Last Updated on November 2, 2022
A group of U.S. citizens is suing the CIA and former CIA director Mike Pompeo for allegedly violating the Fourth Amendment rights of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his visitors.
A video posted by WikiLeaks on Twitter shows a process server approach Pompeo, the US secretary of state under Donald Trump and longtime CIA operative, and serve him the lawsuit at a fundraising event late last week.
“Mike Pompeo has been served with a lawsuit brought by US lawyers and journalists who visited #Assange. Spanish court documents show violations of their US constitutional rights. Plaintiffs are represented by NY attorney Richard Roth,” the tweet’s caption reads.
WATCH:
"Michael Richard Pompeo: You've been served!"
Mike Pompeo has been served with a lawsuit brought by US lawyers and journalists who visited #Assange. Spanish court documents show violations of their US constitutional rights. Plaintiffs are represented by NY attorney Richard Roth. pic.twitter.com/ZH4HVOPnlo
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 2, 2022
Over 100 different U.S. citizens, including lawyers, doctors, and journalists, have sued Pompeo and the CIA over claims the agency violated their Fourth Amendment rights to privacy by spying on them when they visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017 and 2018.
The visitors were allegedly forced to turn in their cell phones to a private security contractor called Undercover Global SL, hired by the Ecuadorian embassy. The lawsuit claims the private security group then copied private and personal data from their phones and gave it to the CIA, without the Ecuadorian government’s knowledge.
Additionally, the lawsuit attests Undercover Global SL secretly audio-recorded conversations Assange had with his visitors, and turned them over to the CIA. Pompeo was the ringleader of this supposed breach of the Fourth Amendment, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs claim Pompeo himself explicitly approved and hatched the plan to steal their private data.
U.S. authorities are hoping to charge Assange on 18 counts. One of the charges is for espionage after Assange’s website, WikiLeaks, released loads of classified U.S. military records which discovered troves of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Stay tuned to National File for any updates.
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