A new report by The Sydney Morning Herald reveals the FBI is restarting its investigation into Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
The move by the FBI comes as a shock to Assange’s legal team, due to the fact Assange was charged by the Department of Justice for violating the Espionage Act over three years ago.
According to the report, author Andrew O’Hagan was approached by FBI agents who asked him to give a statement about his time with Assange over a decade ago when he was a ghostwriter for Assange’s auto-biography.
O’Hagan, however, refused to talk to the FBI agents.
Currently, Assange is in a South London prison where he has been fighting a lengthy appeals process to stop his extradition to the United States.
‘United States law enforcement authorities are seeking to gather new evidence about Julian Assange in an apparent effort to bolster their case against the WikiLeaks founder’ | @smh https://t.co/M4tuFJUtT7
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 31, 2023
Per The Sydney Morning Herald:
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age can reveal that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last week sought to interview acclaimed novelist Andrew O’Hagan about his time working as a ghostwriter on Assange’s autobiography over a decade ago.
O’Hagan, who wrote a well-known and often scathing essay about the breakdown of his working relationship with Assange, said he would not agree to an FBI interview because he opposes any attempt to punish him for publishing classified material.
The revelation of the interview request came as an unwelcome surprise to Assange’s lawyers, who did not previously believe there was an active investigation under way into Assange given it has been three years since US prosecutors issued an indictment against him.
In recent months, the Australian Government has pleaded with the Biden Administration to release Assange who is an Australian national.
The Biden administration has mostly disregarded the Australian government’s pleas.
Biden is now picking a fight with Australia (after offending them by cancelling a trip there over the debt ceiling) by re-opening a case against Australian journalist Julian Assange even as the country calls for his repatriation pic.twitter.com/P2tDMe7uRk
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) June 1, 2023
