Court filing submitted by US authorities in an unrelated case mentioned existence of criminal charges against someone named ‘Assange’

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whose disclosure of secret documents has angered American authorities for the past eight years, has been criminally charged in secret by the US justice department, a court filing has indicated. The court filing, submitted apparently in error by US prosecutors in an unrelated case, mentioned criminal charges against someone named “Assange” even though that was not the name of the defendant. Even if charges are filed, it’s possible Assange could continue living in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he first took shelter in 2012 from sex crime charges in Sweden, and where he has since stayed because of a professed fear that he would be extradited to the U.S. and punished for publishing government secrets. Because the case contained previously classified information, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, who is also assigned to the WikiLeaks case, urged a judge in a filing to keep the matter sealed. That was not the intended name for this filing.”

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have long been investigating Assange, and in the Trump administration had begun taking a second look at whether to charge members of the WikiLeaks organization for the 2010 leak of diplomatic cables and military documents which the anti-secrecy group published. But the charging of Assange in the US could have implications for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into whether Donald Trump’s election campaign team colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential vote, and whether Trump tried to obstruct the probe into that. The name Assange appeared at least twice in the filing:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, urging a judge to keep the matter sealed, wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Sources familiar with the matter told the Post that Dwyer’s disclosure was “was true, but unintentional.” Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, told the Post the filing was “made in error” and that it was “not the intended name for this filing.”

The revelation was surfaced Thursday on Twitter by Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, who posted a screengrab of the filing and tweeted that the Eastern District of Virginia “appears to have [A]ssange on the mind when filing motions to seal and used his name.”



The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Thursday that the Justice Department was looking to prosecute Assange and was “increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him into a U.S. courtroom,” citing sources in Washington familiar with the matter. In one sentence, the prosecutor wrote that the charges and arrest warrant “would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.” In another sentence, the prosecutor said that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.”

It was not immediately clear why Assange’s name was included in the document, though Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia — which had been investigating Assange — said, “The court filing was made in error. “SCOOP: US Department of Justice ‘accidentally’ reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia,” WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter. The newspaper reported that Assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer in the Eastern District of Virginia told the judge that the possible charges “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Eastern District of Virginia said the court filing was made “ in error.”

On Twitter, WikiLeaks described the disclosure as “an apparent cut-and-paste error.”

Seamus Hughes, Deputy Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, found the filing and posted part of it on Twitter Thursday night. On Thursday evening, Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University who is known for scrubbing court filings, joked about the apparent error on Twitter – which first brought it to the attention of reporters.
An unrelated court filing accidentally reveals that Julian Assange, a major target of the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 United States election, has been charged.