The US government's affidavit for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was made public Monday, detailing exactly what criminal actions for which Washington investigators seek to prosecute him.
Filed under seal on December 21, 2017, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, FBI Special Agent Megan Brown's affidavit was filed in support of a criminal complaint alleging that Assange conspired to “access a computer, without authorization and exceeding authorized access, to obtain classified national defense information” and “access a computer, without authorization and exceeding authorized access, to obtain information from a department or agency of the United States in furtherance of a criminal act.”
However, Brown is forced to admit that Assange and former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning “took elaborate measures to conceal their communications, mask their identities, and destroy any trace of their conduct, using, for example, encryption and anonymization techniques, and erasing and wiping data. For this reason, the facts are derived in large part from forensic analysis of available computer data, remnants, or unalterable systems.”
“The charges in this criminal complaint focus on a specific illegal agreement that Assange and Manning reached in furtherance of Manning's illegal disclosure of classified information,” Brown wrote. “As explained below, investigators have recovered Internet ‘chats'…
An Affidavit is simply a written, notarized sworn statement. An Affidavit can be used for nearly any reason such as to attest of someone’s death or birth, to state a place of residence, or to be entered as evidence in a court trial.