Breaking Video: Former CIA Director Michael Pompeo Gets Served
CIA Sued Over Alleged Spying on Lawyers and Journalists Who Met with Julian Assange, Publisher, WikiLeaks
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: November 1, 2022
Breaking Video: Former CIA Director Michael Pompeo Gets Served
CIA Sued Over Alleged Spying on Lawyers and Journalists Who Met with Julian Assange, Publisher, WikiLeaks
The controversial figure was posing for photographs at an event in Ohio when he was served with papers alleging flagrant Fourth Amendment violations.
NEW YORK — Former Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was served with a lawsuit alleging he oversaw a criminal conspiracy to violate the Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. attorneys and journalists inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
A professional process server handed Pompeo legal papers while posing for photographs on October 29 at the John Ashbrook Memorial Dinner in Ohio. The legal service was caught on video and released by the Assange Defense Committee on Twitter.
The suit was filed on behalf of U.S. attorneys and journalists who were surveilled while visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. Plaintiffs include renowned civil rights activist and human rights attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler, attorney Deborah Hrbek and journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz. The filing of the suit was first reported by Newsweek.
The controversial Pompeo served as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence before his tenure as Secretary of State. In one of his first speeches as CIA Director, he famously took aim at WikiLeaks, arguing that it did not deserve First Amendment protection as it was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” In 2021, Yahoo News documented this surveillance plot, and also reported that Pompeo and other Trump administration officials had discussed kidnapping or killing Assange in London – discussions that occurred at “the highest levels” of the administration.
“There seemed to be no boundaries,” said a former senior counterintelligence official, according to Yahoo News.
The lawsuit also names the CIA, Spanish security firm UC Global, and UC Global director David R. Morales Guillen. It alleges violations of the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights. The suit documents how UC Global provided the CIA with information about Assange’s visitors and forced visitors to surrender their electronic devices to enter the embassy – digitally copying and transmitting information on those devices to the CIA. Assange was a legally protected asylee at the time. More than 100 Americans visited Assange in the embassy.
Plaintiff Margaret Ratner Kunstler blasted the threat authoritarians like Pompeo pose to constitutional liberties. “If a foreign journalist can be prosecuted for publishing factual documents, then no journalist is safe,” Kunstler said. “And apparently Mike Pompeo believes that attorneys representing journalists should not be safe either. These actions are outrageous.”
CONTACT: Nathan Fuller, nathan@assangedefense.org
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