Julian Assange is facing 17 new criminal charges
The Justice Department has filed 17 new criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The charges follow a much more limited indictment unsealed in April, when Assange was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. According to the indictment, he’s now facing several counts of obtaining and disclosing national defense information without authorization, relating to what the Justice Department calls “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
Assange was arrested last month after being expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he sought asylum in 2012. UK courts sentenced him to nearly a year in prison for breaching bail conditions, and he began f...