Julian Assange arrives in Australia after taking U.S. plea deal

• The 52-year-old would have faced life in prison if convicted of the 17 counts of espionage and one count of misusing a computer he faced stemming from WikiLeaks' release of a trove of classified materials about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and diplomatic cables.
• Instead, he pleaded guilty to the charge of violating the Espionage Act and is expected to return to his home country of Australia following the proceedings, according to DOJ correspondence.

The latest: "Free at last," WikiLeaks wrote in a post on X Wednesday morning.

• "Julian has to recover – that's the priority. And the fact that Julian will always defend human rights, will always defend victims. He's always done that," his wife, Stella Assange, told reporters Wednesday, the Guardian reported.

Driving the news: A Saipan-based federal judge in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, approved Assange's guilty plea Tuesday, the final step in settling the plea deal he struck with the U.S. government announced earlier this week.

• Assange pleaded guilty to unlawfully obtaining and disseminating secret national defense information, ending a years-long effort by the U.S. government to prosecute him for one of the largest classified intelligence leaks in U.S. history.
• His wife, Stella Assange, has appealed on social media for donations to help cover the price of his charter flight and "ensure his recovery and well-being."

Catch up quick: Assange's anticipated guilty plea was first revealed in court documents filed Monday.

• "JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE," a WikiLeaks statement published on X read, announcing his departure from the U.K. after roughly half a decade in a high-security prison.

President Biden said in April his administration was considering a request from Australia for the U.S. to halt its long-running effort to prosecute the embattled Assange.

• The president's comments came after Assange narrowly avoided extradition to the U.S. when a U.K. court signaled it would allow him to appeal his extradition if the U.S. did not assure his First Amendment rights.
• Australia's Parliament called for Assange's return in a February motion, contending the prosecution had dragged on for far too long.

Flashback: Assange was arrested in 2019 after leaving London's Ecuadorian Embassy following a seven-year stay there that ended when Ecuador withdrew its offer of asylum.

• The Department of Justice alleged in its 2019 indictment that Assange conspired with former whistleblower Chelsea Manning in 2010 to crack a password on Defense Department computers.

The big picture: Assange's guilty plea contradicts his years-long argument that he was acting as a journalist when he published U.S. government documents on Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Assange and WikiLeaks maintain he was still acting as a journalist.
• The DOJ said in an emailed statement Tuesday night that unlike news organizations that published redacted versions of some of the classified documents that he obtained from Manning, "Assange and WikiLeaks disclosed many of the raw classified documents without removing any personally identifying information."
• This leak subjected journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and political dissidents who provided information to the U.S. in confidence "to serious harm and arbitrary detention," according to the DOJ.

Go deeper: "Julian Assange is free": WikiLeaks founder strikes plea deal with U.S.

Editor's note: This article has been updated with comment from the DOJ, a WikiLeaks post to X and with further context.