Posted on 09/16/2017 5:27:39 AM PDT by Enlightened1
California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher spoke to White House chief of staff John Kelly Wednesday about a potential deal with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in exchange for info that exonerates Russia of hacking allegations, according to a Friday report from The Wall Street Journal.
The Daily Caller first reported that Rohrabacher met with Assange in mid-August. Rohrabacher later spoke to TheDC and said that Assange could potentially be pardoned for “information that will be of dramatic importance to the United States.”
Assange has been in asylum since 2012 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London following sexual assault charges in Sweden that have since been dropped. However, the U.S. is reportedly investigating Assange and WikiLeaks for its dissemination of hundreds of thousands of classified documents.
The Journal reported that Rohrabacher spoke with Kelly in order to strike a deal in which the U.S. would drop the probe. The California congressman told TheDC that Assange, who promises never to reveal sources, told Rohrabacher during their August meeting that he could prove that Russia wasn’t behind the hacking and dissemination of emails from the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election.
U.S. intelligence has pointed the finger at Russian intelligence services for the DNC email leak. Kelly told Rohrabacher that he should go to the American intelligence community with his proposal, according to the Journal report. (RELATED: Read Rohrabacher’s Exclusive Interview With The Daily Caller)
The Journal report suggested that Rohrabacher has yet to see the information promised by Assange as he reportedly told Kelly, “[Assange] would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
I think the pardon would have to be attached to just retiring from public life, and leaving the WikiLeaks empire behind. He won’t accept that though.
Do It
I would prefer he had broached this with Trump. I just don’t know what to think about Kelly. Good guy? Bad guy? I just don’t know. I do know he arrived and Bannon and Gorka are now gone so there is that.
More than anything else, the pardon should focus on the “whistleblower” activities of Wikileaks. That is, they unveiled a *lot* of criminal activities carried out by the US Intelligence and federal Law Enforcement community, and the Democrat party along with the foreign powers that sought (and still seek) to gain influence in the US government *through* the Democrat party.
In other words, prosecute those who dangerously broke the law, not those who fingered them for doing so.
The case law for this is obvious: the Pentagon Papers case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson (LBJ) Administration “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress”.
For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dismissed after prosecutors investigating the Watergate Scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
Bottom line: BOTH Democrat and Republican administrations broke the law, yet sought to punish the whistleblower for revealing their crimes.
Yet, it should also be noted that that the LBJ administration officials were never charged; but only after the Nixon administration officials were fingered was the case against Ellsberg dropped. So, double standards.
So the bottom line is that Assange *should* be pardoned, the pardon *coupled* with prosecution of those federal agencies and individuals who blatantly broke the law.
Let’s make a deal: Disprove without a shadow of a doubt the Russian BS and open up all Clinton,Obama,Soros and DNC files. It will never happen. Even if Assange said yes,the government and uni-party would say no.
All FBI files on all Americans should be released.
Imagine being given evidence that ends the entire Russian witch hunt and Kelly advises against it?
Who the frig is Kelly? I’m starting not to trust him.
I don’t remember his name uttered once during the campaign. Was he even on one of Trump’s advisory boards with other generals?
Vince slips note out of box to Assange be very careful you know how the democrats operate.
And those criminals went to jail right? </s>
That such people go on trial needs to go hand and hand with any pardon. And this works both ways. That is, either Assange testifies against them at length, or they likely cannot get convicted. But until he testifies against them, he is a dead man walking for fear that he testifies.
The best bet for him is to give pre-testimony to as many people as will listen, assuming that what he says gets published. That is, he cannot just go in cold. He must do as much as he can to name names and weaken the powerful before he dares to leave that embassy.
Oddly enough, his biggest allies in this might be Edward Snowden and the Russians, all ‘fessing up at once, a huge airing of dirty laundry.
Assange and Snowden can identify the crimes, and the Russians can identify the people behind the crimes, if not showing evidence themselves.
Once they are identified as individuals, they will be much easier to take down, as these agencies have to sanitize themselves from the smell.
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