Wikileaks main man Julian Assange is no longer on the hook for alleged crimes in Sweden, but now faces extradition to the USA and potentially being left to rot in a Stateside prison for an indeterminate length of time as a result. But as with many things Assange, this is not a straightforward matter. It seems he may have been duped.
Julian Assange
During the 2016 US Presidential Election campaign, Combover Crybaby Donald Trump loved Wikileaks. He also loved the idea that the security services in Russia might reveal incriminating information about his Democrat opponent Hillary Clinton. But that was then, and this is now: it now seems that Trump and his fellow Republicans would rather not be associated with anything suggesting they were helped by the Russians.
Donald, where's yer hairspray?
So it was that Assange fell from hero to villain, to where he now finds himself. How this happened, though, is about to come blinking into the sunlight: as James Doleman, who has been covering the Assange legal process, told yesterday “at pre-trial hearing for Julian Assange a court has heard that he will be calling a witness who will allege he was offered a pardon by the US government, if he would say Russia was not involved in the leak of DNC documents during the [2016] election”. You read that right.
Doleman went on to explain “If Assange would ‘play ball,’ he would be pardoned”. And who would pardon him? Amee Vanderpool had that answer. “Julian Assange's lawyer has just told a British court that Rep. [Dana] Rohrabacher (R-CA) passed a message to Assange from Trump that if Assange agreed to cover up Russian involvement in hacking DNC emails (published by WikiLeaks) that Trump would pardon him”. The Donald would.
And when? Wallace Ritchie had that one. “August 17, 2017: ‘Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who the congressman said denied that Russia was involved in sending him emails from the Democratic National Committee.’” Dana Rohrabacher. AKA “Putin’s Favourite Congressman”.
But if Assange were to deny any Russian involvement, someone else must have their name in the frame, and this is where it gets very nasty indeed, as Caroline Orr indicates: “If Trump did indeed offer a pardon to Julian Assange in exchange for evidence showing that Russia didn't hack the DNC, that would explain why Assange went to such great lengths to falsely imply that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails”.
Seth Rich was a DNC staffer who was murdered, probably as part of a botched robbery, in Washington DC in July 2016. His death sparked a number of right-wing conspiracy theories, notably that he had some part in the leaked DNC emails, although he didn’t. PolitiFact, Snopes and FactCheck all declared those theories false and unfounded.
Ms Orr again: “A reminder: In Aug 2017, after meeting w/ Julian Assange, Charles ‘Chuck’ Johnson said Rohrabacher was going to suggest to Trump that he grant a preemptive pardon to Assange in exchange for evidence showing that Russia wasn’t the source of the DNC emails”. Assange unjustly smears Rich to get his pardon, and then what?
Then he finds out just how much trust he can place in Donald Trump. As in none at all. Assange ends up looking bad for dumping on Seth Rich, but still ends up getting screwed. Which may explain the unseemly rush to have him put on a plane to the USA.
5 comments:
British government torture of Assange has of course been brushed under the carpet by corporate media too shit scared to do an honest job.
Trump, deeply corrupt as he is, is the least of it. Brit and Yank spooks have gone after Assange because he helped expose some - and only SOME - of their fascist operations. My guess is he only lifted a small corner of the stone. There'll be much worse hiding under it.
The Assange/Sacoolas episodes are merely further demonstrations of how craven Britain is in the laughably named "special relationship".
You can make book on the likelihood of further victims. It's how fascist spooks work.
We should be very careful about extraditing to the United States.
We should remember how James Earl Ray was sent to the United States and how he was framed for the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Whilst in prison awaiting trial, he was visited by Houston attorney Percy Foreman who offered to represent him. He then tricked him into a plea bargain. As a result, he got a 99 year prison sentence.
Ray then wrote to the judge to explain what Foreman had done. And then the judge, Preston Battle, suddenly died of a heart attack.
The existence of a CIA 'heart attack gun' was revealed in 1975 when the organisation was investigated by the Church Committee:
https://sofrep.com/news/watch-former-cia-employees-discuss-heart-attack-gun/
"[John] McDonnell likening the plight of Assange to Alfred Dreyfus, the 19th-century Jewish French army officer who was tried and convicted on charges of treason amid a climate of antisemitism."
"The comparison between Assange and Dreyfus drew criticism, including from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity working against antisemitism and racism in British society, which tweeted: “Disgraceful false equivalence to one of the key learning moments of modern Jewish history.”
- The Guardian 20 Feb 2020.
The CST seems to be of the opinion that the Dreyfus Case can only be used as an example of anti-Semitism and cannot be used as an example of scapegoating when a new scapegoat isn't Jewish.
There never was any evidence of 'collusion' between Wikileaks and Russia. The leaked info from the DNC's servers was precisely that - leaked. By an insider. Not 'hacked', either by Putin's goons or anyone else.
I recommend readers to to Craig Murray's numerous pieces about all this and see which version rings more true; his or that of the political and media establishment here and in the USA.
This is merely the most recent: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/seeing-through-the-lies-us-edition/
See Paul Golding has apparently been visiting the Russian Parliament. Wonder what they want with our far right fascists?
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