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| Julian Assange |
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
He believes the Justice Dept. may view some of the ancillary services to the representation of the imprisoned journalist/publisher subject to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Those services may include briefings about the litigation and participating in public educational events about the case, according to the Justice Dept. filing.
Chambers USA called Pollack a “thorough and deep-thinking lawyer” who “lives, breathes and sleeps trials, and has such a natural way in front of juries.”
Assange is jailed in His Majesty's Prison Belmarsh in southeast London.
Amnesty International issued a statement on Feb. 13, saying the extradition of Assange to the US would have a profound, chilling effect on global media freedom.
“The risk to publishers and investigative journalists around the world hangs in the balance. Should Julian Assange be sent to the US and prosecuted there, global media freedoms will be on trial, too,” said Julia Hall, AI’s expert on counter-terrorism and criminal justice in Europe.
If successfully prosecuted in the US under the Espionage Act of 1917, a measure not intended to target the media, Assange could face up to 175 years in jail.
He also faces a maximum of five years in prison on computer fraud charges.
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