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Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, plans to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge this week as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department.

 This deal is expected to allow him to go free after spending five years in a British prison, according to court documents. Assange's journey has been marked by controversy, legal battles, and his pivotal role in one of the most significant leaks of classified information in history.

WikiLeaks was established in late 2006 as an online disclosure portal for whistleblowers. Created by Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist and journalist, WikiLeaks has been described as an "open-source, democratic intelligence agency." The platform quickly became a haven for whistleblowers aiming to expose governmental and corporate misconduct.

Supreme Court Overturns Bump Stocks Ban - USA Herald

gov.uscourts.nmid.6474.3.0_1.pdf (courtlistener.com)

gov.uscourts.nmid.6474.1.0.pdf (courtlistener.com)

The Charges Against Assange

Assange has been charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, according to the court documents. This charge was brought by "criminal information," which typically indicates a plea deal. 

The charges stem from one of the largest publications of classified information in American history, occurring during Barack Obama's first presidential term.

One of WikiLeaks's core security concepts was that it did not know the identities of its sources. According to a New York Times article, the U.S. government has been trying to prove since 2010 that Assange was not merely a passive recipient of materials from Chelsea Manning.

 The charges allege that Assange encouraged or helped Manning to extract the files. Despite this, no files or communications on Manning’s computer indicated a conspiracy, and Manning has always maintained that she had anonymous communications with someone at WikiLeaks but could not confirm it was Assange.

Assange also published hacked emails sent to WikiLeaks from the Democratic National Committee and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server system

Clinton’s team destroyed thousands of government emails from this unsanctioned system, some of which were later identified as classified. The source of the leak has never been publicly determined.

Chelsea Manning's Role

The government claims that Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst previously known as Bradley Edward Manning.

 Manning disclosed tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports about the war in Iraq, State Department cables, and assessment briefs of Guantanamo Bay detainees using the WikiLeaks platform.