By Brown
Embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will escape further charges in the US — including for the 2017 leak of the CIA’s cyber-snooping tools, according to a new report.
The hacker, already in prison in Britain and facing espionage charges in the US, was widely believed to be charged over the massive “Vault 7″ leak that then-press secretary Sean Spicer insisted undermined “our security, our country and our well-being.”
But the US Department of Justice has decided not to pursue charges over the catastrophic leak, according to Politico, citing a U.S. official and two other people familiar with the case.
“There is a comfort level within the national security establishment of where the charges ended up,” a US national security official told Politico.
The decision was made in part by tight deadlines to bring additional charges — along with fears a court battle could expose even more CIA secrets. The CIA has never confirmed the authenticity of the almost 9,000-page leak.
“There is no question that there are leak cases that can’t be prosecuted against the leaker or the leakee because the information is so sensitive that, for your proof at trial, you would have to confirm it is authentic,” Mary McCord, who was acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department until 2017, told Politico.
“So the irony, often, is that the higher the classification of the leaked material, the harder it is to prosecute.”
At the time, Wikileaks admitted that the “Vault 7″ leak was the “largest ever publication of confidential documents” from the CIA.
It claimed to expose how CIA software could secretly turn everyday electronics, like smartphones and high-tech TVs, into listening devices to spy on unsuspecting users.
Assange — who is currently serving a 15-month sentence for jumping bail in the UK — still faces serious charges if successfully extradited to the US.
In April, charges were unsealed accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a classified government computer.
Last month, he was slapped with extra charges for allegedly violating the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information.
The US may have to battle it out with Sweden, which last month issued a formal detention order — the first step in seeking his extradition after reopening a rape case against him.
