[News:] U.S. attorney Eric Lewis: Assange prosecution came after Trump’s ‘top-down instruction’

(London, U.K.) Julian Assange’s prosecution almost certainly came at the direction of U.S. President Donald Trump, a prominent American attorney has told the Old Bailey.

Eric Lewis, of Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss PLLC and who is the U.S. chairman of Reprieve, testified at the second week of Assange’s ongoing U.S. extradition proceedings on Monday (September 14) and re-iterated the political nature of America’s prosecution against the WikiLeaks publisher — a point made by a number of defence witnesses who had appeared previously.

According to the U.S.-U.K. treaty on extradition, extradition shall not be granted if the offence for which extradition is requested is a political one — a determination that will be decisive in District Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s ruling on the case.

Lewis, who has represented veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and the Guantánamo Bay detainee Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a “key figure” in the attack on Benghazi in Libya, told the court Assange’s indictment came as a direct result of Trump’s “personal vitriol towards journalists and leakers”.

In his third of five witness statements provided to the courts, Lewis pointed to the abundance of leaks that came in the early days of the Trump presidency — pointing to a quote from the then-Washington Post commentator Chris Cilizza who said: “I’ve never seen so much leaking so quickly – and with such disdain for the president — as I have in the first six days of Donald Trump’s presidency.”

This led Trump to launch his attack on journalists and whistleblowers in February of 2017, with him directing the Department of Justice to aggressively go after leakers.

“We’re going to find the leakers. They’re going to pay a big price for leaking,” Trump said.

When asked by Edward Fitzgerald QC (on behalf of the defence) whether this had a direct correlation with the first indictment filed against Assange the following year, Lewis said: “Yes, almost certainly.”

He added: “In my view, the motivation for the first indictment which came in 2018 was to make sure, firstly, it was in the litigation period.

“It also came after Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions took a top-down instruction from the office of the president that the Department of Justice appeared to be much tougher on leakers.”

Lewis’s written submissions to the court added that Sessions personally made the decision to go after Assange in order to demonstrate “his zeal” for prosecuting journalists and whistleblowers as requested by Trump, and directed the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia to indict the Australian.

The course of action came in spite of Trump’s numerous comments in support of Assange and WikiLeaks during his 2016 presidential campaign — Lewis said this came as a result of the mounting pressure placed on Trump with regards to alleged Russian interference.

According to Lewis: “WikiLeaks published DNC emails to the undoubted benefit of Trump,” who then sought the prosecution to distance himself from Assange, which could have been thought of as a threat to the legitimacy of his presidency.

As reported from developments back in March, Assange’s indictment also came after he turned down the president’s offer for clemency — a deal was promised if he confirmed that DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source of the emails, not the Russians as the majority of media had reported.

Author’s note: Given the length of Mr Lewis’s testimony, this is part one of two news reports on the day’s proceedings.