Assange, Justice Department exploring guilty plea to end 14-year legal drama

Assange, the divisive WikiLeaks founder, is fighting a drawn-out legal battle with the British government to avoid being extradited to the U.S. to face trial for publishing thousands of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables around 2010. A U.K. court is currently considering whether to allow a last-ditch appeal by the 52-year-old. After U.S. prosecutors charged him in 2019, U.K. law-enforcement officials apprehended him, and he has been in a London prison ever since.

Justice Department officials and Assange’s lawyers have had preliminary discussions in recent months about what a plea deal could look like, according to people familiar with the matter, a potential softening in a standoff filled with political and legal complexities. The talks come as Assange has spent some five years behind bars and U.S. prosecutors face diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted stateside.

The discussions remain in flux and the talks could fizzle. Any deal would require approval at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, said he has been given no indication that the department will take a deal. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

If prosecutors allow Assange to plead to a U.S. charge of mishandling classified documents—something his lawyers have floated as a possibility—it would be a misdemeanor offense. Under such a deal, Assange potentially could enter that plea remotely, without setting foot in the U.S. The time he has spent behind bars in London would count toward any U.S. sentence and he would likely be free to leave prison shortly after any deal was concluded.

Britain’s High Court is expected to decide within weeks whether to grant Assange a further right to appeal his extradition to the U.S. If the court rules against him, the U.S. government will likely have 28 days to come and collect Assange and bring him to face trial.

WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of classified documents, prompting U.S. prosecutors in 2019 to charge him under a U.S. espionage law. He faces 18 counts of conspiring to disclose classified information and hack a military computer in relation to WikiLeaks’ releases, which painted a highly critical picture of America’s actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawyers for Assange have argued that he merely published information given to him, much as a journalist would, and so shouldn’t face punishment.

An extradition would throw a political hot-potato into the lap of the Biden administration. The Justice Department has long struggled with how to proceed against Assange because there are some parallels between his work and that of the press, whose right to publish is generally protected by the First Amendment.

Trump-era Justice Department officials who charged Assange sought to differentiate his work from journalism because they alleged Assange solicited the classified material and knew its publication would jeopardize lives. The Obama administration also considered charging him but declined because of concerns about how it could affect conventional journalism.

Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who was convicted of leaking government secrets to WikiLeaks, served seven years in prison. Legal experts said any possible sentence for Assange would likely be less than what Manning served.

Assange has fought a winding, and at times surreal, campaign to avoid a U.S. trial. He was initially dogged by allegations of rape in Sweden in 2010. He sought asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in 2012 and holed up there for years, fathering two children, hosting guests including model Pamela Anderson and pop star Lady Gaga, and continuing to lead WikiLeaks through the publication in 2016 of tens of thousands of documents the U.S. says were stolen from Democrats by Russian government hackers. Those efforts led U.S. officials to describe WikiLeaks as a tool of Russian intelligence that participated in a plot to denigrate then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and bolster the candidacy of Donald Trump.

The Swedish rape charges eventually fell away. Assange outstayed his welcome in the cramped Ecuadorean embassy where he angered officials by not cleaning up after his cat, skateboarding in the hallway and allegedly leaking personal information about Ecuador’s president to a rival.

After being kicked out of the embassy Assange was promptly jailed in London. A British judge ruled Assange had a history of evading justice and so should be kept in Belmarsh prison awaiting decision on his U.S. extradition. In January 2021, a British judge ruled Assange should not be extradited, saying his mental health meant he would be at risk of suicide if convicted and held in a maximum-security prison.

But that decision was overturned after an appeal by U.S. authorities who gave a package of assurances, including a pledge he could be transferred to his native Australia to serve any sentence.

Last month, U.K. judges in the High Court heard claims by Assange that he faced prosecution for his political views and that extradition would be an attack on his right to free speech—an argument they are expected to rule on soon.

In a filing to the U.K. court, lawyers representing the U.S. government said that Assange threatened “the strategic and national security interests of the United States and put the safety of individuals at serious risk."

Even if plea talks don’t result in a deal and Assange is sent to the U.S. for trial, he may not stay for long, given the Australia pledge.

The Australian government, which has largely been supportive of Assange, could shorten any sentence once he landed on Australian soil, said Nick Vamos, a partner at London law firm Peters & Peters and a former head of extradition for England and Wales’s Crown Prosecution Service. “I honestly think as soon as he arrived in Australia he would be released," he said.

Assange’s wife Stella Assange, who led a rally of supporters outside the High Court while judges deliberated last month, said that her husband’s mental and physical health had deteriorated significantly while incarcerated and he would not face a fair trial in the U.S. “Julian’s life is at risk," she said. Assange didn’t attend the hearing because he was sick, his lawyers said.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com and Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com