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That's only a pretext, and the far-reaching goal is to browbeat journalists and publishers like Assange into thinking twice before covering various US government abuses, Zeese believes.

"They want to frighten media into not covering US activity around the world. The US is often involved in activity that could be characterized as war crimes, certainly, atrocity, and certainly, corruption of our transnational corporations. That was all kinds of things WikiLeaks was reporting," the American lawyer and political activist told RT.

Having originally been intended to punish "actual" war-time traitors, the Espionage Act has now become a weapon in the Trump administration's "war on media." The release of the indictment sparked a widespread backlash from the journalistic community - something that Zeese believes has been long overdue.

US media outlets are starting to realize they are under threat as well, having spent years trying to sink WikiLeaks, which they saw as a powerful competitor.

"Assange was democratizing the media, he was broadening the people who could report. People inside governments, inside corporations could leak classified documents anonymously and that had become news. That took away the power of the corporate media."

That being said, the US media are likely to side with the political establishment to remain in the authorities' good graces, said David Swanson, American anti-war activist and radio host.

© REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
People hold signs during a protest outside Southwark Crown Court where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be sentenced, in London, Britain, May 1, 2019.

"They find it more important to stand by the government, the establishment and treat these indictments as respectable because they come from the US government, rather than to stand up for journalism," Swanson told RT, before assuring it will "come back to bite" them in the future.

'Dubious on many levels'

If the US government had solid evidence Assange actually endangered the people mentioned in the WikiLeaks files, it would have come up during the trial of former US Private and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, said Patrick Henningsen, journalist and Founder of 21stCenturyWire.com.

"If they had anything it would have been on the table in 2010"

"The government had multiple opportunities to present evidence that somehow the sources and methods were compromised or that the agents in the field were put in danger and at no point did they come forward with any evidence to back up this assertion. Instead, they came up with theoretical scenarios of what could have happened," Henningsen said, describing the attempts of the US prosecution to "re-engineer" a case "dubious on many levels."

The risks to the lives of government contractors the US is describing "are vastly overstated," Arvin Vohra, former vice-chairman of the Libertarian National Committee and a 2020 presidential candidate, agreed.

Assange's main crime is that he "embarrassed the US government" and "revealed its dirty secrets," Vohra told RT, something Manning and Edward Snowden are "guilty" of as well.

Vohra believes Washington's ultimate goal is to demoralize would-be leakers once and for all.

"They are trying to scare the next Assange, the next Snowden, the next Chelsea Manning."

"All they are doing is showing that Julian Assange is a great American hero, and they are showing nothing bad about Assange but causing American people to continue to lose trust and faith in the US federal government."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has become a rare voice among the US politicians to denounce the new US indictment of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange as an encroachment on First Amendment rights.

"This is not about Julian Assange. This is about the use of the Espionage Act to charge a recipient and publisher of classified information. I am extremely concerned about the precedent this may set and potential dangers to the work of journalists and the First Amendment," Wyden said.

Wyden is known as a long-time advocate of privacy and civil liberties in the US legislature. He championed legislation forcing the US government to obtain a warrant before spying on Americans outside the US in 2008 and pushed for a congressional investigation into allegations of abuse and torture of prisoners by the CIA during the Bush administration.

Wyden's take on Assange's work is in stark contrast with that of the Department of Justice, which maintains that Assange "is no journalist." Numerous members of the journalistic community have vented their outrage at the indictment, describing it as an "unprecedented assault" on the First Amendment.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has echoed the sentiment, denouncing the charges against the Australian as a "threat to all journalists everywhere."

While media, civil rights organizations and prominent whistleblowers like Edward Snowden have been sounding the alarm over the new worrying development in Assange's case, politicians in Washington, with the rare exception, seem to be ignoring the buzz.

US President Donald Trump, who used to praise WikiLeaks when it released damaging emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign before the 2016 election, has not commented on the issue, being seemingly preoccupied with his spiraling feud with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, likewise, has not said a word on Assange. Her colleagues on the Capitol Hill seem to be following the trend so far.

There is little hope for Julian Assange to be given a fair trial in the hands of the US justice system, former CIA analyst and whistleblower John Kiriakou, whose case was handled by the same District Court in Virginia, told RT.

Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on the government-sanctioned torture program in 2007 and was sentenced to 30 months after pleading guilty to leaking the name of an officer involved in waterboarding, told RT that there is high chance Assange might spend the rest of his life in jail.

The US Department of Justice rolled out 17 new charges against Assange under the Espionage Act, a WWI-era document that was aimed at prosecuting spies during war time. Assange became the first journalist or publisher to ever be charged under the century-old law and now faces up to 170 years in prison.

According to Kiriakou, Assange should not count on the court's impartiality in his case: "They are going to try to make an example of Julian. He's been charged in the Eastern District of Virginia. His judge was also my judge and ex-Snowden's judge and [CIA whistleblower] Jeffry Sterling's judge who reserves every national security case for herself."

"She is a hanging judge. She will not give him a fair trial. It's impossible for Julian to receive a fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia."

Speaking from his own experience with the same district court, Kiriakou argued that it "gonna try to give him as many years as they can," which means a "sentence of 30-40 years" if served concurrently.

The only avenue worth taking a shot on is to protest the constitutionality of the Espionage Act, notorious for its vague language, to the US Supreme Court, Kiriakou said.

"He'll have immediate standing to appeal on the basis that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague," he said. "The Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue. That may be the way to go."

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