Assange is not even in the US. I also contend he is a journalist and wikileaks is a news organization. How can the prosecute him and not the WAPO and NY Times for printing all those anti Trump leaks. https://apnews.com/4d2d1afb5fb545b1b4f526aed38f4cb5 The person who confirmed that Assange had been charged spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been made public. It was not immediately clear what charges Assange could face or when they might become unsealed. The charges came to light in a recently unsealed court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was attempting to keep sealed a separate, unrelated case. In one sentence, the prosecutor wrote that the charges and arrest warrant “would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.”
Its odd you bring up the Russian trolls being prosecuted for posting about politics in the US and not registering with the Federal Govt. You realized that Mueller claims that activity is criminal. You are from Canada, you post about politics and you are not registered. So do you believe you are violating the law and should be prosecuted? Do you believe in freedom of the Press in the US or do you prefer the way the Dutch forced Wilders into house arrest for speaking his mind about immigrants. At some point you lefties are going to realize how fascist your view are. Go after you enemies with the power of the state? Lock up your enemies? You don't get to excuse facism because they are going after people you don't like. Those are the people you should stand up for. This is not about Russians... its about Freedom of Speech and the Press.
I don't understand how the WashPost and NYTimes can publish leaked top secret material and they are protected but this guy is not. This is beginning to look a lot like the Deep State trying to silence someone who embarrasses them repeatedly.
If Assage had helped Hillary win these fucking hypocrites would be singing a completely different tune.
Not if he helped her win by publishing emails showing how duplicitous Trump was. You need to grow up. Rule of law and the future of our country is more important to many people than free stuff right now.
Republicans are adding trillions in debt from tax cuts,wars and miltary spending.Thats great for the future of the country
Yeah democrats are real budget hawks. No... Clinton had to work with Gingrich and the republicans to get some deficit reduction. The long term deficit went up dramatically with Obama so you can take your "yearly" budget propaganda elsewhere. Both sides spend too much.
Here is what lefty who cares about freedom thinks... https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16...cuments-poses-grave-threats-to-press-freedom/ But the grand irony is that many Democrats will side with the Trump DOJ over the Obama DOJ. Their emotional, personal contempt for Assange – due to their belief that he helped defeat Hillary Clinton: the gravest crime – easily outweighs any concerns about the threats posed to press freedoms by the Trump administration’s attempts to criminalize the publication of documents. This reflects the broader irony of the Trump era for Democrats. While they claim out of one side of their mouth to find the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and press freedom attacks so repellent, they use the other side of their mouth to parrot the authoritarian mentality of Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo that anyone who published documents harmful to Hillary or which have been deemed “classified” by the U.S. Government ought to go to prison.
Assange charges could unsettle liberals, conservatives — and Trump Some liberals have defended Assange as a journalist, conservatives celebrated him in 2016 and Trump once declared his 'love' for WikiLeaks. By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, JOSH GERSTEIN and MATTHEW CHOI 11/16/2018 02:30 PM EST Apparent criminal charges against Julian Assange are thrusting the WikiLeaks founder back into American politics — a development that could create awkwardness across the political spectrum. Many liberals and civil rights activists have defended Assange as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protections. Conservatives have celebrated him for exposing Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. And President Donald Trump, who declared his “love” for Assange’s website during the 2016 contest, may have new concerns about whether the focus on Assange has a connection to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. For now, the details remain murky about what U.S. law Assange, an Australian national holed up in a London embassy, has even been charged with violating. An unrelated federal court filing discovered late Thursday appears to have accidentally mentioned Assange but doesn’t explain whether the sealed charges deal with WikiLeaks’ publication of stolen Democratic documents to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign or another matter that has also triggered notice from U.S. prosecutors. It’s unclear when — if ever — the details about Assange will even be made public. Still, Assange’s reemergence at a time when Mueller has carefully studied how WikiLeaks obtained the Russian-hacked Democratic emails in 2016 jump-starts a debate over the fate of the Australian computer programmer. Although Assange has legions of determined enemies in the U.S., especially pro-Clinton Democrats and national security insiders who consider him a hostile foreign agent, some influential actors may not be enthusiastic about his prosecution. The American Civil Liberties Union, characterizing him as a journalist, warned that prosecuting Assange “would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.” “It should not be lost upon anyone that there are leaks of classified information to the media just about every day,” added David Coombs, the lawyer who represented former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning during the 2013 trial about the leak of thousands of diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks. Some Republicans argue that it is high time for Assange, who has been living under asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, to face justice. “This is cut and dried: WikiLeaks is an outlet for foreign propaganda, and Julian Assange is an enemy of the American people,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican. “He deserves to spend the rest of his life in an American prison.” But many influential conservatives gleefully celebrated the release of Clinton’s emails in 2016 and have hailed Assange, 47, as a whistle-blower. In September 2016, Fox News host and Trump confidant Sean Hannity hosted Assange on his show and congratulated him for showing “how corrupt, dishonest and phony our government is.” “I do hope you get free one day,” Hannity added. In late 2010, after WikiLeaks released a trove of sensitive U.S. diplomatic documents pilfered by Manning, Hannity called for Assange to be jailed for “waging war” against the U.S. But Assange’s potential criminal prosecution may be most awkward of all for Trump, who during the 2016 campaign repeatedly praised WikiLeaks for revealing damning correspondence from Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. “I love WikiLeaks,” Trump extolled several times during the presidential campaign. “This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove.” Since then, after briefings from U.S. intelligence officials who consider Assange a national security threat,Trump has changed his tune and sought to place some distance between himself and Assange. “The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange — wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people.... to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against 'Intelligence' when in fact I am a big fan!” Trump wrote in a two-part tweet on Jan. 5, 2017. Only a few months into Trump’s presidency, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said it would be a “priority” to stop leaks and arrest Assange. CNN reported in April 2017 that the U.S. was preparing charges to arrest Assange and that then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo characterized WikiLeaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” Assange’s efforts in the 2016 campaign present challenges for several people in Trump’s orbit. Mueller’s prosecutors and his grand jury have summoned about a dozen associates of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone to Washington to explain how the self-proclaimed dirty trickster came to know about the pending WikiLeaks release of emails embarrassing to the Clinton campaign. The president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., also appeared to have correspondence with WikiLeaks leading up to the election, The Atlantic reportedlast year. Legal experts cautioned against drawing conclusions about the nature of any charges the Justice Department might bring against Assange. “I don’t think we should assume this is Russia-related,” said Matthew Miller, an Obama-era Justice Department spokesman. U.S. officials have considered bringing charges against Assange since he was the conduit for Manning’s 2010 disclosure of secret government documents. Seamus Hughes, a former U.S. counterterrorism official now working at George Washington University, first discovered the reference tocriminal charges against Assange and posted the publicly filed document on Twitter. “This is every lawyer’s worst nightmare,” said Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor and former federal prosecutor who said the disclosure looks to be “an erroneous cut and paste.” At issue is a three-page court filing dealing with an unrelated sex-crime case brought by federal prosecutors alleging Seitu Sulayman Kokayi tried to coerce and entice a minor. In one passage, Assange’s name mysteriously appears amid an explanation for why the case needs to be kept from public view “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case.” After explaining the reasons why the U.S. government can keep a case sealed, the document concludes: “The complaint, supporting affidavit, and arrest warrant, as well as this motion and the proposed order, would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter." Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement the reference to Assange in an unrelated criminal case “was made in error.” “That was not the intended name for this filing,” he said. A spokesman for Mueller declined comment. Barry Pollack, a U.S.-based lawyer representing Assange, took issue both with the disclosure of the charges, as well as its longer-term implications. “The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard manner in which that information has been revealed,” he said. “The government bringing criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy to take.” Even some Assange critics agree. While the Obama White House publicly described Assange as an "accomplice" in Manning's theft of classified information, Obama officials concluded that it would be difficult to charge him given the implications for more traditional journalists. Several former federal prosecutors said Assange could be a gold mine of information for Mueller if U.S. officials were able to extradite him from the Ecuador Embassy and ultimately flip him into a government witness. Philip Lacovara, an attorney from the Watergate special counsel team, called Assange “the linchpin between the Russian intelligence operatives and the activities by Donald Jr., Stone and others to exploit the illegally hacked emails and to disseminate them for coincident purposes of aiding Trump’s own political goals and enabling Russian influence on the election.” Added Renato Mariotti, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago: “He could reveal important information to prosecutors, not just about Americans who worked with WikiLeaks to commit crimes, but also about foreign intelligence services that used WikiLeaks to undermine the United States.” https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/16/julian-assange-charges-wikileaks-997122