Defending Julian Assange: Barry Pollack on the Historic Plea Deal and the Future of White-Collar Defense

Since he founded WikiLeaks in 2006, Julian Assange has been a polarizing figure – something more mythic than human. To some, Assange has been a bastion of free speech and a galvanizing insurgent in the fight against government secrecy. To others, his work has altered the political climate, risked national security and endangered the lives of Americans. Those who feel ambivalently are a small group.

No matter your stance, Assange’s meteoritic rise and the ensuing fallout have been undeniably historic. WikiLeaks’ first disclosures – including information on a U.S. helicopter strike in Baghdad, private logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and dossiers from Guantanamo Bay – were massive exposures of government secrets. Assange’s eventual indictment, meanwhile, was the first time a publisher has been charged under the Espionage Act for disseminating private government information – a move that has shaken journalists and First Amendment advocates.

But to lawyer Barry Pollack, Assange was one thing: a client. To him, Assange was a man, stuck in prison in England, wanting to go home to Australia.

So, Pollack made it happen.

Last June, Pollack brokered a monumental deal with the U.S. government that arranged for Assange’s release, bringing a nearly 15-year saga to a close. Pollack, one of the nation’s most renowned criminal defense attorneys, has been by Assange’s side since Assange first sought safe harbor in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012. Pollack has seen him through WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic emails during the 2016 election and the ensuing public response; through Assange’s indictment under the first Trump administration, made public in 2018; and finally, through his arrest and move to British prison in 2019, where Assange spent seven years.

Pollack, facing the competing demands of client needs, multiple governments’ jurisdictions, international legal teams and public scrutiny, cut straight through the myth and into the reality of his client’s situation. On a hot summer day in the Northern Mariana Islands (vitally, after facing extradition for years, on U.S. territory close to Assange’s home in Australia rather than in the mainland U.S.), Assange pled guilty to just one of the 17 counts of espionage lodged against him. He was sentenced to time served and returned home.

Pollack’s work is about the people behind the public figures. “Typically, when I meet with a client, they are facing what may be the worst crisis that they have ever faced,” he says. “And at the end of the day, it's no longer a stranger who I'm seeing get through to the other side of this terrible piece of their life. It's somebody that I've come to know and respect.”

This is not the first time Pollack, who has spent 35 years defending clients accused of high-profile white-collar and financial crimes, has come up against notoriety. Following the infamous collapse of Enron, which the FBI itself describes as the most complex white-collar crime investigation in its history, Pollack represented former Enron accountant Michael W. Krautz. While 22 people were convicted in the investigation, after a month-long jury trial, Krautz was one of only a few who were acquitted of federal criminal fraud charges. In another high-profile matter – and one with high personal stakes for Pollack – he recently represented fellow D.C. defense lawyer and personal friend Jonathan Jeffress in a sexual assault case brought by another attorney. Ultimately, jurors found Jeffress not guilty – in a trial that took place the same month as Assange's plea deal was reached.

Outside of the white-collar world, Pollack has worked to exonerate three pro bono clients who each spent years in prison on later-overturned murder charges. In the first of those cases, Pollack represented Martin Tankleff, who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his parents when he was 17 years old. After spending another 17 years in prison, with Pollack as his lawyer, Tankleff’s convictions were reversed. Pollack then represented him in civil suits that yielded $13.4M in compensation. In response, Pollack received the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project’s Defender of Innocence Award and the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Gideon Champion of Justice Award.

Pollack is a partner at employment, commercial litigation and white-collar defense firm Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, where he and partner Addy Schmitt established a D.C. office in 2023. Together, the pair bring their experience in D.C. together with the firm’s bench of talent in New York.

Barry Pollack: A little of both. There had been some efforts to see if a resolution could be had over a number of months that ultimately were not productive. They simply did not lead to an offer by the United States that Julian was willing to accept. Then in the late winter to early spring of 2024, the government came back with a new offer that was along the lines of what ultimately happened. It was a matter of hammering out all of the details, of which there were many, because in addition to all the ordinary considerations, the UK government needed to be involved, the Australian government needed to be involved. So it was very difficult logistically to bring it all together. Over the last month or so, the pace of the negotiations picked up considerably and became far more intense – but in a way that I thought, and I think the government thought, “We're on the right path now; we're going to be able to come to a resolution that works for everybody.” A lot of time and effort went into that, and we did obviously get to the finish line.

LD: The international intricacies of working on this matter, both in terms of coordinating with his lawyers abroad and with various governments – was that a unique experience for you?

BP: I've been practicing for 35 years now, and there has been a steady growth of cases that implicate multiple countries. When I first started, it would be extremely rare that you would have a case that was not entirely in the United States. Over time, the world has changed. So much business is interconnected internationally. U.S. companies do business abroad. Foreign companies do business in the United States. The United States has an extraordinary view of what its worldwide jurisdiction is. In Julian's case, you've got somebody who's not a United States citizen who is publishing information not in the United States, had not set foot in the United States, with respect to any of the alleged offensive conduct. The information was leaked to him by somebody in Iraq. Yet the United States obviously felt that it could pursue that as a criminal offense in the United States.

LD: Now, it’s been some months since his release. What do you expect the ripple effects of this historic plea deal to be?

BP: I think it's too soon to tell. After all of the years of litigation, the fundamental question of whether the U.S. government can, consistent with the First Amendment, charge somebody under the Espionage Act was not resolved. Essentially, under this plea we agreed to disagree about that issue. What Mr. Assange admitted is that he received information that he knew to be classified, that he thought was newsworthy, and that he published it. In other words, he admitted to doing what the New York Times and the Washington Post do literally every day of the week. The ultimate issue of whether or not pursuing that violates the First Amendment was not resolved by any court. So, in some ways, there's the precedent of the Julian Assange case, but it's not a meaningful legal precedent. So how future administrations will address that issue remains to be seen. So what will happen in a second Trump administration? Will they feel emboldened to go after media organizations? Or will this be a one-off not to be repeated? That remains to be seen. And of course, the issue is going to outlive the second Trump administration. We'll have to see what future administrations do.

I'm able to talk to a jury and explain the evidence in a way that makes sense to them – that shows them that the government's way of looking at the facts is not the only way to look at the facts and may not even be the best way to look at the facts.

LD: This wasn't your only Espionage Act case. Can you tell me about representing former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling back in 2015?

BP: So, in the history of the Espionage Act, while it had never been used against a publisher, it had been used on a handful of occasions against somebody who had a relationship with the government –  either a government employee or a government contractor who leaked governmental information. Jeffrey Sterling had been a CIA officer who was charged with leaking information to two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jim Risen, who at that time was with the New York Times, about a program that Mr. Sterling had supposedly worked on while he was with the agency. Ultimately the New York Times did not publish a story about that program at the behest of the White House, because supposedly there'd be national security implications of doing so. But a couple of years later, Mr. Risen published a book that was a history of the CIA. In the book, there was a chapter about this program, using material that he had obviously gathered when he was working on the potential story for the New York Times. After the book was published, ultimately the government charged Mr. Sterling under the Espionage Act for being a source for that chapter in the book.

LD: The sentencing guidelines call for a much higher sentence than was handed down – he received three and a half years rather than somewhere between 19 and 25 years. What do you think informed that result?

BP: The case was entirely circumstantial in terms of whether or not Mr. Sterling was in fact the leaker. Mr. Sterling had had a very contentious relationship with the CIA. Ultimately, after he left the CIA, he sued the CIA for race discrimination. So, in the government's mind, he had a motive to leak, because he was unsatisfied with the agency. The flip side of it is the agency had a motive to pin this on Sterling as opposed to anybody else because they had a contentious relationship with Sterling. At the end of the day, the jury did convict him. However, I think that the judge believed that Mr. Sterling was the leaker, but did not believe that the damage from this leak was anything close to what the government was portraying it to be. And I think that's why at the end of the day, she gave a sentence that was a small fraction of what the federal sentencing guidelines called for.

LD: Your pro bono work has focused on overturning wrongful convictions. Did that stem at all from your work as a public defender early on in your career, or was that a separate interest?

BP: It actually started before I went to the Federal Defender's Office, with one particular case. There was a man on Long Island named Martin Tankleff, who had been convicted in a notorious case out there, where he was convicted of murdering both of his parents in a wealthy neighborhood of Long Island when he was 17 years old. He had asked my old firm, Miller Cassidy, to assist him pro bono, and I started working on his matter there. I ended up working on it four years and it continued long after I was no longer at the Federal Defender's Office. It ultimately resulted in his conviction being reversed based on newly discovered evidence that demonstrated that he had nothing to do with the murder. Ever since, I've sifted through requests from inmates, and I've also worked with the Innocence Project. It is hard work, because once you are convicted, the system is set up to keep the convictions. So, these cases often take years to litigate, but there's really nothing more rewarding than seeing that kind of injustice corrected.

LD: What have you found most fulfilling about your work?

BP: I'm very fortunate in that I truly enjoy what I do. Typically, when I meet with a client, they are facing what may be the worst crisis that they have ever faced. To guide them through that process is enormously gratifying. It's hard to imagine doing something where you see a greater impact on the life of the person who you're dealing with. And these cases are intense. You spend a lot of hours with your client. In almost every case, I've developed a relationship with the client. And at the end of the day, it's no longer a stranger who I'm seeing get through to the other side of this terrible piece of their life. It's somebody that I've come to know and respect. So, in that way, to me almost every case is a home run.

LD: Are there any trends that you're seeing impact your practice lately? Or, given the new administration, any expectations of where things will trend?

BP: In this administration, because there have been so many pronouncements so quickly, I think everybody is kind of scrambling to try to predict what that's going to mean in the coming months and the coming years. If the administration follows through on some of its early pronouncements, it seems like there are going to be a number of areas that are curtailed. Certainly it sounds like enforcement – for example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – is going to be curtailed significantly. It sounds like the justice department wants to focus, if not exclusively, primarily on transnational drug cartels, on violent crime, and less so on white-collar crime. That said, I anticipate that there will be areas where there's continued enforcement. I think tax fraud, domestic public corruption. So I think there may be a bit of a slowdown in white-collar criminal enforcement, but it's certainly not going to stop. I think more likely it's going to shift focus.

LD: How would you describe your style as an attorney?

BP: There are trial attorneys who are excellent on their feet. They are very compelling in front of a jury. Then there are lawyers, many of them civil litigators, but certainly some criminal litigators as well, who really dig into the facts. They know the case sometimes much better than the government knows the case, sometimes better than their own client knows the case. I like to be both. With my background as a Certified Public Accountant before I became a lawyer, I don't shy away from digging into the financial details of a financial fraud case. I think I'm creative in looking at different ways to view the evidence besides simply, the government's theory of what the evidence shows.

I also think I have the ability to communicate well with a jury. In some ways, you're being a translator. You're taking a mass of very technical information from an industry that the jury may not be familiar with and communicate it in a way that is understandable. To the extent that I have had success in the courtroom, that's what I contribute it to. I'm able to talk to a jury and explain the evidence in a way that makes sense to them – that shows them that the government's way of looking at the facts is not the only way to look at the facts and may not even be the best way to look at the facts.

I'm going to tell you the unvarnished truth, but I'm going to do it in a way that puts you in control.

LD: What about your relationship with your clients? Obviously, it’s going to change from client to client, but are there any unifying characteristics to your approach to client relationships?

BP: I think some lawyers really try very hard to persuade their client to do what the lawyer thinks is in the client's best interest. I tend to think that it is the client's life, and the client who's going to live with the consequences of those decisions, and that the client should be making those decisions. So I try to be very candid with the client. I give them the unvarnished, "Here's where I think the strengths of the case are. Here's where I think the weaknesses of the case are. Here's what the risks are." And then let the client make the decision fully informed as to what risks the client is willing to accept. Every client has his or her own risk tolerance and that's what needs to guide those decisions.

LD: Right.

BP: So, to me, it is really about establishing trust and candor. That trust is built. I'm not going to sugarcoat it; I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear. I'm going to tell you the unvarnished truth, but I'm going to do it in a way that puts you in control. You're going to be the one who is then armed with the information you need to make what is the right decision for you.