“My knees are shot,” says activist and satirist Randy Credico, now 70. “Right now I’m walking with a cane.” As Credico explains, he spent his late 60s “jumping on and off a billboard truck like a 25-year-old Teamster.”

Credico did so on behalf of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who faced Department of Justice charges that could have resulted in a 180-year prison sentence. In 2019, Assange was indicted on 18 counts under the Espionage Act for allegedly helping whistleblower Chelsea Manning obtain the classified information published by WikiLeaks that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Credico, a stand-up comedian who once appeared on The Tonight Show, first became a dedicated political activist in the late 1990s, fighting against New York’s Rockefeller drug laws. In 2016 his close friend Margaret Ratner Kuntsler, then Assange’s lawyer, introduced him to Assange. Credico explains that he embraced the Australian publisher’s cause because he viewed the “persecution of Assange as the biggest threat to the First Amendment since Nixon targeted Daniel Ellsberg.”

This past June, Biden’s Department of Justice cut a surprise deal with Assange, who pled guilty to one count of soliciting classified information in exchange for a sentence of time served. After spending over a decade in confinement in London, Assange now lives with his family in Australia.

The resolution of the case was an unexpected victory for Assange’s many supporters. Over the past eight years, Credico visited Julian twice in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, tracked the case on his weekly WBAI radio show and various podcasts, logged countless miles on a billboard truck, and handed out thousands of leaflets detailing Assange’s plight to audiences from D.C. to New York City.

“Those of us in our social media bubbles knew all about Assange, but the average person on the street had never heard of him,” Credico tells The Indypendent.

Plenty of powerful offcials in Washington maintained a keen interest in the case, of course. Credico’s relationship with Assange put him in the crosshairs of the Mueller investigation. Trump associate Roger Stone dubiously claimed that Credico was a backchannel from Assange to the 2016 campaign, causing Credico to testify before a Mueller grand jury.

In late 2019 Credico entertained jurors at Stone’s trial, delivering his signature impressions from the witness stand. Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Justice indicted Assange. Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo was also a powerful foe of Assange and his supporters.

After Biden’s Department of Justice pressed on with the case, Credico decided to take more dramatic action. As CovertAction Magazine explained in August 2022, Credico’s attempt to post pro- Assange statements on billboards in Washington, D.C., was rejected by Clear Channel, the right-wing media outlet that owns most of the outdoor advertising sites in the capital.

The owner of a promotions company then convinced Credico that a mobile ad on a truck would get attention, thus spurring the activist’s crusade inside and around D.C. and through New York City. As Credico explains, “We’d drive around Capitol Hill or all over New York City, and I’d be jumping off the truck 30 times a day to talk to people. Now I need knee surgery.”

In recent years Credico also organized a dozen or so “Stand-Up for Assange” events. In late 2021 speakers at one East Village event included Roger Waters, Cornel West, and Margaret Kunstler.

“I fi rst met Randy in June 2021 at the People’s Forum in NYC,” Waters tells The Indy. “Although that’s only three years ago, it feels like a fucking lifetime. He rode around in that Assange truck for weeks and weeks and weeks.”

“My dear brother Randy was the major voice in America supporting our brother Julian Assange,” says West, whose relationship with Credico dates back to their mutual arrest at a protest against the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk in the fall of 2011.

West adds that he “lost count of the events and podcasts Randy sponsored on behalf of Assange!” Credico is supporting West’s 2024 presidential campaign.

By late last year, support for Assange spanned the political spectrum in Congress, ranging from Squad members AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar to MAGA diehards, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie. Dissidents including Glenn Greenwald and right-wing populists like Tucker Carlson also championed Assange’s cause.

Jesselyn Radack, a defense lawyer who has represented Edward Snowden and other leading whistle blowers, tells The Indy that “as [Julian’s wife] Stella Assange noted, ‘It took a global movement to get Julian out.’” Radack nonetheless argues that Credico’s role “can’t be overstated. Despite a government campaign to smear Assange and target his supporters, Randy’s radio program, podcast, live shows, protests and rallies kept this case in the spotlight. Randy is truly an unsung hero.”

WBAI Interim General Manager Bob Hennelly echoes Radack. “There’s no doubt that Randy Credico helped to keep the progressive community’s attention on Assange’s ongoing tribulations, because he’s lived through our turbulent times with an unflinching social conscience and a sharp wit,” says Hennelly. Credico’s current program, Live on the Fly, airs on WBAI on Fridays from three to five PM.

Credico’s next activist work will be supporting Native American activist Leonard Peltier and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, both of whom have been incarcerated for decades. “I want to see them leave prison alive,” he says.

While he surely will bring creativity to those fights, it’s a safe bet that Credico will not be jumping off any more trucks.

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