Imagine that Assange is trying to force the Obama Administration to grant him a pardon. The Obama Administration in turn is playing good cop/bad cop. They have no inherent problem granting this leftist a pardon, but if they do now, it will appear to be a capitulation or another bribe and it will harm them politically. They in turn are “negotiating with him” trying to somehow delay and not release and are no doubt harassing and pressuring Ecuador and Sweden. The bottom line is that either he uses what he has or loses all influence. The bottom line IMHO is that some sort of face saving deal is made with Assange, he receives a de facto pardon through an “international agreement” and he never releases the rest of the e mails. Obama will then have some sort of plausible deniability to justify a pardon. It will still harm the Democrats politically but it won’t be as devastating if e mails were actually released. Those servers weren’t scrubbed and those technicians and aides are not refusing to testify if there was nothing explosive in them. also it should not be forgotten that the Russians, Chinese and others besides Assange no doubt have hacked that server and have the same information.
But after all that happens, what protects Assange from being killed for daring to put them through the trouble?
I’ve been saying since the beginning that we must operate under the assumption that any country with a state intelligence operation worthy of the name has the complete contents of that server. Say, at least a dozen countries, some of them allies.
Scary thought.