(London, U.K.) The “remarkable” politicisation of America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) has come under fire during the ongoing U.S. extradition proceedings of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.
On the second day of his testimony on behalf the defence, American attorney Eric Lewis told the Old Bailey on Tuesday (September 15) how the department was increasingly failing to be independent – particularly under the watch of Attorney General William Barr.
Barr, who first served as Attorney General under President George H. W. Bush from 1991-1993, has been back in the role since February — four months prior to Assange’s first superseding indictment that ratcheted up the charges from one count of conspiracy to committing computer intrusion to an additional 17 charges under the Espionage Act which increases the publisher’s maximum sentence by 170 years.
The staunch Republican is famously an advocate of unitary executive theory — an outside view that the President of the United States possesses the power to control the entirety of the executive branch, including the ability to direct the DoJ.
Lewis pointed to a memo Barr authored in 2018 where he wrote that while the Attorney General and DoJ lawyers exercised prosecutorial discretion on behalf of the President, they are merely “his hand”.
Lewis said: “This Attorney General has articulated his totally outside view that is out of keeping with the entire history and tradition of the Justice Department.”
“It’s a remarkable statement,” he added. “It’s hard to emphasise how out of line that is with the department’s history.”
Barr’s unsolicited memo was written with respect to the polarising prosecution of President Donald Trump’s long-time friend Roger Stone — his sentence was commuted by Trump in July of this year.
Lewis stated this was just one example of the DoJ’s increasingly politicised nature in recent years, pointing to a joint letter that was signed by over 1,100 former DoJ officials who condemned Barr’s “interference in the fair administration of justice.”
“Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies,” the letter reads.
Turning to how political interference was applied in Assange’s case, Lewis outlined how the DoJ took a “firm view” not to prosecute Assange under the administration of former President Barack Obama — given the First Amendment implications of prosecuting a publisher — and how that decision was reversed under Trump although no new information had come to light since 2012.
Lewis made reference to an April 2019 interview that then-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave to Fox News’ Chris Wallace as further evidence of how Assange’s prosecution came at the direct instruction of Trump’s administration.
“We take [WikiLeaks] serious (sic),” Sanders said. “In fact, our administration is the only one that’s done anything about it.
“Let’s not forget that the reason Julian Assange is being looked at is because of the engagement he had with Chelsea Manning. That individual is the person that the Obama administration actually commuted their sentence.
“We’re the only ones that’ve taken this whole process seriously and are actually doing something to solve the problem.”
The interview is what interrupted Monday’s proceedings during the first day of Lewis’s testimony. Both journalists and the courts speculated that what caused the video of Trump repeatedly stating he loved WikiLeaks was the result of some sort of hack, but it later transpired it had come from Lewis’s laptop from articles he was using to prepare for his testimony.
Lewis also referenced how two DoJ officials — namely James Trump and Daniel Grooms — took issue with the Trump’s decision to pursue Assange as further evidence of political interference, voicing their concerns on First Amendment grounds to the Washington Post in 2019.
The case continues.