by Rich Welsh | Jan 4, 2021 | Crime, Opinion, Politics
On Monday, a judge in the UK ruled that Wikileaks‘ founder Julian Assange was not going to be extradited to the United States to face charges for what the US Department of Justice said was spying and conspiring to get secret US documents by hacking government computers.
I know that many people have accused Assange of hacking for WikiLeaks, but he vehemently maintains that Wikileaks doesn’t hack for its information. People, mostly whistleblowers, upload their documents the Wikileaks website. There is no hacking involved concerning Wikileaks. If someone hacks a computer server to get documents and then uploads them to Wikileaks, that is not Wikileaks hacking. There is a distinct difference.
Courts have maintained that journalists from outlets like the New York Times or the Washington Post cannot be held liable for government documents that are given to them. So then how come WikiLeaks is treated differently? I remember when the Washington Post, under the George W Bush administration, published classified information on black sites overseas where they were interrogating terrorists, causing serious diplomatic relations problems with other countries for letting that cat out of the bag. Nothing happened to the Washington post.
American officials have accused Assange, 49, of 18 counts relating to Wikileaks’ release of a large number of confidential US military records, along with diplomatic cables that the government argued put lives in danger.
Assange’s lawyers argued that the prosecution was politically-motivated, powered by US President Donald Trump, even though it was started by under the Obama administration, and that his extradition posed a severe threat to the work of journalists.
US prosecutors indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and a single charge of computer misuse over the publication of the leaked military and diplomatic documents in 2010. Again, other news outlets do not get into trouble when government documents are leaked to them, so why is this any difference?
The 49-year-old Australian activist was arrested again back in September over the charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.
In the indictment, Assange is charged with conspiring with Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to decrypt a password to a classified US Defense Department computer.
Assange denies all accounts of scheming with Manning to crack the encrypted password on the DOD computers, and he points out that there isn’t any evidence that anyone’s safety was ever put at risk.
Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected almost all of Assange’s legal team’s arguments during a heaing at London’s Old Bailey, but she said she would not extradite him to the Unite States because there was a real risk he could commit suicide, and she ordered his discharge.
“Faced with conditions of near total isolation, I am satisfied that the procedures (outline by US authorities) will not prevent Mr. Assange from finding a way to commit suicide,” she said.
Assange’s legal team made the argument that Julian was acting as a journalist, and is therefore entitled to First Amendment protections of Freedom of Speech for publishing the leaked documents that exposed US military wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Maybe they should have argue Freedom of the Press?
The judge rejected their claims, saying his conduct “would therefore amount to offences in this jurisdiction that would not be protected by his right to freedom of speech.”
The judge then added that Assange, who has suffered from clinical depression, would be further harmed by the isolation of sitting in a prison cell in the US should he face the American Justice System, saying that he has the “intellect and determination”
The judge added that Assange suffered from clinical depression that would be exacerbated by the isolation he would likely face in US prison, adding he had the “intellect and determination” to bypass any suicide prevention measures the American authorities would take. Just think about what happened to Jeffrey Epstein.
Assange’s many supporters were thrilled with the decision not to extradite him, but at the same time they were not happy that the ruling was made on health grounds.
Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancée, who is the mother of his two young sons, was there are the Old Bailey for the hearing.
After the ruling, Moris said in a statement, “Today is a victory for Julian. Today’s victory is a first step towards justice in this case.”
by Steven Ahle | Jan 3, 2021 | News
At long last, the day has come for a judge in Great Britain to rule on whether Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States. Many of you are rooting against that happening.
But, I have some bad news for you, the chances of the judge denying extradition are unlikely. It is rare for such a request to be denied since there is little likelihood that any prisoner here would undergo human rights violations. (Unless Assange is a Republican.)
Bloomberg reports:
A U.K. judge will rule Monday on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges after weeks of talk about a possible pardon from Donald Trump.
The decision from a London judge will come after President Trump, whose administration brought the charges, issued a plethora of pardons to political allies. And lawyers say the odds of clemency from Trump are better than a judge buying Assange’s arguments that his human rights will be trampled on in America.
“It’s very rare for the magistrates to refuse extradition requests from the U.S.,” said Anthony Hanratty, a lawyer at BDB Pitmans in London, who specializes in extradition cases. “There’s a quite strong presumption that the U.S. will comply with obligations in relation to human rights and legal process.”
Assange, 49, has been in custody or self-imposed exile in London for the better part of a decade. He initially sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 rather than face questioning in a Swedish sexual assault case, which was later dropped. Last year, when he was expelled from the embassy, he faced U.S. charges related to WikiLeaks disclosures.
Many people on both sides of the aisle believe Assange just did what any good reporter would do. I have never seen this kind of fuss when the NYT and the WaPo publish classified information, especially if they think it will hurt the Republicans.
Personally, I think the thing that Democrats have against Assange is not the military secrets he revealed but because he published the DNC emails.
If I were them, I would hope he was not extradited. What if he got mad and revealed his source? What if his source was Seth Rich as many suspect it was? They would not want that known.
Those emails revealed the pay to play scheme during Hillary’s reign as Secretary of State.
It also alleged campaign contribution fraud and the fact that the DNC was actively working against Bernie Sanders.
by Kari Donovan | Dec 16, 2020 | Crime
James O’Keefe released audio footage of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, talking to Cliff Johnson, an attorney from the US State Department, about what appears to be a discussion over a “dangerous leak.”
“We have been calling the US State Department for a day to explain the urgency and they have not called back,” Assange said in 2011 when the State Department was under the leadership of Hillary R. Clinton.
O’Keefe posted on Twitter:
“Julian Assange to Hillary Clinton’s State Department following the theft of 250,000 diplomatic cables from @Wikileaks: “In case there are any individuals who haven’t been warned…they should be warned.”
The footage, O’Keefe described as from August 26, 2011 and said the two were discussion State Department documents.
The video starts with the introduction of Cliff Johnson, an attorney for the US State Department, and Assange is heard saying, ” Thank you for calling back. Have you been briefed? Yes, so the situation is that we have intelligence that the State Department Database Archive of 250,000 diplomatic cables, including declassified cables, is being spread around and is to the degree that we believe that it is in the next few days will become public. We are not sure but the timing could be imminently or within the next few days to a week and there may be some possibility to stop it,” Assange said.
Veritas adds, “The Documents originally obtained by Assange and Wikileaks were to be redacted by Wikileaks before any release, but were stolen.”
The video goes on, Cliff Johnson asks, ” And who would be releasing these cables? Is this Wikileaks?”
“No. We would not be releasing them,” Assange responds. “This is Daniel Domscheit-Borg, a previous employee that we suspended last August,” Assange said.
Johnsons asks,” So e apparently has access to the materials that Wikleaks also has?”
Assange answers,”yes that is correct.”
Johnson: “And he has access to everything you have, is that correct?”
Assange: “That is correct.”
Johnson: “Ok. And that includes classified as well as unclassified cables?”
Assange: “That is correct.”
Johnson: “I see, and in terms of what they took does that mean that they now have the ability themselves without your control or authorization to make this as available as they want?”
Assange: “That is correct. There is no attempt at redaction program and no attempt at harm minimization.”
Project Veritas added: “Assange believed there was great danger to US Agents and interests with the publication of the unredacted documents.”
Assange: “In case there are any individuals who haven’t been warned that they should be warned.”
The video shows that Assange was acting in assistance to the US Government. ANd that the information was out there and not under his control. Veritas said that Assange also thought the US may have blocked or slowed the publication by eliminating some of the files covertly.
Assange offered advice on how to slow or stop the breech.
This release of footage comes on the same day that Assange has requested a Presidential pardon from President Donald J. Trump.
by Kari Donovan | Dec 23, 2020 | Politics
President Donald J. Trump issued a full Presidential pardon to Roger Stone on Wednesday and Stone took the opportunity to deliver a statement full of gratitude as well as pleas to Trump to issue pardons to others.
The following is the full and unedited statement of Roger Stone, from December 23, 2020.
On behalf of my family and myself, I wish to praise God and give my deepest thanks to President Donald J. Trump for his extraordinary act of justice in issuing me a presidential pardon, completely erasing the criminal conviction to which I was subjected in a Soviet-style show trial on politically-motivated charges, further corrupted by egregious, illegal misconduct by the Jury Forewoman in the case.
Just weeks ago, when the US Department of Justice released the last remaining redacted sections of the ‘Mueller Report’ that pertained to my case, the Special Counsel admitted that there was no “factual” evidence whatsoever of coordination, collaboration, or collusion between me, any Russians, WikiLeaks or publisher Julian Assange. Additionally, they found no “factual” evidence that I had advanced knowledge of the precise timing, source, or content of any of WikiLeaks’ 2016 disclosures, including the release of John Podesta’s apparently purloined emails. Even more incredibly, the ‘Mueller Report’ concludes that even if they had found evidence that I had received data from WikiLeaks and disseminated it to anyone, these were perfectly legal, constitutionally-protected actions under the First Amendment. In short: Mueller’s intrusive, lawless, malicious multimillion-dollar witch hunt could find no prosecutable crime against me,
other than what they managed to fabricate.
Why am I not shocked that only BuzzFeed, whose lawsuit won the release of this material, the Washington Examiner, and ZeroHedge reported this shocking news? Perhaps it’s because the Justice Department released it at midnight of election day – the busiest news day of the year – in other words, they wanted it buried deep. Or perhaps media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, the Business Insider, Politico, and others who gleefully reported lie after lie about me, my case, and the purported “evidence” against me. In fact, the media jackals reported
nothing. I have no doubt that the unhinged radical left, who despise both President Trump and me, will now recycle the entirely-false and now thoroughly-
the debunked narrative that I “maintained my silence” regarding misconduct by the President in return for the commutation of my sentence and a pardon.
Hillary Clinton has said it, Jerry Nadler has said it, Adam Schiff and Hakeem Jeffries have said it, and Eric Swalwell, the communist Chinese-compromised
Congressman, echoed it. It’s a lie.
This canard is based on a conversation I had with Howard Fineman that he later misreported on MSNBC. Fortunately, I have Fineman’s text message
reaffirming that I never said I ‘knew of criminal misconduct’ by the President or ever said that I maintained my silence to protect him, but rather that I merely repeated what I had said on multiple occasions after the commutation of my sentence, namely that I refused to bear false testimony against the
President when the Mueller prosecutors approached by my attorneys seeking my “cooperation” in return for a recommendation for leniency in my sentencing.
Claims falsely made by Michael Cohen and Rick Gates that they overheard conversations between candidate Trump and myself discussing WikiLeaks are not only totally-uncorroborated but also materialized only after the Special Counsel’s legal operators’ induced the two with favorable plea
bargains for their other crimes. These manufactured claims are unsupported by any phone records or witnesses, and their sworn testimony is contradicted
by their FBI 302 documents released by the Justice Department.
I was charged with “lying to Congress,” even though any misstatements I made to partisan Democrat inquisitors on the House Intelligence Committee
concealed nothing material either to their investigation or regarding any underlying crime because there was none. Rod Rosenstein testified to the
Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not approve the investigation into my affairs. His statement is belied by his own signed scope-memo
authorizing the Special Counsel’s expansion. In other words, Rosenstein lied to Congress under oath.
More recently, the Washington Post reported that three top senior nonpolitical career prosecutors denied claims made by Assistant US
Attorney Aaron Zelinsky in sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee that they told him they were being pressured by the White House
and top administration officials regarding my sentencing, specifically to “go easy on Stone in their sentencing recommendation.” In other words, both
Rosenstein and Zelinsky lied to Congress. When will they be prosecuted? Lastly, I want to particularly thank Rev. Franklin Graham for his spiritual
guidance, as well as Rev. Randy Coggins, Pastor Mark Burns, Pastor Darrel Scott, Pastor Rod Parsley, Reverend Rodney Howard-Browne, David
Clement, Eric Metaxas, Father Michael J. Grady of St. Anthony’s Parrish in Fort Lauderdale, and other men of God who convinced me that reaffirming
my faith in Jesus Christ and confessing my sins would bring God’s grace in delivering me from my persecutors. How right they were.
The injustice done to me does not stand alone. Other good Americans have been victims of a corrupt system made to serve venal power-seekers,
rewarding deceit and manipulation, rather than reason and justice. President Trump can be the purveyor of justice over the vile machinations of wicked
pretenders to the mantle of public service.
I hope the president will consider granting full and unconditional pardons to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Marcus Garvey, and Former Secret Service Agent Abraham W. Bolden, Sr.
by Rich Welsh | Dec 31, 2020 | Opinion, Politics
On Monday, a UK judge will rule over whether or not WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges in the face of weeks of talks about a possible pardon by President Donald Trump.
The decision from a London judge will come after President Trump, whose administration brought the charges, issued a large number of pardons to political allies, albeit worthy of pardon since the allies were wrongfully prosecuted and set up by the Obama administration in one of the worst political scandals in our history. Lawyers are arguing that the odds of clemency from Trump are a lot better than a judge believing Assange’s argument that his human rights will be trampled on in America. Though not by Trump, our deep state is no longer to be trusted.
“It’s very rare for the magistrates to refuse extradition requests from the US,” said Anthony Hanratty, a lawyer who specializes in extradition cases working at BDB Pitmans in London. “There’s a quite strong presumption that the US will comply with obligations in relation to human rights and legal process.”
Assange, 49, has been in a self-imposed exile in London for the better part of a decade. He considers it being in custody. The Wikileaks Founder initially asked for and received refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 rather than face questioning in a Swedish sexual assault case, which was later dropped. The evidence of that case looked very shady at best. I would never put it past the Obama administration of fabricating the whole thing. After what we have learned the Obama administration did against the Trump campaign, then President Trump, they are capable of any crime.
Assange was finally expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy, and he immediately faced US charges related to WikiLeaks disclosures.
Among other things, Assange has been accused of conspiring with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain classified documents from databases containing about 90,000 Afghanistan war-related activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related reports and 250,000 State Department cables. The thing that really bothers me here is deep state bad actors have leaked classified information out of the Trump administration like a sieve, and the mainstream Fake News media were always only too happy to publish the material, so long as it harmed Trump. And nothing has ever happened to the media, because the leftist judicial system has said that it is not illegal for the press to publish documents that were obviously illegally given to them. So then, how come Wikileaks, a media outlet that actually spreads truth, is treated differently? It’s a double standard that I never quite understood. And yes, I do understand all the nuances involved.
Earlier this year, Assange’s lawyers, at extradition hearings that were delayed because of COVID, argued that their client couldn’t get a fair trial in the United States.
Trump said some nice things about Assange when in 2016 Wikileaks released the emails of Hillary Clinton that brought on many scandals for the failed presidential candidate. And now it looks like the embattled Wikileaks Founder’s supporters are switching from fighting an extradition fight to focus on a possible pardon.
Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancée, has used the last few months to make direct pleas to President Trump on Twitter, and in some appearances on Fox News.
“I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas,” she tweeted last month.
The hopes for a pardon for Assange have grown in fever pitch over the last few weeks after hearing Trump pardoned over a dozen people, mostly political allies who were wrongfully harmed by corrupt Obama officials, which is what the pardon power is really all about. Allies like Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, and Dinesh D’Souza just to name a few, all screwed over by Obama operatives for political reasons.
