Sounds to me like they don’t really have anything on him but if they can get him to admit something they won’t look so much like the bags of shit they really are.
I can’t properly express the irony involved in the Trump administration looking to charge Assange (who some claims is a Russian actor, which in itself would put him and Trump on the same team) when the ex-president is now charged with the same line of indictments for keeping classified docs as bathroom reading material…
Not quite. The big thing they have on Assange is that he helped Chelsea Manning break into US databases, which is not only a computer crime but espionage. In any case, according to the WSJ prosecutors see diminishing odds that he would serve much more time even if he were convicted in the US.
Assange put himself in his situation, it wasn’t done to him. He put himself in isolation rather than answer a rape investigation and once he jumped bail ended up where he is today. He fought the law and the law won. He has years of his life to show for it. Any suffering he had was his own doing.
None of that is relevant to me. Even leaving aside the question of whether what he did was journalism or espionage, he still should not be subject to extradition to a country with a track record of punishment that amounts to torture.
Given that all large nations spy on one another it’s a bit ridiculous to start extraditing each others’ spies, nor does the US try to. This is probably motivated by the whistleblowing.
The law was being followed. A sealed indictment from a grand jury awaits Assange in the US. And it’s pretty common for any country to seek extradition in such a case. You simply don’t like that a case was made in the first place.
That argument is suspiciously vlose to No True Scotsman.
Sealed indictments and secret courts are all part of the reason I would oppose anyone being extradited to the US for political crimes.
Guantanamo is a massive international human rights violation that dragged on for over a decade. It’s not a country any of us should extradite non-US citizens to. Or even them, probably.
it's overreach to create a false pretext for a war. it's overreach to murder journalists. it's overreach to cover it up. and it's overreach to prosecute the journalists who expose it.
I think you could liken it to robbing a bank to obtain money versus scamming a bunch of elderly people to obtain money. Both give you the same end result but each crime is treated differently.
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