# The plea-hearing objection > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The plea-hearing objection," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-plea-hearing-objection/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's account of standing up at his own plea hearing, over his lawyer's objection, to tell the judge that the statement of facts the prosecutors had written into his plea agreement was untrue — and of her reply that it was just window dressing.* - **Who writes the agreement:** The prosecutors - **What he objected to:** A confession to grave crimes he says he did not commit - **His lawyer's position:** That he had nothing to say - **The judge's answer:** That it was just window dressing - **His reply:** Be that as it may, it is simply not true **The plea-hearing objection** is [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account of the one moment in his prosecution at which he contradicted the record on his own behalf, and of how little it changed.[1] ## Who writes the document The premise he supplies first is procedural. In a federal plea there is a final agreement, and it is the prosecutors who write it. A defendant can object to what is in it — and they can tell him to go fly a kite.[1] What his own agreement contained, on his account, was a confession to grave crimes that he had not committed.[1] ## The exchange At the hearing the judge asked whether he had anything to say. His lawyer answered for him that he did not. Kiriakou overrode his own counsel — *"no, I do"* — and stood.[1] He told the judge that the agreement was all nonsense and that he had not done any of the things that had been put into it. Her answer, in his telling, was that it was just window dressing. His reply: *"be that as it may, it's simply not true."*[2] ## What he draws from it Kiriakou offers the episode in 2019 as a forecast rather than a grievance, attaching it directly to [Julian Assange](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/julian-assange): the same thing, he says, is going to happen to him.[2] He treats it as of a piece with [the wider practice of federal plea bargaining](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/federal-plea-coercion), in which the document a defendant signs is drafted by the party prosecuting him and its contents are not, in the end, open to correction.[1][2] ## See also - [Federal plea coercion](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/federal-plea-coercion) - [Leonie Brinkema](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/leonie-brinkema) - [Julian Assange](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/julian-assange) - [The CIPA hearing in Kiriakou's case](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-cipa-hearing) - [Eastern District of Virginia](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/eastern-district-of-virginia) ## Sources 1. What Will Happen to Julian Assange (2019-06-29), at 07:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozUzW_3pBcw&t=455s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2019-06-29-what-will-happen-to-julian-assange/ 2. What Will Happen to Julian Assange (2019-06-29), at 08:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozUzW_3pBcw&t=487s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2019-06-29-what-will-happen-to-julian-assange/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-plea-hearing-objection/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt