Title: Kevin Gosztola (Unauthorized Disclosure)
Show: Kevin Gosztola (The Dissenter)
Date: 2024-02-19
URL: https://youtu.be/Y1E8EypwzPA
Duration: 44:00

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[00:02] let's get to the interview I've talked long enough and some of you are probably like wrap it up we want to hear what John has to say so here's John kiraku John like I said a dear friend a colleague he was imprisoned uh he exposed torture he spoke out against Bush Administration torture said it was water boarding he was prosecuted under the Espionage Act under Obama he was in prison for 30 months he got

[00:35] out of prison he developed into a voice against prison injustices a voice on the Espionage Act through his experiences a voice that stands in solidarity with with with whistleblowers and a voice that has been outspoken in support of Assange and so uh listen to our interview enjoy it there's a little bit of a glitch video it looks like there's some kind of glitch happening in The Matrix but the audio is fairly clean and

[01:06] I think you're going to appreciate our conversation once again thank you for tuning in to the unauthorized disclosure podcast and I will be back next week with r I hope but until then take care of yourselves enjoy the interview and uh it's really good to be speaking with you and there's a lot to get to but you know first let's yeah uh

[01:37] toward the end of the show we'll get to Julia Nan's appeal hearing that is coming next week of course right now uh activists press Freedom Advocates are involved in counting down to what they call day x because they believe that this will be a San's last best hope uh before the appeals court U but first we had what was I think maybe most one of the most significant leak prosecutions under President Joe

[02:08] Biden it took place or or the sentencing for this case took place at the end of January on January 29th it involved Charles Little John he's an IRS whistleblower and he's the one who disclos the documents the tax returns from Trump to the New York Times uh so here's Charles Little John the IRS whistleblower and this was him at sentencing and so I'd like to ask you in particular um as as somebody who went

[02:41] through a leak prosecution about this aspect of what happened because he got an extraordinarily harsh sentence yeah he did he got yes he did something close to I believe uh I think he actually got five years in prison and uh so I'm just gonna read this from you know from what I wrote up and and just have you share your reaction to all of this because I thought that it was remarkable how the

[03:13] prosecutors were so zealous in going after him they basically said that uh similar cases like his inadequately accounted for the seriousness of ideologically motivated leaks they mentioned an IRS analyst named John Fry who had leaked to uh who had a who had been associated with um leaking to prominent attorney Michael Cohen um and then an employee of

[03:45] the US Department of the treasur of treasury's financial crimes enforcement Network finsen Natalie Mayflower sour Edwards you know she was someone who released these finen files um for them basically the government govern said those cases were too short uh so you should be more harsh that was the request to the judge and then looked to Espionage Act cases to say to the court that you should consider a recent case an employee of

[04:17] the defense intelligence agency Henry fzy was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to communicating top secret sensitive compartmented information primarily over the telephone to two reporters um and I believe in there there might have been a mention of reality winners case and and other people who had much longer sentences so don't give him what you normally would for leaking tax documents to that that violated the privacy of those taxpayers treat him like he

[04:49] compromised National Security information it's outrageous there are so many things wrong with this uh sentence first of all the information was embraced by the Biden campaign the Biden campaign used uh the information taken from the New York Times which uh which Little John had provided uh to to campaign against uh Donald Trump the information was not classified it was protected but it was

[05:21] not classified and even if you don't consider him to be a whistleblower um the information the uh sorry this the sentence was was so harsh as to put him on par with what reality winner got in her whistleblowing case which we all complained was too harsh it's like sentences have have gone crazy in this country um already we're

[05:52] known among industrialized countries for the for the harshness of our of our sentences on a Myriad of of crimes on most crimes compared especially to our Western European um allies but five years for leaking unclassified tax documents it's just stunning now one of my complaints and I say this all the time but I think it Bears repeating is this is how these prosecutors get promoted this is how they end up going to the A-list uh law firms this is how

[06:25] they end up uh uh basing their Congressional campaigns their campaigns for governor which they all eventually want to do um in in my case for example when it came to negotiating a sentence uh there was there was one uh assistant us attorney that was just adamant adamant that I get uh uh five years in prison I ended up with 23 months uh and what is she doing now she's the deputy attorney general for the Criminal

[06:55] Division so this is how they make reputations for for themselves it's how they get promoted it's how they get ahead in their careers their job is to get you the longest possible sentence now in this case I think we have to blame the judge uh because there was as you pointed out there was ample precedent for a sentence of probation or a sentence of uh what was it six months and to go five years I'm sorry there's just simply no justification for

[07:27] something like that and are you familiar with some of the absolute garbage that was said by this judge I will just uh I'll I'll bring this up here because it's rather astounding so it was very clear that the Biden justice department was deciding that they wanted to send a message to others we know especially since President Barack Obama's administration that many of these cases

[07:58] are about making an example out of individuals and it have to be because there's so much leaking in Washington DC and so the ones that do get prosecuted are for a political purpose this judge was saying extraordinary things about little John such as when you target the sitting president of the United States you're targeting the office and when you're

[08:28] targeting the office Office of the President of the United States you're targeting democracy you're targeting our constitutional system of government and her her name is by the way judge Anna Rees appointed by Biden Rees also said the fact that he did what he did and he's facing one felony count I have no words for it and then when on to say that the actions of whistleblowing committed by little done

[08:59] compared to the January 6th riots on Capitol Hill your actions were also a threat to our democracy and it engenders the same fear that January 6 does it cannot be open season on our elected officials it just can't there was nothing Noble or moral about the nature of his offense you got a pretty good tongue lashing from Leone brinka when you were when you were sentenced for your case but I don't knowes that sound like it surpass what you had to sit

[09:31] through before you were sentenced officially uh yeah that surpasses what judge Brink has said to me it's funny that you bring that up because I was actually gonna bring it up um judge brinka said well first of all my my attorneys had negotiated something called an 11 c1c plea uh 11 c1c plea is an agreement between the uh justice department and the defense attorneys to a guilty plea in exchange for a sentence that is set in stone right and the judge

[10:03] can't reject it or can't change it she can reject it but she can't change it judge brickma said that when she was presented with this 11 c1c plea that she had been a federal judge since 1986 and she had never seen an 11 c1c plea and she said I don't like it I don't like it one bit if I could give you 10 years Mr kiraku I would give you 10 years well the truth is she could give me 10 years all she had to do was reject the 11 c1c but every National

[10:35] Security journalist in Washington was in the courtroom that day for my sentencing and she was playing to the to the reporters um with that said she never accused me of weakening our democracy she never accused me of domestic terrorism so yeah this is worse and it's also disingenuous you know I I don't care if this was a a Biden appointee or Trump appointee or from any other president this judge made herself look silly with a dumb statement like that

[11:09] and as we made clear here this is tax returns yes published by the New York Times along with other tax files on Elon Musk Jeff Bezos and other very good tax Dodgers like they're sophisticated they've been able to get away with paying small amounts of money to the IRS if you or I tried to do it we would be audited or we would probably find an IRS agent knocking on our door yeah and uh yet she's equating the

[11:43] publishing of this information or the leaking of this information which is in the public interest to rioting on Capitol Hill like going through and smashing windows and threatening to string up Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi come on give us a break here yeah this is really over the top you know I I felt so sorry like you did I felt so sorry when reality winter got what was it five years and four months it was just outrageous um but to equate this with a

[12:15] national security crime to equate the release of tax information with with top secret sensitive compartmented information it's just a it's it it doesn't make any sense to me at all unless maybe it's in the National Security interests of the US to protect the 1% from having us you know see how much they don't pay when they're expected to pay their taxes that's right uh and so okay that brings us to the

[12:46] elites of this country uh and before we move on to other cases that are all basically all in one universe so I'm putting them off for the end of our conversation let's get to that bizarre report from the special Council about Joe Biden President Joe Biden's mishandling of classified documents because this to me was a rather wacky document that got thrown out there for everyone uh and so here's this is the

[13:18] box or one of the boxes that was circled it's in this garage it said that there's classified Afghanistan documents that the FBI found in 22 when they went and searched his home in Delaware and in particular I want to I want to raise this uh because you know you went through your own prosecution so I I imagine that you read a document like this it might make you

[13:51] feel a little bit infuriated because you sat through lectures about how classified information has to be protected and they made it seem like it was essential that these kinds of criminal prosecutions take place and right you prosecutor could never show discretion so what I have up on your here on the screen is I actually have these inverted this isn't exactly the order in the document but I'll read it like this the practice of retaining classified material in unsecured locations and re and and

[14:22] reading classified material to one's Ghost Rider present serious risks to National Security give them the vulnerability of extraordinarily sensitive information to loss or compromise to America's adversaries the department routinely highlights such risks when pursuing classified mishandling prosecutions but addressing those risks through criminal charges the only means available to this office is not the proper remedy here in

[14:55] reaching our decision we did not consider every circumstance in which criminal charges against a former president or vice president for mishandling classified information may be warranted but on the facts of the case and this is from the Department of Justice principles on there I never knew that this was a language that was on the justice department site but apparently they use this phrase the facts of this case the fundamental interests of society the fundamental interests of society do not require criminal charges

[15:27] against Mr Biden and for this additional reason yada yada yada we're declining prosecution so so yeah there it is it's not in the fundamental interests of society to prosecute Joe Biden you know I wrote an oped uh in consor news I'm gonna say it's almost two years ago now whenever whenever Donald Trump was initially um caught with the classified documents at maral Lago and uh the oped was head LED don't

[16:00] charge Donald Trump with Espionage and the sub headline was and don't charge anyone else either uh we need to come up with something akin to what we had in the 1990s when classified information was mishandled or allegedly mishandled and I'll I'll recount a story that I've told you in the past at the CIA in the 199 I sat next to a woman who was having an affair with a

[16:34] man who used to be a senior Cia officer he had retired and he had gone to CNN as a uh terrorism consultant and in the course of pillow talk she relayed classified information to him he went on CNN and repeated the classified information the CIA began an investigation they immediately tied it right back to her she was not charged with Espionage

[17:05] what they did was they wrote a strongly worded letter and put it in her personnel file they suspended her without pay for two weeks and she was ineligible for a promotion for a period of one year that's how you handle the misuse of classified information now you saw the picture you you just posted the picture of the Box in Joe Biden's garage who had access to that information who

[17:36] who saw the information who was the information revealed to nobody maybe it went to his Ghost Writer okay shame on you you should have a strongly worded letter put in your personnel file but Espionage sorry same with Donald Trump Donald Trump has a problem he has lots of problems but in this case he had a problem with with taking classified information uh with him in his retirement did he publish it did he turn it over to Fox News is society a more

[18:09] dangerous place because of it no not that anybody has proven and so you know let's put a strongly worded letter in his personnel file or something but to charge him with Espionage which in some cases can be a death penalty case no I'm sorry it's not appropriate we need to revamp the whole thing you and I have talked about this at length both privately and uh and you know on your podcast and on my radio show the the Espionage Act needs to be

[18:40] scrapped and Rewritten so that it targets people who mean harm to our country people who are working on behalf of foreign governments or foreign entities or dangerous terrorist groups or something like that not for some absent-minded politician who leaves boxes in his garage sorry you're absolutely right before the people like you and other whistleblowers and other lower level leakers who had

[19:11] their lives destroyed or people who were found to be retaining documents in their homes and had their homes rated by the FBI I would just like to before we move on from Joe Biden read this part from the special council's report and I just read this to bluntly call out the special counsel and his team for printing in this because I have followed justice department prosecutions and this is not how others

[19:46] have been prosecuted so I just want to read this it says so let me backtrack we didn't say this so to make sure that everyone listening understands what Biden was found to have in his possession or found to have done he had these documents he apparently took these records that showed that he opposed the troop surge that President Obama wanted for Afghanistan admirable glad he opposed it

[20:19] then he uh had these notebooks and he shared them with his Ghost Rider and there are recordings of Joe Biden speaking to his ghost writer and apparently leaking classified information from these notebooks that had highly sensitive military National Security other things that had been noted from I think presidential daily briefings of meetings of that nature so this is what the special Council wrote for an oral disclosure of information as

[20:49] opposed to the disclosure of a classified document the government must prove that the possessor has reason to believe the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign Nation accordingly to establish that Mr Biden violated section 793 e that's in the Espionage Act when he read the information from his notebooks to his ghost riter we would need to prove that he acted with an intent to violate the law and had reason to believe the

[21:19] information he disclosed could be used to harm the United States or benefit a foreign Nation um so like that's not how people are prosecuted no it's not it's not and you know you know as well as I do Kevin I'm sorry to interrupt you but in in my case a precedent was set when judge Len brinka said that she would not respect the precedent that had been set in the Tom Drake case that that the the defendant had to have Criminal Intent to

[21:52] leak the document she said Mr kiraku you either did it or you didn't do it it and I think you did it and my attorney stood up and said your honor are you saying that a person can accidentally commit spage and she said that is exactly what I'm saying right so this whole thing of intent to violate the law when you talk to your ghost riter you were violating the law and your intent to share that information with

[22:23] your ghost riter is your V like that is the intent like but also to me that also seems to be a very Twisted way of of of viewing laws it's like I didn't mean to kill that person therefore I should not be punished for killing that person because I wasn't really trying to murder them that doesn't sound like how people get off and get away with crimes in this country or or just just don't go to pray

[22:55] I mean basically he's saying since Biden didn't intend to violate the Espionage Act he can't be prosecuted for violating the Espionage Act but that and then it's saying that if he then it says had reason to believe the information he disclosed could be used to harm the United States or benefit a foreign Nation but again the reason to believe the information would do such a thing it comes from all the meetings you have with people in government that advise

[23:27] you about the sensitivity of that information correct like that's that's how you are on notice that you have to protect the information and not leak it absolutely and then when you're when you're first given a security clearance you have to sign secrecy agreements saying that you'll never disclose the information that you uh come across and then every time you're read into a a compartment which which makes up sensitive compartmented information special compartmented information you

[23:59] sign new secrecy agreements saying that you're never going to disclose the information um and we all know that that the um that the uh president's Daily Brief is the most highly classified publication that comes out of the intelligence Community you can't disclose that stuff yeah and David Petraeus I think did something almost similar to Joe Biden Joe Biden wasn't having an affair with

[24:29] his ghost riter but Joe but but David Petraeus shared these notebooks they called them black books in PR yeah and his biographer Paula Broadwell had access to all of these and was referencing them for his the the the faing biography that was written about him so anyways let's move on to the next thing which is to discuss what happened to Joshua schy the sentencing he

[25:00] received uh it was over 40 years or it was about for I think it was 40 years 40 years yep 40 years sentence uh now up top uh it's treated separately so let's treat it separately there were two different trials yes we know that he was accused of having child sexual assault material on his computer and he was convicted of it and he received six to

[25:30] seven years in prison for it and that's serious violation and whatever was happening with that material it looks ugly that being said that's not our concern that's not what you and I deal with so I'm just going to set that aside the same way the court set it aside because if you look at what the prosecution was doing they reserved their worst and most aggressive prosecution for the leaking that Joshua

[26:02] Schult he did he got 33 and a half years I think for the disclosure of these materials and in particular I want to draw your attention and get your response to the fact that a terrorism enhancement was added to one of the charges what do you think about that the the computer crime offense was apparently on on a list was it added to a list after the Patriot Act was adopted

[26:33] following the September 11th attacks and so being on this list the government went in there and decided they were going to ask for this terrorism enhancement and they said that they needed to do this because of the fact that he had uh he had tried to retaliate he had a calc sorry he his offense was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of

[27:03] government intimidation or coercion or to retaliate against government conduct so in particular he was retaliating against government conduct by releasing the CIA hacking materials to WikiLeaks so a leak even though we're talking about a computer crime offense basically if they could have they would have tried to do this to the Espionage Act and made it a terrorism offense they're going after him and

[27:35] saying basically that leaking to WikiLeaks was tantamount to terrorism terrorism there are so many things wrong uh with his sentencing um we should we should give a little bit of background here too this was the second time that he was tried for these alleged crimes the first time he was he was acquitted of two charges and the jury hung on all the other charges and then Josh schy did something

[28:05] very very stupid he fired his attorneys and elected to represent himself and um by all accounts uh he came across to the jury as as arrogant uh which didn't do him any favors now one of the things that I think was a real disservice to him was was the fact that um there was no evidence there was no documentary

[28:36] evidence that he had ever downloaded anything from the CIA system and passed it to WikiLeaks and what the justice department said to explain that was that he was such a genius such a computer genius that he was able to completely cover his tracks and the reason why he's guilty is that there is no evidence against

[29:07] him that doesn't make any sense at all but apparently there were a lot of noding heads in the uh in the jury box and so he rejects this label of whistleblower he says that he never sent Wikileaks anything okay fine I call him a whistleblower you call him a whistleblower um I also want to say something about enhancements first of all this terrorism enhancement is just outrageous and there's no recourse you can't appeal an

[29:39] enhancement it's just it's just up to the judge at the request of the prosecution but what is an enhancement if you go to the Justice Department's website and you look at the sentencing schedule it looks like an Actuarial chart right this is I would really encourage everybody to do this so you have on the leftand side you have levels 1 through 40 with one being you you know jaywalked

[30:10] on federal property right and across the top from from left to right there are something like seven columns number column number one is you've never been in trouble in your life number seven is your career criminal you commit federal crimes every single day and the others are in between so level 40 Seven is the federal death penalty right

[30:41] that's the the most serious level you can be and then the other extreme is you know they don't even waste their time Prosecuting you okay so Josh schy had never been in trouble in his life so they charge him with Espionage which is actually level 27 on on a a scale of 1 to 40 so level 27 calls for something like nine years in prison how did he get 40 well they gave him an enhancement for

[31:15] terrorism they gave him an enhancement for hacking they gave him an enhancement for this is one of my favorite ones failure to take responsibility so if you are charged with a crime you plead not guilty you go to trial and you're found guilty they saywell you were lying when you said you were not guilty so that means you failed to take responsibility for your criminal Behavior that's an enhancement so instead of being a level 27 the first enhancement makes it a 29

[31:47] the second a 31 the third a 33 all of a sudden that nine years becomes 40 years that's how they did it and we should also mention that he was kept in horrendous conditions oh I just wrote about this the special administrative measures which I imagine to some of some degree will carry over to wherever he's going to be incarcerated I know correct that the judge said to keep him

[32:18] reasonably close to somewhere in the central part of the United States I I don't I don't actually know off the top of my head where he's from but they wanted to move him closer to his family it's usually good luck with that yeah well I mean How likely is it that he gets put in like Florence Colorado you know the the super yeah Florence Maran or terot mark my words those are CM so the communication management units yeah

[32:50] correct um listen the judge recommending to the justice department that they keep him close to family is like me recommending to the justice department that they keep him close to family it counts for literally nothing because is is it is the sole it is the sole responsibility of the Bureau of Prisons to decide who goes where the judge can say all he or she wants that as my judge did that I should go to a minimum security Work Camp it makes no difference to anybody and and this holds

[33:22] with Julian Assange as well we can talk about that whenever you want but for well so just just leading into Assange I was going to mention that the terrorism enhancement is certainly something that I would expect his attorneys in people who are advocates for him to now raised in the context of these extradition proceedings yes because we're talking about the potential for cruel and inhuman treatment and this computer crime

[33:54] offense is there's there's very few people who have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act who have also had this charge affixed to them which may be kind of stunning you know you you think the justice department is very aggressive so probably there are a lot of these cases but it's not always that people who have done these leaks have also faced computer crime offenses even though they could because mind you all of this information is being downloaded from computers that's right so I'm not quite sure what's going on at the justice

[34:24] department in their National Security division reality winner didn't have it Daniel hail did not have it Terry Albury did not have it and I think there's one more recent case that I thought it was remarkable that they didn't get it but Julian Assange does and Chelsea Manning did and Chelsea Manning didn't get a terrorism enhancement however the military went after her and said that she had aided the enemy you might recall I do and and splashed around this

[34:55] evidence that made it seemed like she had helped Al-Qaeda indirectly by leaking to WikiLeaks and so I fear that this is going to come back to Julian Assange I fear that through this conspiracy to commit a computer crime that juliia Assange is going to be this won't be in the UK because they want to be careful but in a US trial in that setting I fear that the US government is going to have its knife

[35:27] out and ready and will say that Julia Assange aided terrorists I think that's exactly what's going to happen they tried the same thing with Tom Drake you'll recall what 15 16 years ago now um in fact Tom tells a really wonderful story um about a prer meeting that he and his attorneys had with the the prosecutors at the justice department and one of the prosecutors said um you have the blood of American soldiers on your hands and he said who

[35:59] blood what soldier name one name one single soldier and everybody just went silent they try this kind of garbage all the time saying that people have died because of your Revelations there's blood on your hands uh that that you've given Aid to uh Aid and comfort to the enemy and and to terrorist groups none of it's none of it's true you you recall probably better than anybody that after uh the the Chelsea Manning case was completed the head of NSA at the time

[36:29] came out and said that there was no discernable harm to the National Security none zero it was embarrassing to see what people say behind closed doors but there was no harm to the National Security just like with uh this this IRS guy little John there's no harm to the National Security they can compare his case to as many DEA or Dia cases as they want there's no harm and just like with Julian Assange there's no harm yeah exactly and so we've got this

[37:03] hearing coming up uh but on my way to getting your final thoughts for this episode and letting you give some parting words about juliaan Assange and the fact that we have this major hearing I do want to mention that we have news uh that I haven't had a chance to write up yet talking to you but I'm going to get something together because I've been closely following this case the CIA is going to invoke the state Secrets

[37:33] privilege in this lawsuit that I thought was rather incredible because the judge did not dismiss it and allowed a a a basically complaint against the CIA to stand that they could go and litigate and it involves well I'll let the CIA tell you because here's what I have from the memo they just submitted to the court after the Court's recent decision on the government's motion to

[38:04] dismiss the sole remaining claim in this case is the plaintiff's allegation that at the cia's request the Spanish defendants we're talking about UC Global this private security company that targeted Assange that they illegally downloaded the contents of the plaintiff's electronic devices when they visited Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and transmitted these materials to the CIA so these are two journalists and two attorneys that have sued said their privacy rights were violated the CIA continues any factual

[38:34] inquiry into these allegations whether they are true or not would implicate classified information as it would require the CIA to reveal what intelligence gathering activities it did or did not engage in among other things because the CIA cannot publicly reveal the very facts over which it is seeking authorization the very facts over which it is seeking authorization to assert the State Secrets privilege that sentence is written weird anyways they um are going to invoke the state Secret's privilege to prevent a judge

[39:07] from holding them accountable for copying people's Electronics I've been talking to um UBS whistleblower Brad berkenfeld about this at length over the last uh week or so Brad visited Julian on two occasions in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and Brad of course is an American citizen born and raised in the United States uh he turned his cell phone in uh just like every visitor to the Ecuadorian Embassy did and now is confident that his

[39:38] information was illegally improperly downloaded by uh this Spanish contractor and turned over to the CIA and there's no recourse this is clearly obviously a legal constitutional violation and uh there's nothing that uh anybody can do uh about it you know there is a deep State and you can call it whatever you want you can call it the Deep State you can call it the state you

[40:09] can call it the federal bureaucracy whatever it is it tramples the constitutional rights of uh of average American citizens and there is no recourse this is yet another example yeah they're doing it right now because as we record this podcast they're saying to the Congress you're going to go in a close session and debate 702 reauthorization for uh surveillance authorities for the NSA we don't want this to happen out in the in the open for for the public to respond and and

[40:41] tell us that we need to change how we do all of this John Cod the judge he can accept this or he cannot he actually could say that you're not allowed to invoke the state Secrets privilege but you know what there's very very few judges that would do he might he might but I hear he's retiring soon he's he's a much older judge and so if he didn't grant them the state Secrets privilege I fear that the CIA

[41:13] just drags this out and then hopes that the case gets reassigned and then tries to find a way to invoke the state Secrets privilege again later on down the road there's always I mean there are Masters at procedurally gaming the syst absolutely absolutely they are and this really makes me fear for the civil liberties of of all Americans because it looks like they're going to get away with this and if they get away with it now they're going to get away with it next time because a precedent will have been set or reset and then you know

[41:43] where do we turn from there where do we go all right so I'll let you have the last words here anything you want to say about the pivotal hearing that is happening on February 20th and what's at stake and how I think people should understand this is the first chance for Julian Assange and his legal team to go before this court and say that that lower court decision The District Court decision from 2021 must be reconsidered

[42:13] because it was not acknowledged and recognized that juliia Assange has press Freedom rights that's right um I've spoken to a lot of people about this hearing next week Julian's uh relatives uh his UK attorneys one of his American attorneys even people at Wikileaks and everybody is pretty certain that he's going to be not just extradited a week from tomorrow but but whisked directly

[42:44] from the courtroom to a waiting FBI plane and flown immediately back to the United States if and when that happens it's up to all the rest of us to stand up we're going to have to maintain a presence at that Courthouse we have to go to Every hearing we have to stand outside we have to talk to the media we have to March we have to write we have to to meet with citizens who need to be educated on this uh on this

[43:16] issue uh because there's a very thin line between Julian and all the rest of us Julian is obviously a publisher he's obviously a journalist and any conviction any prosecution would put every National Security journalist in America on the firing line I mean the Constitution really is what is at stake here and so if the government is going to try to

[43:46] chip away the Constitution it's up to the rest of us to fight them on it we we have to we we can't go down without a fight we we owe it to ourselves if not to Julian well thank you John it was really great to be able to speak with you I'm glad I was able to talk with you about all of these stories and these important issues and everyone should go read uh your articles you have a substack and uh you're also regularly contributing to Consortium news so thank you very

[44:19] much
