Posted on 09/15/2020 11:37:15 AM PDT by RandFan
President Donald Trump had called for the death penalty to be used for Julian Assange before changing his mind about the Wikileaks founder, the Old Bailey heard.
US lawyer Eric Lewis claimed rumours Mr Trump had been aided by foreign powers in the 2016 election continued to be viewed by the American leader as "undermining his legitimacy", according to his witness statement presented to Assange's extradition hearing.
Assange is fighting extradition to the US following the leaks of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011.
The 49-year-old, who has been in high-security Belmarsh Prison for 16 months, is facing 18 charges - including plotting to hack computers and conspiring to obtain and disclose national defence information.
Mr Lewis asserted: "WikiLeaks and Mr Assange pose a threat to the legitimacy of Trump's (election) campaign that he is desperate to squash by diverting attention and imprisoning Mr Assange
"WikiLeaks is a vulnerability for Trump because of the evidentiary links between his campaign and WikiLeaks."
In October 2016, WikiLeaks published DNC (Democratic National Committee) emails to the "undoubted benefit of Trump", according to Mr Lewis.
Mr Trump had regularly praised WikiLeaks during his campaign, remarking: "I love WikiLeaks," the court heard.
But by 2019, he claimed to know nothing about the organisation, only that "there is something having to do with Julian Assange", it was alleged.
In his statement, Mr Lewis said: "The prosecution of Julian Assange is part of Trump's efforts to distract attention from the help that WikiLeaks gave to focus attention on the earlier leaks, which are much more politically potent for him.
"He wants to put Mr Assange in jail and keep him quiet."
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
Yes. His “team” are going to annoy the one man who can actually pardon him.
Why does it matter what the lawyer imagines about Trump?
Assange is kind of a mixed bag. But his coconspirator has already been pardoned (from the army intel leaks). It seems to me there isn’t much left to charge him on.
I think the DOJ want payback for his damage to Hillary.
Bingo. Very insightful! Now that is what I call "3D Chess"! The Brits are not too keen on President Trump or the death penalty.
Because in my mind Trump would not be president if it were not for Wikileaks. The emails were priceless in exposing the corruption of the democrats.
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You are correct.
I cannot speak to whether or not Trump would have won without it, but based off the democrat reaction to the WikiLeaks leaks, I’d say you are not alone in that assessment.
The whole need for the Russia hoax was because there was so much damning information in the wikileaks info. They needed a boogieman to pin it on besides just some independent minded (yet excentric) leaker guy and his website. They certainly couldn’t have it get out that some kid who worked for Bernie Sanders and then the Clinton campaign turned an election.
Obama broke the he-she homofascist out of prison after spying for wikileaks. He wasn’t a whistleblower. He joined the military to spy and do harm because he opposed Clinton’s don’t ask don’t tell policy.
But somehow Trump is worse...
You can start listening at about the 18:00 mark here. Not Hillary, but but both Bill Browder and US government conflicts of interest with Assange’s attorney, Mark Summers at Matrix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVOeo4ghYkg&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=Populist.TV
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