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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NSD

THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2019 (202) 514-2007

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REMARKS FROM THE BRIEFING ANNOUNCING THE SUPERSEDING 

INDICTMENT OF JULIAN ASSANGE

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers

Today, we announce that a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia has returned an 

indictment with seventeen additional felony charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

I want to thank U.S. Attorney Zach Terwilliger as well as the FBI agents and the prosecutors in 

the Eastern District of Virginia and the National Security Division who investigated this case 

over the years. 

One of the Department of Justice’s top priorities is to prosecute, and therefore deter, 

unauthorized disclosures of classified information. In the past two years, we have brought four 

cases involving the leaks of such information. This is the fifth.

In 2013, Chelsea Manning was convicted by court martial for offenses that involved violations of 

her military oath to protect and defend the United States. As you know, she provided Julian 

Assange and WikiLeaks with hundreds of thousands of pages of national defense information.

The indictment today charges Julian Assange for his alleged complicity in Manning’s actions, 

including his explicit solicitation of classified information and his encouraging her to remove 

classified information from U.S. systems and send it to him. The indictment also charges 

Assange for his posting of a narrow subset of classified documents on WikiLeaks that allegedly 

identified the names of human sources—including local Afghans and Iraqis who were assisting 

U.S. forces in theater, and those of journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and 

political dissidents living in repressive regimes. Assange thereby is alleged to have created 

grave and imminent risk to their lives and liberty.

These alleged actions disclosed our sensitive, classified information in a manner that made it 

available to every terrorist group, hostile foreign intelligence service and opposing military. 

Documents relating to these disclosures were even found in the Usama bin Laden compound. 

This release made our adversaries stronger and more knowledgeable and the United States less 

secure.
Some say that Assange is a journalist and that he should be immune from prosecution for these 

actions.

The Department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy and we thank you for it. 

It is not and has never been the Department’s policy to target them for their reporting.

Julian Assange is no journalist. This made plain by the totality of his conduct as alleged in the 

indictment—i.e., his conspiring with and assisting a security clearance holder to acquire 

classified information, and his publishing the names of human sources. 

Indeed, no responsible actor—journalist or otherwise—would purposely publish the names of 

individuals he or she knew to be confidential human sources in war zones, exposing them to the 

gravest of dangers. And this is just what the superseding indictment charges Julian Assange with 

doing. The new charges seek to hold him responsible in light of the full breadth of his illegal 

conduct. 

I’d like to turn it over to Zach now to say a few words about his office’s efforts.

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by

U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger for the Eastern District of Virginia

Today, a federal grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of Virginia returned an 18-count 

superseding indictment charging Julian P. Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that 

relate to his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history 

of the United States.

Let me be clear about what Assange is charged with, and what he is not charged with.

Assange is charged for his alleged complicity in illegal acts to obtain or receive voluminous 

databases of classified information and for agreeing and attempting to obtain classified 

information through computer hacking.

The United States has not charged Assange for passively obtaining or receiving classified 

information.

The indictment alleges that Assange published in bulk hundreds of thousands of these stolen 

classified documents.

But the United States has not charged Assange for that.

Instead, the United States has only charged Assange for publishing a narrow set of classified 

documents in which Assange also allegedly published the un-redacted names of innocent people 

who risked their safety and freedom to provide information to the United States and its allies.

These sources included local Afghans and Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights 

advocates, and political dissidents from repressive regimes.
The indictment alleges that Assange knew that his publication of these sources endangered them.

To be clear again . . . Assange is not charged simply because he is a publisher. 

In making any prosecutorial decision, the United States looks to the principles of federal 

prosecution, which provide that . . . A determination to prosecute represents a policy judgment 

that the fundamental interests of society require the application of federal criminal law to a 

particular set of circumstances.

The superseding indictment reflects these principles.

My sincere thanks to prosecutors and our law enforcement partners at the National Security 

Division and the FBI for their outstanding work and commitment to this case.

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by

FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence John Brown

Good afternoon. The superseding charges unsealed today are the result of nearly a decade of 

investigative work by FBI counterintelligence agents. Today’s charges illustrate the priority the 

FBI places on enforcing the laws that protect our nation’s security and vital intelligence sources.

We are dedicated to pursuing investigations into unauthorized disclosures of U.S. national 

defense information. This is particularly true when unauthorized disclosures allegedly can 

include the names and identifiable information of intelligence sources who have risked their 

personal safety—and at times their lives—to provide the U.S. government with information.

While technological advances have improved the way the U.S. government shares and 

disseminates our most sensitive information, they have also made it more challenging to secure 

it. It is easier today than ever for clearance holders and non-state actors to widely and 

anonymously disseminate our nation’s sec

rets out in the open.

The FBI is committed to investigating this type of alleged criminal activity no matter how long a 

case may take. We are here today thanks in large part to the coordination and support of our 

partners and the work of the men and women of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. Their 

dedication to this case deserves tremendous recognition. 

I would also like to thank the Department of Justice and the Eastern District of Virginia for their 

commitment to this case.

Thank you.