Recruited by The United States to build a case against Founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Wikileaks Julian Assange, convicted criminal Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson has admitted to fabricating information used by The Department of Justice in the charges it has filed against the Australian-born publisher, Icelandic news outlet Stundin reported June 26, 2021. As a result, again attention should be drawn to how absurd the American government’s criminalization of Assange is. He is a journalist once at the helm of a publishing platform, an entity falling under the umbrella of the constitutionally protected press.
The Stundin article catalogues Thordarson’s lies extensively. According to the Icelandic publication, he falsely maintained that he had received direct instructions from Assange “to engage in computer intrusions in Iceland.” At the same time, Thordarson was also engaging in “unauthorized communications with members of international hacking groups that he got into contact with via his role as a moderator on an open IRC WikiLeaks forum,” the article reads. However, Stundin could not locate evidence of any awareness by Wikileaks staff of these communications. All the while, he was embezzling massive amounts of money from the anti-secrecy platform.
In its criminalization of Assange, The United States continues its nonobservance of precedent such as that set in New York Times Co. v. U.S., a landmark Supreme Court case that unprecedentedly affirmed protections for the press in cases where publishers release classified information in the public interest. And this nonobservance is in great part now evidenced to have been facilitated by lies that a convicted pedophile and scam artist, Thordarson, fed the American government. The similarities between the historical developments that precipitated New York Times Co. and what has happened with Assange and members of his circle are remarkable, and they add to any argument that the Founder of Wikileaks is a publisher entitled to First Amendment protections. Against the backdrop of such similarities and Thordarson’s conduct during his clandestine employment by the American government, it is again painfully evident that the U.S. will stoop to any depths of legal depravity to accomplish its corrupt goals.