It is a curious argument from the government in that until this point it tried to establish that WikiLeaks was first, or the only one, to publish. The indictment against Assange makes no mention of the chronology of publishing, which is crucial because as the defense is trying to establish, WikiLeaks would not have published the unredacted archive at all if others had not done so first. It could amount to selective prosecution.
The turn in prosecution argument is similar to it dropping its contention that Assange is not a journalist by making it clear that the U.S. is not precluded from charging a member of the media for disclosing national defense information.
7:20 am EDT: Defense witness Christian Grothoff, a professor of computer science at Bern University, Switzerland, has laid out the chronology of the publication of the unredacted State Dept. cables that are at the heart of this case.
He traces it back to the publication of the password in the Feb. 2011 book by David Leigh and Luke Harding. Grothoff then explained that the German publication Freitag wrote on Aug. 25, 2011 about the password being available in the book, which led to the cables being published on Aug. 31 on a torrent site, followed by their publication by Cryptome.org on Sept. 1.
WikiLeaks then published it on Sept. 2. Grothoff testified that WikiLeaks was a "responsible publisher" that tried to protect the unredacted cables. Defense attorney Mark Summers on direct asked Grothoff if the files were still available on Cryptome.
Grothoff: "Yes I accessed them last week."
Summers: "Was Cryptome ever prosecuted for this?"
Grothoff: "The defense never provided me with information, no."
On cross examination, prosecutor Joel Smith attempted, as the prosecution has with virtually every defense witness, to undermine Grothoff's impartiality.
Smith: "Can you think of anything that shows you are not impartial?"
Grothoff: "I don't know what you are thinking about. Obviously we know that Mr. Assange did publish information about war crimes by governments, which makes him a sympathetic character. But that does not make me impartial."
Smith then said that Grothoff had signed an open letter to President Donald Trump in 2017 asking that he end the grand jury and drop all charges against Assange because of the threat to press freedom it represented. Grothoff said he didn't remember signing the letter.
Grothoff: "I have a view that this prosecution is unfair but I only tried to look if there was a case for the prosecution and I did not find it."
Smith: "You are biased, you are partial."
Grothoff: "No you are confusing actions WikiLeaks took to hide these cables. So when you say WikiLeaks published these cable first, you are wrong and did not do your homework. It is unfair to accuse Mr. Assange of publishing those cables."
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