An interesting legal point from the Assange ruling that people aren't giving Baraitser enough credit for.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/USA-v-Assange-judgment-040121.pdf

A goodly number of journalism outlets embraced and propagated rank disinformation even though this was always the most likely outcome of a political defense claim.

Here are Baraitsers three findings wrt the alleged acts being crimes in the UK. The most obvious is the conspiracy to hack that three people were already prosecuted for in the UK was a crime in the UK.

Baraitser relied heavily on the superseding indictment to find Assange's actions in the main Espionage Act charges went beyond journalism.

Here's Baraitser's ruling on the publication offenses. She cited media outlets criticizing WL's publication without redaction.

How Baraitser deals w/War Crimes claims is IMO one of the more troubling aspects (tho I don't dispute its validity as a matter of law).

As I noted earlier, Baraitser considered arguments that didn't really address the extradition request, and I think this is one instance of that. So while she considered the war crimes defense, she found it lacking (on fairly troubling grounds, insofar as it defers Q to trial).

Baraitser has little time for the bullshit claims that Trump was targeting Assange personally.

"Surprising theories."

Indeed.

Baraitser goes outside the record before her in several places (these are just two, but two particularly interesting ones).

Given that Cassandra's testimony could be damaging for Trump, Schwartz, Assange, and others, it doesn't look like it was a good idea to submit it (it never did).

Again, the effort to claim this was politically motivated was a big flop, and a bunch of journalists and journalist NGOs debased themselves to spew propaganda making the claim.

As mentioned, Baraitser went beyond the record before her on several occasions, in part to consider the import of Vault 7. Here, it worked in favor of Assange, bc it's how she blew off USG [empty] assurances that Assange might not be subject to SAMs.

Baraitser ultimately rules that Assange's dispute re password hash is irrelevant based on US (and UK) conspiracy law. This was obviously throughout, but people who should have known better claimed otherwise.

This is Baraitser's ultimately judgment on the publishing counts, though the section is worth reading in full. Basically, she says Assange has a defense but not an uncontested one.

It's worth noting that Baraitser ALSO did not rule that a secondary publication put the crime beyond the reach of OSA, which I had thought she might (IMO was Assange's strongest evidentiary arg).