'You Will Be Able to Walk Out of This Courtroom a Free Man'

After years in a British prison and years before that holed up in Ecuador's London embassy, Julian Assange faced an American judge Wednesday morning in one of the most remote US federal courthouses. In Saipan, capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Wikileaks founder pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring unlawfully to obtain and disseminate classified information, CNN reports. Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted the plea deal terms and did not impose prison time beyond the 62 months he served in London's Belmarsh prison. "It appears this case ends with me here in Saipan," Manglona said, per the Guardian. "With this pronouncement it appears you will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man. I hope there will be some peace restored."

• He said he thought activity was protected. "Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information," Assange said when asked to explain what he was pleading guilty to, per the Guardian. He said he "believed the First Amendment protected that activity," but he now accepts it was "a violation of the espionage statute." Assange added: "I believe the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction of each other, but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all the circumstances."

• Government attorneys said national security was threatened. Before Assange pleaded guilty and Manglona accepted the plea, attorneys for the US described Wikileaks as a "website that purposely sought to expose sensitive military and defense information that threatened national security," the Washington Post reports. They said Assange encouraged people with security clearances, including Chelsea Manning, to leak such information. Manning served seven years in prison for leaking huge amounts of information on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
• Why he was in Saipan. The US Justice Department agreed to hold the hearing in Saipan because Assange wanted to avoid going to the continental US, and because it is close to Australia, the AP reports. At the start of the hearing, Manglona told him that the court was the "smallest, youngest, and furthest from the nation's capital."
• Opposition. "Julian Assange endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Mike Pence said in a post on X. "The Biden administration's plea deal with Assange is a miscarriage of justice and dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces and their families," wrote Pence, who was Donald Trump's vice president when the charges against Assange were filed in 2019.

(More Julian Assange stories.)