Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

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pineapplemike
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Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by pineapplemike » Thu Nov 15, 2018 5:25 pm

U.S. Is Optimistic It Will Prosecute Julian Assange
Over the past year, U.S. prosecutors have discussed several types of charges they could potentially bring against the WikiLeaks founder
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-is-opt ... 1542323142

The Justice Department is preparing to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and is increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him into a U.S. courtroom, according to people in Washington familiar with the matter.

Over the past year, U.S. prosecutors have discussed several types of charges they could potentially bring against Mr. Assange, the people said. Mr. Assange has lived in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since receiving political asylum from the South American country in 2012.

The people familiar with the case wouldn’t describe whether discussions were under way with the U.K. or Ecuador about Mr. Assange, but said they were encouraged by recent developments.

Ecuador’s relationship with Mr. Assange has deteriorated sharply since last year’s election of President Lenin Moreno, who has described him as a “stone in our shoe” and said his continued presence at the embassy is unsustainable.

An indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller that portrayed WikiLeaks as a tool of Russian intelligence for releasing thousands of hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential campaign has made it more difficult for Mr. Assange to mount a defense as a journalist.
Public opinion of Mr. Assange in the U.S. has dropped since the campaign.

Prosecutors have considered publicly indicting Mr. Assange to try to trigger his removal from the embassy, the people said, because a detailed explanation of the evidence against Mr. Assange could give Ecuadorean authorities a reason to turn him over.

The exact charges Justice Department might pursue remain unclear, but they may involve the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of national defense-related information.

In an interview last week, the head of the Justice Department’s national security division, John Demers, declined to comment on the possibility of prosecuting Mr. Assange, saying, “On that, I’ll just say, ‘we’ll see.’”

Ecuador has been looking to improve relations with the U.S., hosting Vice President Mike Pence in 2018 amid interest in increasing trade.

Ecuador’s Foreign Relations Ministry declined to comment. This month, Foreign Relations Minister José Valencia told a radio station the government hadn’t received an extradition request for Mr. Assange.

Mr. Assange has clashed with his Ecuadorean hosts over internet access, visitors, his cat and other issues. Last month, he sued Ecuador over the conditions of his confinement. At a hearing last month, at which a judge rejected Mr. Assange’s claims, Mr. Assange said he expected to be forced out of the embassy soon.

A lawyer for Mr. Assange, Barry Pollack, said he hadn’t heard a prosecution was in the works.

“We have heard nothing from authorities suggesting that a criminal case against Mr. Assange is imminent,” Mr. Pollack said. “Prosecuting someone for publishing truthful information would set a terrible and dangerous precedent.”

The U.S. hasn’t publicly commented on whether it has made, or plans to make, any extradition request. Any extradition request from the U.S. would likely go to British authorities, who have an outstanding arrest warrant for Mr. Assange related to a Swedish sexual assault case. Sweden has since dropped the probe, but the arrest warrant stands.

The Justice Department has investigated Mr. Assange for years, beginning in 2010 after disclosures by WikiLeaks of thousands of classified Afghan War reports and other material, for which former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was found guilty at a court-martial.

Under the Obama administration, then-Attorney General Eric Holder drew a distinction between WikiLeaks and news organizations, saying WikiLeaks didn’t deserve the same First Amendment protections. Investigators, however, were unable to uncover evidence that Mr. Assange had induced Ms. Manning to leak the documents and didn’t bring a prosecution.

President Trump has sent conflicting messages about Mr. Assange, saying “I love WikiLeaks” during the 2016 campaign and praising the group after its disclosures of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails.

Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told an associate earlier this year he was working to get Mr. Assange a blanket pardon from Mr. Trump, according to text messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. He wrote editorials and publicly advocated for such a pardon, though he told the Journal that he had never discussed his efforts with the president.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, said last year when he was CIA director that WikiLeaks is akin to a foreign “hostile intelligence service” and a U.S. adversary. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Mr. Assange’s arrest was a “priority.”

The Trump Justice Department has considered several potential cases against Mr. Assange, including prosecuting him in connection with the cables Ms. Manning provided and his more recent involvement in the DNC disclosures. Prosecutors have also considered tying Mr. Assange to foreign intelligence services, people familiar with the discussions said.

Mr. Mueller obtained an indictment earlier this year against a dozen Russian officers accused of hacking into Democrats’ computer networks and staging the release of the documents, including through WikiLeaks, during the 2016 campaign.

After a series of criminal cases against Russian and other foreign intelligence officers, U.S. officials have grown more comfortable with disclosing the sensitive material required for such prosecutions, people familiar with the matter said. Prosecutors would need to rely on such evidence if they wanted to portray Mr. Assange as an agent of a foreign government.

Assange’s attorneys said they would appeal the ruling.
Is Julian Assange a journalist?
Last edited by pineapplemike on Sat Apr 13, 2019 11:34 am, edited 4 times in total.

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TheReal_ND
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by TheReal_ND » Thu Nov 15, 2018 5:30 pm

You cant prosecute a body double. Or can you?

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BjornP
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by BjornP » Thu Nov 15, 2018 7:27 pm

Is Julian Assange a journalist?
Simply posting someone's classified document online, doesn't make anyone a journalist. He provides the source material, or grant access to it.

Wether he's "tied to Russian intelligence", though... meh, he's worked for the Kremlin, quite openly so. But that was when he had his show on RT. I think it's more that Wikipedia chooses to focus mostly on US/NATO documents for their own ideological reasons. This benefits Russia, making the US look bad and untrustworthy, but I don't think Russia is actually directing it as such. Lots of people around the world think the world should be more multi-polar, for example. Doesn't mean they support Russia or work with their intelligence services.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.

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TheReal_ND
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by TheReal_ND » Thu Nov 15, 2018 7:30 pm

This benefits Russia, making the US look bad and untrustworthy,
Our media, oligarchs, deep state, MIC, and half our elected officials are indeed, "bad and untrustworthy." Love Americans, hate them, or neither but this is the facts. There is no telling who is worse but I think your media should listen to its people and vote in their own interests. Not like that's ever going to happen but whatever.

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BjornP
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by BjornP » Thu Nov 15, 2018 8:41 pm

TheReal_ND wrote:
Thu Nov 15, 2018 7:30 pm
This benefits Russia, making the US look bad and untrustworthy,
Our media, oligarchs, deep state, MIC, and half our elected officials are indeed, "bad and untrustworthy." Love Americans, hate them, or neither but this is the facts. There is no telling who is worse but I think your media should listen to its people and vote in their own interests. Not like that's ever going to happen but whatever.
Not so much about who is "worse", as it is about knowing that Russia considers the country of the United States a geopolitical rival. They may support nationalism in other countries, but given the naturally multiethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural make-up of the Russian Federation, this is not their "ideology". That's the big difference between propaganda from Russia when it was USSR and now.

That they (your government and media) are untrustworhy does not make those who provide you with evidence that they're untrustworthy, trustworthy. The Russian state makes the small-fry "oligarchs", corruption, deep state, election fraud allegations and suspected assassinations look like Sesame Street. If Russia held more of their secrets in digital form, you'd find some Western sponsored version of Wikileaks being able to find lots of their shit and expose that. Russia would then say it's all Western propaganda and the media would be forbidden from reporting on it as "terrorism propaganda" or some shit.

It is the openess, the transparancy of the US government, that helps make it look like even more shit than it is. If you can hide your shit, it won't be so much of a problem. Russia and China can hide their secrets, their corruption, their murders better than the US.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.

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TheReal_ND
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by TheReal_ND » Thu Nov 15, 2018 8:46 pm

Well far be it from me to uphold Russians or Chicoms as paragons of virtue but they are at least honest. They openly surveil and deny liberty while Europe and America hides it behind their vaunted "democratic values" and "freedom." Pox on all their houses as well as your weak sycophantic Global European Society. Phah.

nmoore63
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by nmoore63 » Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:05 pm

The deep state hates Asssange.

The problem is the defendants right to Discovery.

They must be careful to get his case in front of the right judge.

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Fife
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by Fife » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:48 am

There is no "deep" state.

There is just the state.

The state hates Assange. The "journalist" credential dispute is a red herring; that is, meaningless.

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pineapplemike
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by pineapplemike » Fri Nov 16, 2018 7:21 am

"is he a journalist" wasn't the right question, moreso do 1st amendment press freedoms apply to him
Indictment vs. Julian Assange Mistakenly Revealed by Prosecutors
http://archive.is/bodXT
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has prepared an indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, marking a drastic escalation of the government’s yearslong battle with him and his anti-secrecy group.
It was not clear if prosecutors have filed charges against Mr. Assange. The indictment came to light late Thursday through an unrelated court filing in which prosecutors inadvertently mentioned charges against him.
...
Though the possible charges against Mr. Assange remained a mystery on Thursday, an indictment centering on the publication of information of public interest — even if it was obtained from Russian government hackers — would create a precedent with profound implications for press freedoms.

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pineapplemike
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Re: Prosecute Julian Assange ("I love Wikileaks!")

Post by pineapplemike » Fri Nov 16, 2018 1:57 pm

As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom
Glenn Greenwald
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as- ... s-freedom/

The Trump Justice Department inadvertently revealed in a court filing that it has charged Julian Assange in a sealed indictment. The disclosure occurred through a remarkably amateurish cutting-and-pasting error in which prosecutors unintentionally used secret language from Assange’s sealed charges in a document filed in an unrelated case. Although the document does not specify which charges have been filed against Assange, the Wall Street Journal reported that “they may involve the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of national defense-related information.”

Over the last two years, journalists and others have melodramatically claimed that press freedoms were being assaulted by the Trump administration due to trivial acts such as the President spouting adolescent insults on Twitter or banning Jim Acosta from White House press conferences. Meanwhile, actual and real threats to press freedoms that began with the Obama DOJ and have escalated with the Trump DOJ – such as aggressive attempts to unearth and prosecute sources – have gone largely ignored if not applauded.

Prosecuting Julian Assange and/or WikiLeaks for publishing classified documents would be in an entirely different universe of press freedom threats. Reporting on the secret acts of government officials or powerful financial actors – including by publishing documents taken without authorization – is at the core of investigative journalism. From the Pentagon Papers to the Panama Papers to the Snowden disclosures to publication of Trump’s tax returns to the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, some of the most important journalism over the last several decades has occurred because it is legal and constitutional to publish secret documents even if the sources of those documents obtained them through illicit or even illegal means.

The Obama DOJ – despite launching notoriously aggressive attacks on press freedoms – recognized this critical principle when it came to WikiLeaks. It spent years exploring whether it could criminally charge Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing classified information. It ultimately decided it would not do so, and could not do so, consistent with the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment. After all, the Obama DOJ concluded, such a prosecution would pose a severe threat to press freedom because there would be no way to prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents without also prosecuting the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and others for doing exactly the same thing.