Said Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, quoted in "Julian Assange leaves UK after striking deal with US justice department/It is anticipated the WikiLeaks founder will plead guilty to violating US espionage law at a hearing in Saipan and will be allowed to return to Australia" (The Guardian).
Under the deal, which must be approved by a judge, Assange is likely to be credited for the five years he has already served and face no new jail time....
WikiLeaks said on X that Assange had left Belmarsh prison on Monday morning, after 1,901 days of captivity there. He had spent the time, the organisation said, “in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day."...
Assange was indicted during the former president Donald Trump’s administration over the release of documents, which were leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former US military intelligence analyst who was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act....
Meanwhile Mike Pence, the former US vice-president, criticised the deal, saying it was a “miscarriage of justice”. Writing on X he said: “There should be no plea deals to avoid prison for anyone that endangers the security of our military or the national security of the United States. Ever.”
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Tell Pence that Assange just spent 1,901 days in jail.
Let's assume the ruling cabal behind Biden has made it clear to Assange that the fate of Seth Rich awaits him.
A modern day Jefferson Davis.
You know, I'm so old that I remember when NYT was celebrated for publishing the Pentagon Papers. And then further celebrated for publishing a bunch of lies about Trump that were made up the Hillary Clinton campaign that Adam Schiff said were the honest truth (as if he would know). I wonder if NYT and WaPoo will ever again celebrate someone actually getting the goods on our overlords. I think we know the answer.
As the Brit magazine Private Eye used to say, it's a funny old world...
Assange got vilified by a ton of bad press back in the day. With hindsight, this was perhaps Deep State operatives feeding a story to de facto State Media outlets. With what we know about later Deep State practices against US citizens (i.e., Crossfire Hurricane, the Twitter Files, and Hunter's laptop), Assange must be given the benefit of the doubt.
The Deep State wasn't even technically breaking the law in going after foreigners like Assange. Keep that in mind. When will the actions of the proven incompetent / political hack "Russian Disinformation" spy chief James Clapper be revealed and inspected in detail?
anyone that endangers the security of our military or the national security of the United States
That's a pretty broad brush. What a tool.
I hope Assange fairs better than Zelensky in his deal with the Biden Administration
He got huzzah until he published hillarys dirty laundry
Assange is another political prisoner of this country. He is a great person.
The guardiam spiegel the times the post all got pulitzers publishing his work what happened
It was the ur text of winter soldier
Trust Our spies... Please
https://johnkassnews.com/hunter-joe-and-the-shameless-51/
Saipan is an odd choice for the hearing, but does have a United States District Court. I wonder about jurisdiction, which I suppose Julian Assange will have no reason to contest if he is sentenced to time served.
I’ll start off by saying I like the deal. I don’t like Assange. He’s no hero to me. But as noted by others above and elsewhere, he did what journalists do in a free society and published information leaked to him. Pence’s anger should be directed to Manning. It should also be directed to the Intelligence Agencies that lied to him and other politicians, which is the problem with Pence’s statement as it actually provides cover for them.
That’s my big problem. Pence, and many like him, want to make criticism of government a crime on the notion it hurts our security. What about Jocelyn Nungaray? The 12 year old harmed because we have to have a policy of letting anyone that crosses our border in without criticism of why they came? Why does Pence, and Biden, protect our military with their F-15s and not Jocelyn. If either of them treated her killers with the same distrust they do Assange, the killers would have been arrested at the border and kept their until deportation. They crossed here illegally, which violates our national security, and they had prior records, which is supposed to prevent their entry.
Now to bring this back to Pence. If the Intelligence Agency can bring false allegations about Trump forward, which hampers his Presidency and prevents him from carrying out his mandate to close the border, who is doing more harm to our national security? The US Intelligence agencies or Julian Assange who was pointing out their treachery a decade prior?
The Biden administration wants Assange out of a British jail because he’ll be easier to assassinate that way.
The rap against Assange was that he exposed hundreds of Afghan informants to the Taliban. Maybe that was overblown, but he admitted that he didn't review everything he published before it went public, so it's hard to conclude that he was careful about collateral damage.
Kind of amazing that one can contest extradition for more than five years.
My assumption is that the deal is an attempt to win votes. Is Assange really that celebrated on the left? I tend to think that low-information swing voters are going to see him as vaguely creepy.
I'm not a fan of Assange either, but I'm glad to see him freed. The system has run out of reasons to keep him in the Hole, I guess. But I find that the system celebrates people that have done objectively worse - they just had the good sense to pick material that was less embarrassing, or politically useful. So their legitimacy is in question.
Even if Assange did something wrong, to me a strong Free Press is more important than phoney hypocritical declarations of state sanctity, with all the evidence to the contrary easily displayed.
How did the U.S. have any legal jurisdiction over Assange to bring any charges. He is an Australian citizen who acted while in Europe. Can anyone explain?
Assange did what journalists inside the U.S. do with regularity- publish stories the U.S. government doesn't want published (or at least that is what the press used to do when they were an actual counterweight against government power).
The alternate history here, though, is exactly what Narciso above mentioned- Assange was a darling of the Left and Democrats right up until he published the DNC e-mails in 2016. That is the crime for which the DoJ has been persecuting him for the last 8 years. In that alternate history the NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, and, maybe, even FoxNews would have spent that entire 8 years supporting Assange's efforts to gain his freedom (this isn't me guessing, they literally did that prior to the DNC e-mail dump). It was Assange helping to torpedo the Shelob Ascendency that made Assange's 8 years a living Hell- it was all done to punish him for helping the bad orange man win in 2016.
One Assange is worth a thousand Pences.
How did the U.S. have any legal jurisdiction over Assange to bring any charges.
They indicated him for conspiracy. Basically, the allegation was that he was not just a publisher but that he worked with Manning to carry out the breach of US national security.
Thanks Tom T. But I still don’t understand; Assange has no duty of loyalty to the United States and is not subject to its law. Could Moscow-based Soviet handlers who recruit U.S. citizen spies have been charged with conspiracy? If so, why have I never heard of that happening?
The rap against Assange was that he exposed hundreds of Afghan informants to the Taliban
Who exposed more of America's Afghan allies to the Taliban, Julien Assange or Joe Biden?
I was one who was disdainful of Assange, until I actually looked at what was in wikileaks about other countries dirty laundry not only in the West but in the Middle East and Asia,
the things the Foreign chancelleries know about any number of governments and yet do not say,
I remember on 24, they suggested in one season, Assuange in all but name, was going to give the nuclear codes to the Chinese, of course we had two long time MSS agents in the FBI, among other things, not to mention other lesuo* officials like Stefan Halper and Alexander Downer,
both were part of the Russian maskirovna, against Trump administration officials,
there was an actual America born Russian officer who walked through those same salons and no one the wiser, while they were crafting their tale about Flynn and miss Lokhova, who was one of the most prominent whistleblowers against Sberbank perhaps the most crooked bank
nwo who represented that Bank, well none other than the Podestas who also handled the Uranium one heist, By Rosatom, a real strike agaisnt Western interests,
Carter PAge helped reveal SVR assets but he was painted as a spy, something similar happened on Burn Notice with Michael Weston, this was the basis for the FISA warrant that developed no information,
of course a cursory review of the documents would show the claims were uttterly ridiculous,
but what are the standards for what is legitimate news subject matter
Trumps ditzy niece somehow gets a hold of his tax returns legit, Hunter's Laptop, Ashley Diary, for shame, you even mention them,
the Panama papers were useful until they nabbed too many of the wrong people,
the deal with Sochin, had it gone through the partners would not have pulled their money out, starting with the Qatari investment fund to HNA one of China's largests banks, Page knew how to put these deals together,
“Under the deal, Assange is set to plead guilty to conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to US national defense.”
So Assange accepts he violated the US Espionage Act.
Assange should be happy he never released a trove of Russian classified docs. An 8th floor hotel balcony comes to mind.
who did he transmit to, he gave it to everybody, it's a peculiar definition of Espionage,
much like the hero Daniel Ellsberg, although there were indications he wanted to leak the SIOP the nuclear war plan,
I recall that, when informed that he'd given the Taliban had the names of those who'd helped Americans, he said with some satisfaction that the locals know how to deal with their enemies.
Whatever else he may have done, this, plus his agreement with the result, is a really serious indicator of his goals.
"They indicated him for conspiracy. Basically, the allegation was that he was not just a publisher but that he worked with Manning to carry out the breach of US national security."
That was the US fabricating a reason to arrest Assange.
Julian Assange is not a hero. He is an irresponsible opportunist and as the UK judge Michael Snow described him, "a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests."
A legitimate and responsible journalist would have been more selective in publishing the Wikileaks documents to protect human intelligence sources, as was the case when the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and El Pais published documents from Wikileaks.
But Assange didn't care, and published all the raw documents himself, which endangered the lives of human intelligence operatives in a war zone. He wasn't a journalist; he was a hacker.
In the aftermath he appeared to be sympathetic to Vladimir Putin's Russia, which casts a different light on the entire episode and his political values. Wikileaks later publishing US Democratic party documents during the run-up to the 2016 election and aiding Trump's candidacy- which were obtained from Russian intelligence sources- confirmed his relationship with Putin's Russia. And praise from Majorie Taylor Greene for his efforts is hardly the type of endorsement worthy of respect.
There are many differences between Assange and Daniel Ellsberg, for example, who was responsible for The Pentagon Papers. Assange does not compare favorably on any level.
His supporters (and even the news coverage) are strikingly quiet on the DNC email dump. The reality is Assange lost his way and decided to work for Putin.
It's just that simple.
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