This is one of those cases where the elites rule while Constitutional law and/or due process is ignored in favor of cheap tricks.
It remains to be seen what Trump’s Justice Department will do with a native-born Australian, now a citizen of Ecuador. To punish Assange is to single him out, especially after our long history of complicity with security leaks, the most egregious of which date back to Nixon’s time in office but none of those can be compared to the on-going attempt to bring down Trump.
Turley says we bribed Ecuador to stand down on and let us have him. Bagged and gagged by now.
Let’s see if the MSM wax double standards on the story…anything you find, please link in the comments.
I don’t like top be the first to comment on this but… Julian Assange did bring down the DNC emails; of which the American public is arguing about. He also brought down the Afghanistan emails, which we should all be happy about as they led to serious State Dept. conflicts.
I don’t see what the gov’t has to prosecute him on. What he told us is true.
There, I said it…
I hope that the Trump administration pumps Assange for all the info he’s got, and then pardons him.
I agree with Dr. Turley that this series of episodes creates an extremely vexed situation for both national security and the freedom of the press. But I still hope Assange is pardoned. I’m a fan. What can I say?
Those who depend on Trump acting to redeem his campaign promises are bound to be disappointed.
Under the administration of former president Rafael Correa, a corrupt and authoritarian despot, Assange had a good life at the embassy. Correa, meanwhile, arrested journalists and critics of his government, as well as constantly conspiring with Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. Correa trained his troops in Cuba and planned to pair the military as Hugo Chávez did in Venezuela.
Correa today is a fugitive, accused of corruption and proven involvement with drug trafficking and FARC guerrillas. Correa is accused of having introduced Colombian guerrillas on the border with Ecuador. The FARC is supplying narcotics for drug traffickers throughout the region, for Mexican cartels as well as for markets in Europe and the Middle East.
Assange never denounced Rafael Correa, he never showed a single dossier about his crimes. Assange is not a hero, he’s a criminal
Has Assange claimed to be a hero?
He didn’t have a whole lot of choice about exposing Correa, not if he wanted to make it alive out of the embassy.
He gives many reasons for wanting to be, in view of his narcissism. But I am not referring to the fact that he calls himself, but that many people consider him that way, without considering who he was before, and who his host was. It is very easy to deduce that he was a hero, just because he had exposed confidential US government data, which people confuse as the “secret cabal.” One administration is different from the other, but the secrets of state remain so, secrets.
Did Assange have ways to expose Correa? So why was Correa exposed only by his former vice president and not by Mr. Assange? Did Mr. Assange let him do the honors? No, he did not because he was covering up his crimes. Assange if he really wanted to expose Correa, and would not try to blackmail Moreno. He deserves to rot in jail.
Believe it or not, there are people in this world who shed tears watching the hero being manhandled like that. Yes, I said hero. Are you jealous?
“He deserves to rot in jail.”
The problem in saying Assange deserves to be in jail is that generally, in Western jurisprudence, you have to specify a crime. What is Assange’s crime? It is not illegal to publish information you obtained from a source who obtained it illegally.
Assange’s legal exposure is the charge that he encouraged Manning to steal even more secret documents. The conversation that charge was based on is pretty flimsy. It’s hard to see how it even rises to the level of “probably cause” let alone “beyond a reasonable doubt”. He said something like “The wet eye continues to cry” to Manning in a phone conversation. Is that an encouragement to continue illegal behavior? Pretty thin gruel, if you ask me.
What Assange seems most afraid of is being assassinated while in US custody. Objectively speaking, since his case is well-publicized, it’s probably quite unlikely.
I tend to take a technical view of situations. Like Assange or hate him, I don’t see much evidence of a real crime.
The one qualification I have to that is that we’ve seen the propensity of federal prosecutors to lard lots of fuzzy charges with long sentences on any substantive charge. We see that with Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulis. It becomes impossibly expense to defend against the pile of charges, so the temptation is to plead guilty to a minor felony, which is used as a justification for the whole coercive process.
What Dymphna said !
https://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com/2019/04/julian-assange.html
I also favor a pardon for Assange, however if the US lets him go, Sweden is poised to reintroduce those ridiculous rape charges. I think this is a power struggle with some very nasty people.
Pardon for what crime? The charge of a crime itself is highly questionable. A person cannot be charged, convicted, and jailed for something that is not a crime. At least by traditional jurisprudence.
Whatever you think of Julian Assange, I think we should be forever grateful to him for having (however much or little) helped us all to dodge the “Hillary Clinton” bullet.