Julian Assange indicted on 17 new charges under Espionage Act

Schifference said:
I think Assange chose a path and knew all along that he was playing with fire. I wish him the best. I do not think he belongs in jail or even indicted. I don't care what you do, but, if you chose to expose others you will make powerful enemies. If you are a nurse or doctor and chose to expose the filth or poor care at the facility you work, chances are you will not be admired, advanced, or even employable by other facilities. Doesn't matter cop, doctor, lawyer, accountant, laborer...... Don't rat out others or else.
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What ever happened to don't commit treason or else..
 
nikcers said:
That doesn't mean that he deserves it. He has already been in prison all of this time. If we let him die in prison then we deserve the government we get.
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Nobody said he deserves it. He is one of the greatest heros of truth in history.
The real danger is him being wiped from history, as well as reality.

Alliances are shifting.
 
UWDude said:
Nobody said he deserves it. He is one of the greatest heros of truth in history.
The real danger is him being wiped from history, as well as reality.

Alliances are shifting.
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That big ass smile of his and the thumbs up after he got arrested was probably just to rob them of their satisfaction of seeing him in misery. They can't bleachbit all of our brains can they?
 
nikcers said:
That big ass smile of his and the thumbs up after he got arrested was probably just to rob them of their satisfaction of seeing him in misery. They can't bleachbit all of our brains can they?
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Book in hand as well.
Very strange.
 
UWDude said:
Book in hand as well.
Very strange.
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“History of the National Security State” Gore Vidal - In 2000 Vidal published the collection of essays, The Last Empire, then such self-described "pamphlets" as Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta and Imperial America, critiques of American expansionism, the military-industrial complex, the national security state and the George W. Bush administration.
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I just thought he was telling us why they were targeting him and others like him- because he exposed the secrets of the military industrial complex.
 
Hillary could walk up to Bernie Sanders 'CNN LIVE' , shoot him dead, and not get indicted.

Those at the top are untouchable, there is no system of Equal Justice in America.
 
Bill Barr Is Wrong On Assange

Bill Barr has been (in my opinion) wrongly attacked for many of his actions with regard to the Special Counsel Report. Indeed, I defended his decisions in print and I testified in favor of his confirmation. I still believe that he is an excellent choice for Attorney General. However, on the charges against Julian Assange, he is wrong. Dead wrong. As I stated in a recent column, the use of the Espionage Act strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Now, the Washington Post is reporting that two prosecutors involved in the Wikileaks case argued against the new charges.

The Washington Post reported Friday, prosecutors objected that the charges “posed serious risks for First Amendment protections.” They were of course correct. It is reassuring that some of the prosecutors saw the dangers and raised their voices in opposition. However, the decision (presumably by Barr) to move forward has created a genuine legal crisis for the press freedom in the United States.
...
I am assuming that Barr had to approve the final charges but there is no confirmation of his role.
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More: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/arc...es/2019/may/26/bill-barr-is-wrong-on-assange/
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Swordsmyth said:
If Trump is playing chess and the plan is for Assange to come out alright then the strategy must be to get the left to like Assange again and defend him so that when he pulls the rug out from under Russiagate they can't just dismiss it because "he is in league with Trump and Putin"

If that is the plan then it seems to be working already:








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The indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act has profoundly affected press coverage of the WikiLeaks founder, with much of the media turning suddenly and decisively in his favor after years of vilifying him.
The sharp change has also come from some politicians, and significantly, from two Justice Department prosecutors who went public to express their dissent about using the Espionage Act to indict Assange.
To the extent that public opinion matters, the sea-change in coverage could have an effect on the British or Swedish governments’ decision to extradite Assange to the United States to face the charges.
[h=3]Used to Be a Russian Agent[/h] Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election establishment media, fueled by the Mueller probe, has essentially branded Assange a Russian agent who worked to undermine American democracy.
Focusing on his personality rather than his work, the media mostly cheered his arrest by British police on April 11 after his political asylum was illegally revoked by Ecuador in its London embassy.
Assange’s initial indictment for conspiracy to intrude into a government computer was portrayed by corporate media as the work of a “hacker” and not a journalist who didn’t merit First Amendment protection.
But the superseding indictment under the Espionage Act last Thursday has changed all that.
Rather than criminal activity, the indictment actually describes routine journalistic work, such as encouraging sources to turn over sensitive information and hiding a source’s identity.
Since the Trump administration has crossed the red line criminalizing what establishment journalists do all the time, establishment journalists have come full-square against the indictment and behind Assange.
Leading liberal outlets, who until Wednesday openly despised Assange, began on Thursday to make 180 degree turns in their editorials, commentaries and news reports.


An editorial in The New York Timescalled the indictment “a marked escalation in the effort to prosecute Mr. Assange, one that could have a chilling effect on American journalism as it has been practiced for generations. It is aimed straight at the heart of the First Amendment.”
“The new charges focus on receiving and publishing classified material from a government source. That is something journalists do all the time. … This is what the First Amendment is designed to protect: the ability of publishers to provide the public with the truth.”
​
The Times praised Assange’s work:
“Mr. Assange shared much of the material at issue with The New York Times and other news organizations. The resulting stories demonstrated why the protections afforded the press have served the American public so well; they shed important light on the American war effort in Iraq, revealing how the United States turned a blind eye to the torture of prisoners by Iraqi forces and how extensively Iran had meddled in the conflict.”
​
[h=3]‘Profoundly Disturbing’[/h] Former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger wrote:
” I find the Trump administration’s use of the Espionage Act against him profoundly disturbing. … Whatever Assange got up to in 2010-11, it was not espionage. … Imagine the precedent if the Trump administration gets away with this. Israel and India have extensive nuclear weapons programmes – each protected by ferocious domestic official secrets acts. Think of the outcry if the Netanyahu or Modi governments attempted to extradite a British or US journalist to face life in jail for writing true things about their nuclear arsenals. …
Assange is accused of trying to persuade a source to disclose yet more secret information. Most reporters would do the same. Then he is charged with behaviour that, on the face of it, looks like a reporter seeking to help a source protect her identity. If that’s indeed what Assange was doing, good for him.”
​
The New Yorker‘s Masha Gessen, wrote: “The use of the Espionage Act to prosecute Assange is an attack on the First Amendment. … It stands to reason that an Administration that considers the press an ‘enemy of the people’ would launch this attack. In attacking the media, it is attacking the public.’


MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, the Democratic Party booster, who probably had more influence than any commentator in drumming up the Russiagate conspiracy and Assange’s alleged role in it, on Friday launched into an astounding defense of the imprisoned publisher. On her program she said:
“The Justice Department today, the Trump administration today, just put every journalistic institution in this country on Julian Assange’s side of the ledger. On his side of the fight. Which, I know, is unimaginable. But that is because the government is now trying to assert this brand new right to criminally prosecute people for publishing secret stuff, and newspapers and magazines and investigative journalists and all sorts of different entities publish secret stuff all the time. That is the bread and butter of what we do.”
​
Nick Miller, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, said:
“On the face of it this indictment covers a lot of practices that are standard to investigative journalism: appealing for information, encouraging a source to provide documents that are not publicly available, reporting classified information you believe is in the public interest and the public has a right to know. …It may be that prosecutors can argue Assange was not acting as a journalist. But they would, by doing so, make the line separating journalism from espionage wafer-thin, and much more dangerous to approach, even in the public interest.”
​
[h=3]Politicians Too[/h] The indictment for espionage also caused a number of politicians to back Assange. Three U.S. candidates for president and another senator spoke out in his favor. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) tweeted:
Let me be clear: it is a disturbing attack on the First Amendment for the Trump administration to decide who is or is not a reporter for the purposes of a criminal prosecution. Donald Trump must obey the Constitution, which protects the publication of news about our government. https://t.co/5JtHNHH2BE
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 24, 2019​
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in a statement: “Trump should not be using this case as a pretext to wage war on the First Amendment and go after the free press who hold the powerful accountable everyday.”
“This is not about Julian Assange,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in a statement. “This is about the use of the Espionage Act to charge a recipient and publisher of classified information. I am extremely concerned about the precedent this may set and potential dangers to the work of journalists and the First Amendment.”
In Assange’s native Australia, Sen. Rex Patrick said:
“The United States government’s decision to charge Australian citizen and publisher Julian Assange with new espionage offences relating to receiving and publishing classified US government information raises a grave threat to freedom of the press worldwide, and must be viewed so by the Australian government,” he said.
“The Australian government should be active not only in providing consular support to Mr Assange, who is an Australian citizen, but also outspoken in making representations to the British government against allowing Mr Assange to be extradited to the United States on charges that so obviously constitute a grave threat to press freedom.”
​
Bob Carr, a former Australian foreign minister, said: “While it appears capital punishment does not apply in this case, the US, by seeking extradition for offences that might attract a 175 years imprisonment, could be testing the tolerance of its allies and partners. I think this changes the game almost as much as if capital punishment were the penalty.”


Carr said Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, “needs to protect herself from the charge that she’s failed in her duty to protect the life of an Australian citizen.
“Therefore I would imagine that Dfat (the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) will provide her with talking points to conversations with her British, Swedish and indeed American counterparts.
“Not to do so would leave the minister exposed to withering criticism that they did not take all appropriate action that might have mad a difference, mainly before the British court makes a decision.”
[h=3]Extradition Made Harder[/h] The Trump administration appears to have gone too far in its Espionage Act indictment, eliciting not only media pushback, but perhaps complicating its extradition case. The British home secretary may now not want to been seen sending a suspect to a country that has clearly criminalized journalism.
Miller, in the Morning Herald, wrote:
“By bringing espionage into the picture the US have also made their extradition work much, much harder. Assange’s lawyers may try to argue that he is being extradited for his political opinions (which is not allowed), or for conduct that would not be a crime in the UK (ditto). This last is a very interesting question. The UK’s Official Secrets Act may be even harder to stretch to cover Assange’s actions then the US Espionage Act.”
​
The Intercept reported:
“The uproar could make it easier for Assange’s lawyers in the U.K. — where he is currently serving a 50-week jail term for violating bail — to argue that he is wanted in the United States primarily for embarrassing the Pentagon and State Department, by publishing true information obtained from a whistleblower, making the charges against him political in nature, rather than criminal.”
​
It is not clear why the U.S. released its superseding indictment when it did. It had until a June 12deadline to do so. The U.S. government also had the option of a loophole in its extradition treaty with Britain, providing for a waiver to the “doctrine of speciality.”
That would have allowed the U.S. to ask Britain to waive the provision that the UK would have to know all the charges against a suspect before an extradition decision would be made, thereby not permitting the U.S. to add more charges once Assange was on U.S. soil. One possibility is that the U.S. asked Britain for the waiver and it was refused.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-27/tide-public-opinion-turning-assanges-favor
 
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Warrior_of_Freedom said:
I find it fascinating how the government finds ways to charge someone with 500 crimes for the same crime
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They can make up whatever they want, the only reason why they are not saying something stupid like rape is they know it wouldn't pass the smell test.
 
Brian4Liberty said:
Deep State Mueller used his statement today to throw accusations at Assange (Wikileaks). He is saying that the Russians provided hacked Democrat information to Wikileaks.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?535064-Mueller-Statement
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Yeah this is like leaving your car running unlocked in a bad sort of town and then saying your car is stolen. The problem I have with the whole email thing is Clinton knows cyber security, there was a recording from like 2010 of her saying that they have to shut off all their electronics when going to another country because they can access anything that is turned on.
 
Swordsmyth said:
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election establishment media, fueled by the Mueller probe, has essentially branded Assange a Russian agent who worked to undermine American democracy
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Mueller doubled down on this accusation today.
 
nikcers said:
Yeah this is like leaving your car running unlocked in a bad sort of town and then saying your car is stolen. The problem I have with the whole email thing is Clinton knows cyber security, there was a recording from like 2010 of her saying that they have to shut off all their electronics when going to another country because they can access anything that is turned on.
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Clinton was careless, no doubt about.

But whether it was Russians providing information to Wikileaks is by no means settled. It could have been a DNC leaker, or someone who got the information from the Awan brothers.
 
Brian4Liberty said:
Clinton was careless, no doubt about.

But whether it was Russians providing information to Wikileaks is by no means settled. It could have been a DNC leaker, or someone who got the information from the Awan brothers.
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It doesn't matter who provided the information, she left it out there for anyone to take. I don't discount that it was or wasn't the Russians, its actually even more plausible to be any number of actors who would love for America and Russia to have bad relations.
 
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