WASHINGTON (AP) — About a year and a half ago, a lawyer for Julian Assange presented federal prosecutors in Virginia with a longshot request: Dismiss the case against the WikiLeaks founder.

It was a bold ask given that Assange had published hundreds of thousands of secret documents and was arguably the highest-profile detainee in the world facing a U.S. government extradition request. By that point, the Justice Department had been engaged in a protracted fight in British courts to send him to the United States for trial.