Biden admin to continue persecution of Julian Assange

[Occam's Banana]

Biden will continue Trump's prosecution/persecution of Julian Assange ... (of course ...)

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1359250850506563587


Biden administration plans to continue to seek extradition of WikiLeaks' Assange
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN2A92T4
Mark Hosenball (09 February 2021)

President Joe Biden’s administration plans to continue to seek to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the United Kingdom to the United States to face hacking conspiracy charges, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi on Tuesday said the U.S. government will continue to challenge a British judge’s ruling last month that Assange should not be extradited to the United States because of the risk he would commit suicide.

In a Jan. 4 ruling, the judge, Vanessa Baraitser, said, “I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.”

The British judge set Friday as a deadline for the United States to appeal her ruling forbidding Assange’s extradition.

Raimondi said the United States will challenge Baraitser’s ruling. “We continue to seek his extradition.”

[...]

Obama’s Justice Department decided not to seek Assange’s extradition on the grounds that what Assange and WikiLeaks did was too similar to journalistic activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump administration officials stepped up public criticism of Assange and WikiLeaks only weeks after taking office in January 2017 and subsequently filed a series of increasingly harsh criminal charges accusing Assange of participating in a hacking conspiracy.

[... full story at link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-justice-assange-idUSKBN2A92T4...]

[TheTexan]

Maybe he's just playing 4d chess and plans to later pardon him.

[Anti Globalist]

Doubt he'll get brought to the US. He's most likely to die in prison.

[Occam's Banana]

Maybe he's just playing 4d chess and plans to later pardon him.

[Brian4Liberty]

Deep State hasn’t changed. They just have a frontman now that can be trusted.

[acptulsa]

Deep State hasn’t changed. They just have a frontman now that can be trusted.

When did they not? 1979? 1963?

Assange knows we haven't seen a blessedly untrustworthy front man in this millennium. If we had, he'd be free.

Republicans have been making excuses for the tools they voted for all my life. But no Republican president has told us the unvarnished truth since January 17, 1961. And no president has truly served us since 1928.

The GOP hasn't survived because they've done anything for us in our lifetimes. It has survived because its voters can't stand to admit even to themselves they stood up for some hopium peddler. If they could, the GOP might actually be worth a tinker's dam.

Do we do more harm slapping some sense into Trumpkins, or more harm by pretending he was something other than a somewhat noisy, but worthless tool?

I hope everyone enjoyed the MSM pretending to cry all the time he was in office, because we sure won't enjoy trying to keep the RNA "therapy" he paid trillions of our money for out of our arms.

[shakey1]

Nothing new under the sun.

[acptulsa]

Nothing new under the sun.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I think the reason most people around here are pissed at Biden is very little has changed. They want him to actually be worse than Trump, or at least different.

[jmdrake]

Deep State hasn’t changed. They just have a frontman now that can be trusted.

Yeah....cause they couldn't trust the last front man to not pardon Assange....oh wait a minute.

[acptulsa]

Yeah....cause they couldn't trust the last front man to not pardon Assange....oh wait a minute.

No, they couldn't trust him to give Big Pharma trillions to trot out some immune system suppressing RNA therapy "vaccine"... Oh, wait a minute...

You know we're wasting our time. I knew law-and-order Nixon voters who were still in denial about voting for the crookedest crook in the country a decade and a half later.

[jmdrake]

No, they couldn't trust him to give Big Pharma trillions to trot out some immune system suppressing RNA therapy "vaccine"... Oh, wait a minute...

You know we're wasting our time. I knew law-and-order Nixon voters who were still in denial about voting for the crookedest crook in the country a decade and a half later.

Yeah...and there are the Sarah Palins of the world that still think there were vast unreported stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq even after Dubya admitted that wasn't true.

[acptulsa]

Yeah...and there are the Sarah Palins of the world that still think there were vast unreported stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq even after Dubya admitted that wasn't true.

Fool Republicans once and you can't fool them again. They stay fooled.

Truest thing Dubya ever got laughed at for saying.

[TheTexan]

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I think the reason most people around here are pissed at Biden is very little has changed. They want him to actually be worse than Trump, or at least different.

What will likely be different 4 years from now is that your AR-15 will be banned or tightly regulated.

They have the votes.

They just apparently have more important things to do right now, like impeaching Trump.

Delaying their agenda, is yet another one of his unintended gifts to this country.

[Ender]

Yeah...and there are the Sarah Palins of the world that still think there were vast unreported stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq even after Dubya admitted that wasn't true.

And, that Iran is evil for wanting their country back. Shame on them!

[Ender]

What will likely be different 4 years from now is that your AR-15 will be banned or tightly regulated.

They have the votes.

They just apparently have more important things to do right now, like impeaching Trump.

Delaying their agenda, is yet another one of his unintended gifts to this country.

It's just a $#@! Show to keep everyone's eye off the Man-Behind-The-Curtain.

[A. Havnes]

When your VP is one of the most famously corrupt prosecutors in the USA, how can you really expect pardons for Assange or Snowden? Harris is definitely going to want to go after them and get a chance at playing prosecutor once again.

[acptulsa]

When your VP is one of the most famously corrupt prosecutors in the USA, how can you really expect pardons for Assange or Snowden? Harris is definitely going to want to go after them and get a chance at playing prosecutor once again.

It's but a tiny difference between prosecutor and persecutor. I suspect she crossed that line long before she crossed over into politics.

[Peace Piper]

Reminder: Here's one of the stellar examples of humanity that the orange buffoon DID pardon



Still hard to believe so many here thought this clown was worthy of support



Everyone should remember the Donald as a "Great and Very Brave Soldier" - for avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in the '80s



Can America go any lower? Just watch as the latest criminal septuagenarian starts a few more wars.

Maybe some more "Enhanced Interrogation"?



Why not? It's the New American Century



GREETINGS FROM THE DISTRICT OF WAR CRIMINALS, PEDOPHILES, LIARS, CHEATS and THIEVES

[A. Havnes]

It's but a tiny difference between prosecutor and persecutor. I suspect she crossed that line long before she crossed over into politics.

She definitely crossed that line!

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/DecampDave/statu...92913925734401


US Appeal Decision on Assange on Friday at High Court]

[Anti Globalist]

Assange didn't kill himself.

[Occam's Banana]

UK opens door to Assange extradition to US on spying charges
https://apnews.com/article/julian-as...b7cb87005fded6
Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless (10 December 2021)

LONDON (AP) — A British appellate court opened the door Friday for Julian Assange to be extradited to the United States on spying charges by overturning a lower court decision that the WikiLeaks founder’s mental health was too fragile to withstand incarceration in America.

The High Court in London ruled that U.S. assurances about Assange’s detention, received after the lower court decision, were enough to guarantee he would be treated humanely. Assange’s lawyers say they will ask to appeal.

In the ruling, the High Court directed the lower court judge to send the extradition request to Home Secretary Priti Patel, who would make the final decision on whether to send Assange to the U.S. for trial.

“There is no reason why this court should not accept the assurances as meaning what they say,” a two-judge panel of the High Court said in its ruling.

Since WikiLeaks began publishing classified documents more than a decade ago, Assange has become a lightning rod for both criticism and veneration.

Some see him as a dangerous secret-spiller who endangered the lives of informers and others who helped the U.S. in war zones. Others say WikiLeaks has publicized official malfeasance that governments wanted to keep secret.

Both views have been debated as Assange has sought his freedom — and to evade the Americans.

The U.S. has asked British authorities to extradite Assange so he can stand trial on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse linked to WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents.

Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris, called Friday’s decision a “grave miscarriage of justice” that threatens the rights of journalists everywhere to do their jobs without fear of retaliation by governments that don’t like what they publish. She said Assange’s lawyers would seek to appeal.

“We will fight,” Moris said outside the court, where supporters chanted and waved banners demanding Assange’s release. “Every generation has an epic fight to fight and this is ours, because Julian represents the fundamentals of what it means to live in a free society.”

Assange, 50, is currently being held at the high-security Belmarsh Prison in London. The High Court ordered that he remain in custody pending the outcome of the extradition case.

Assange has been in detention since he was arrested in April 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years holed up inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London. Assange sought protection in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed.

In January, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected the U.S. request to extradite Assange, saying the Australian citizen was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions.

U.S. authorities later provided assurances that Assange would not face the severely restrictive conditions that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

If convicted, Assange won’t be imprisoned at the “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the highest-security prison in the United States, American authorities promised the court. They also pledged that he wouldn’t be held under “special administrative measures,” which can include segregation from other prisoners and the loss of privileges such as visits, correspondence and use of the telephone.

They also said he would be eligible to serve any prison sentence in his native Australia.

American prosecutors say Assange unlawfully helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

The charges Assange faces carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison, though lawyers for the U.S. have told British courts that the longest sentence ever imposed for such an offense was five years and three months.

Lawyers for Assange argue that their client shouldn’t have been charged because he was acting as a journalist and is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees freedom of the press. The documents he published exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, they say.

Barry J. Pollack, a lawyer for Assange in the U.S., called Friday’s decision “highly disturbing,” citing unfounded allegations that the U.S. plotted to kidnap or kill his client.

“The U.K. court reached this decision without considering whether extradition is appropriate when the United States is pursuing charges against him that could result in decades in prison, based on his having reported truthful information about newsworthy issues such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Human rights advocates argue that the U.S. government wants to stifle its critics. While the British High Court was not ruling on the merits of the charges, the extradition proceedings have opened a broader discussion about Assange’s case.

Amnesty International’s Europe director, Nils Muižnieks, said the indictment “poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad.”

“If upheld, it would undermine the key role of journalists and publishers in scrutinizing governments and exposing their misdeeds — and would leave journalists everywhere looking over their shoulders,” Muižnieks said Friday.

But so far, the court has opted to ignore these issues all together, said Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition at the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service. Now that the American assurances, have been accepted, Assange would have to base his appeal on other matters he raised in the district court — all of which had been rejected in the past.

“All of the political heat is interesting for the media, but for the extradition court, they don’t seem to be concerned about it,” Vamos told the BBC.

Vamos said that if Assange is given permission to appeal, the case could go on for another six months. If the courts decide he has no grounds for appeal, it could be over as soon as January.

“We had a phrase when I was working on the extradition team at the CPS ... that extradition isn’t over until the wheels are up on the plane,” he said. “Anything can happen, even at the last second.”

[pcosmar]

The bottles stand as empty, as they were filled before.
Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more.
Though I could not caution all, I still might warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.

[AngryCanadian]

No doubt they will try to blame Russia on Julian Assange.

[Occam's Banana]

[Working Poor]

I am praying that his lawyers are smart enough to fight this persecution cause I know Clinton wants to bring her evil down upon him and will laugh while doing it like she did with Qaddafi :we came, we saw, he died cackle cackle what an evil evil bitch she is.

[CCTelander]

Yeah....cause they couldn't trust the last front man to not pardon Assange....oh wait a minute.

+rep

[Brian4Liberty]

UK opens door to Assange extradition to US on spying charges
https://apnews.com/article/julian-as...b7cb87005fded6
...

The High Court in London ruled that U.S. assurances about Assange’s detention, received after the lower court decision, were enough to guarantee he would be treated humanely.
...

LOL. "Humanely."

You would have been in jail the entire time, with no bail, under inhumane and unconstitutional conditions, somewhere between the Assange/Manning treatment and what they have done to the 1/6 trespassers.
...

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

I am praying that his lawyers are smart enough to fight this persecution cause I know Clinton wants to bring her evil down upon him and will laugh while doing it like she did with Qaddafi :we came, we saw, he died cackle cackle what an evil evil bitch she is.

I can only hope he gets a judge that is impartial and not political.

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

How does a person being tried on foreign soil get a jury of his peers?

If Assange were to get a jury of his peers, would that mean a jury of journalists?