Julian Assange's Latest Court Loss Is Headache for Biden

President Joe Biden's hand could soon be forced in a looming decision on the fate of Julian Assange after a Wednesday court decision in the United Kingdom cleared the way his extradition to the U.S. on multiple espionage charges.

The WikiLeaks editor lost his latest appeal in a lengthy extradition battle on charges stemming from the website's publication of nearly 500,000 documents leaked in the early 2010s about the U.S. conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which detailed potential war crimes committed by the U.S. government, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

The charges ignited a firestorm of debate in the U.S. that rages to this day about the protections afforded whistleblowers claiming to act in the public interest and the ethics of publishing classified documents, an act U.S. officials at the time claimed undermined their actions abroad.

In a statement Thursday, Assange's wife, Stella, wrote that the family planned to make a renewed application for appeal to the High Court of the United Kingdom opposing his extradition, which some believe could result in a sentence as lengthy as 175 years in a U.S. prison.

"We remain optimistic that we will prevail and that Julian will not be extradited to the United States where he faces charges that could result in him spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison for publishing true information that revealed war crimes committed by the U.S. government," she wrote on Twitter.

Should that effort fail, however, Assange will likely be sent to the United States, where debate over whether his work platforming whistleblowers constituted a crime continues across all corners of the political spectrum.

While Biden is likely to stay the course on prosecution—potentially resulting in a sentence of as few as four years in federal prison, according to previous estimates from the U.S. Department of Justice—others have made pardoning the Australian a key facet of their platforms for higher office, seeking to capitalize on his symbolic significance in continuing debates over the unsavory legacy of U.S. foreign policy.

Biden, who made his support of a free press part of his campaign, has faced allegations of hypocrisy by critics for continuing to seek the imprisonment of an individual who published unsavory content about U.S. actions abroad.

Dark horse Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy made a pardon of Assange—as well as the abolition of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—an early facet of his presidential platform. Others, like liberal candidates Cornel West and Marianne Williamson, suggested an inclination to pardon Assange.

But for Biden, any decision would also pass him the torch of an extradition battle that was largely escalated under the oversight of then-President Donald Trump, whose administration filed the charges against Assange in 2019 and aggressively pursued his arrest while he remained in hiding.

Last year, Newsweek reported on a lawsuit by four American lawyers and journalists who claimed the CIA, under then-Director Mike Pompeo, illegally surveilled them when they visited Assange while he was sheltering in the Ecuadorian Embassy there, including the installation of hidden microphones and other equipment in Assange's living and working quarters.

Newsweek reached out to the Department of Justice and a representative for Assange via email for comment.

Correction 06/12/2023 5:53 a.m. ET: A reference suggesting Assange is a U.S. citizen has been removed.