Posted on 01/04/2021 12:31:54 AM PST by RandFan
LONDON (Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will learn on Monday whether a British judge has approved his extradition to the United States to face charges including espionage over the release of secret U.S. military documents.
U.S. authorities accuse Australian-born Assange, 49, of 18 counts of conspiring to hack government computers and of breaching a secrecy law by releasing vast troves of confidential military records and diplomatic cables over a decade ago.
If extradited and then found guilty of espionage, Assange could go to prison for 30 to 40 years, his lawyers say, though prosecutors say he would face no more than 63 months in jail.
Whoever loses Monday’s ruling is likely to appeal to London’s High Court and the case could go the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, further delaying the final outcome.
U.S. prosecutors and Western security officials see Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, as a reckless and dangerous enemy of the state whose actions put at risk the lives of agents whose names were in the material.
Supporters regard him as an anti-establishment hero who has been victimised because he exposed U.S. wrongdoing in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and say his prosecution is an assault on journalism and free speech.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
If it turns out that President Trump reserved his pardon powers for political cronies, that will truly be disappointing.
I agree...
It would look even worse if the corpse comes in and drops the charges against Assange. Trump should act!
It'll never happen. Assange was instrumental in keeping Hillary out of the White House and Snowden blew the whistle on Obama-era Deep State spying.
Democrats hate both these men. Why Trump continues to let these two heroes languish in prison and in exile mystifies me, especially after pardoning his crooked-as-hell father in law.
Utterly shameful after all wikileaks did to help us in 2016. And Assange is a foreigner, but if Snowden gets a pardon he would be out of his mind to return to the new America operating “post rule of law”.
All it would take is for an AG to charge him despite the pardon, and for the supreme court uphold it by “discovering” some new limit to the veto power and overturn Trump’s pardon of him.
It’s way too easy to imagine that happening.
That’s true. The permanent state want these men in prison.
There must be a reason why Trump has not acted (yet...).
All we can do is hope for clemency.
They aren't the only ones, there's plenty of others who see them as traitors here and on the world stage. Like everything else in our country the division for them being hero's vs. traitors is pretty much equally divided.
The difference is loyalty to the people and the Constitution, or loyalty to Government as an independent entity.
We just might find out real soon why the later was the wrong choice.
I do not know what Trump will do.
There are two good reasons to say NO to both of them:
(1) Snowden revealed top secret NSA and CIA trade craft and active international operations.
(2) Assange leaked 750,000 classified military and diplomatic documents that were stolen by Trans-Manning.
If you or I did those things, we would be prosecuted and sent to prison.
Full disclosure - since I never break the law or do humiliating things, I do not care if the NSA listens to my phone calls or reads my email.
Neither of them has loyalty to neither our Constitution nor a Government. They are both ‘Independent’ from such loyalties and have since stated so.
I was talking about the difference between those who judge Assange as patriot or traitor.
Assange is neither a patriot nor a traitor.
The precedent was already established with the Pentagon Papers. Assange was a publisher and it wasn’t illegal to publish what he received. It may have been illegal for the leakers to give him the documents, of course, but not for him to publish them.
Once again... I was referring to the two choices of those who judge him. One is patriotic to the people and Constitution and the other is blind servitude to a criminal rogue government.
Re: Not illegal to publish Pentagon Papers
I disagree.
The main issue in the Pentagon Papers was prior restraint of the press.
There are other restricting precedents and statutes that speak to the nature, timing, and quantity of the information being published.
UK has already said there would be no extradition. Mexico has offered home to him there.
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