Much of the defense's case—including many of the arguments it revealed in the initial February hearings—focuses on the political nature of the charges. Assange's lawyers point out that "political offenses" aren't subject to extradition in the US-UK extradition treaty, and argue that his prosecution is "being pursued for ulterior political motives and not in good faith." The Espionage Act charge against Assange, which alleges that he illegally released classified documents, is by its nature a political offense that falls outside the extradition conditions, the defense argues. To emphasize the politicized nature of the case, they reference President Trump's years-long war with the press, referring to the media as "the opposition party," and "the enemy of the people." They raise then-CIA director Mike Pompeo's statement in April of 2017 that he saw Assange and WikiLeaks as "a non-state hostile intelligence agency."
That interpretation broke with that of the Obama administration, which considered prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act in 2013 but chose not to, since doing so would violate a long precedent of not prosecuting news outlets for publishing classified information they obtain from sources.
"The indictment breaks all legal precedents. No publisher has ever been prosecuted for disclosing national secrets since the founding of the nation more than two centuries ago," wrote journalism professor Mark Feldstein in his testimony on behalf of the defense. "The belated decision to disregard this 230-year-old precedent and charge Assange criminally for espionage was not an evidentiary decision but a political one."
The defense's arguments also seek to undermine the hacking case against Assange, which alleges that he conspired with former army private Chelsea Manning and others to steal classified information. That original hacking charge, the basis of the firs ..
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