. attorney, said outside the court on Saipan that the prosecution of someone he called a journalist and a publisher was “unprecedented” under the Espionage Act.
“Mr. Assange revealed truthful, important and newsworthy information, including revealing that the United States had committed war crimes,” Pollack said outside court. Pollack said Assange should never have been charged.
Assange and his website are responsible for leaking classified U.S. military documents and videos from the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including video of an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed civilians.
The website also published around 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables, and in 2016 it released stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta before the presidential election.
Assange was arrested in 2019 in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had spent years seeking asylum after the Swedish government issued arrest warrants for him in a sexual assault investigation. In 2012, courts in the U.K. had determined he must be extradited, and he subsequently sought refuge in the embassy.
Although the Swedish case was dropped because so much time had passed, Assange was arrested for skipping bail. At the same time, federal prosecutors in the U.S. revealed a computer hacking charge against Assange and issued a request to extradite him.
Assange spent five years in high-security Belmarsh Prison in east London while he fought extradition.
The Justice Department has accused Assange of conspiring with whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a former military intelligence analyst, beginning in 2009 to obtain confidential documents.
Assange then used the WikiLeaks website to disclose hundreds of thousands of reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The leaks also included State Department cables and assessment briefs of detainees at the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2019, when it charged Assange in a superseding indictment, the Justice Department accused him of “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
The Justice Department said the way he and WikiLeaks released unredacted information put people who had given the U.S. information in confidence, including political dissidents, at risk or imprisonment or worse.
“Assange’s decision to reveal the names of human sources illegally shared with him by Manning created a grave and imminent risk to human life,” the Justice Department said in the statement after the guilty verdict.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017. Her refusal to cooperate with a grand jury in 2019 led to her being held in contempt for almost a year.
Assange isn’t expected to serve any more time in custody following the plea. His wife and lawyer, Stella Assange, told Reuters she plans to seek a full pardon on the premise of journalistic integrity.
“The fact that there is a guilty plea under the Espionage Act in relation to obtaining and disclosing national defense information is obviously a very serious concern for journalists and national security journalists in general,” she said.
She also said she would have to raise money to repay the Australian government for his travel home. The couple have two children together, whom Assange fathered while he was living at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday before Parliament that Assange deserves to return home to Australia. Albanese called the legal proceedings between Assange and the U.S. “a welcome development.”
“Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long. There is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration, and we want him brought home to Australia,” Albanese said.
WikiLeaks said on X before the court proceedings that Assange was on Saipan “to formalise the plea deal that should never have had to happen.”
It said Assange would take a flight from there to Canberra, Australia.
As part of the 62-month time-served sentence, Assange is barred from returning to the U.S. without permission, the Justice Department said.
