Julian Assange - Fall Guy For Trump

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.

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