Fake terror charge echoes
fakery in FISA warrants
The desire to 'get' Julian Assange has never been about accusations from his ex-Swedish sex partners. It was the extremely vengeful Obama administration that put the pressure on Sweden to reactivate its charges against Assange soon after they had been dropped years ago. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted him droned for publishing State Department documents purloined by Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning.
Supposedly, the British want him for ducking extradition to Sweden by taking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy. But this is all nonsense. Everyone knows his real "crime" is the publishing of files that governments use to control their business (and their populations). I wonder whether Ecuador turned against him because WikiLeaks dared publish a cache of Russian documents.
The U.S. Justice Department (FBI I suppose) has revealed its interest in the matter by (finally) officially revealing that Assange is wanted for assisting in computer intrusion, not for making like the New York Times and publishing secret documents.
But we all know that Assange became Public Enemy Number 1 when WikiLeaks published emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chief, John Podesta. Immediately on publication, the Clinton group roared that Clinton was a victim of a Russian conspiracy -- even though Assange denied obtaining the data from the Russian government. The "Russian collusion" theory against Trump then was given a huge partisan boost.
But the Deep State and the Democrats are terribly embarrassed: NO RUSSIAN COLLUSION, saith Robert Mueller.
What to do? What to do?
Get Assange! That will blow up Trump with his own bomb.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a Virginia Democrat, was elated, calling Assange’s arrest "great for the American people." He added, "We’re going to extradite him. It will be really good to get him back on United States soil. So now he’s our property and we can get the facts and truth from him." There is little doubt that his implication is that Assange's arrest is "great for the Democratic Party."
Recall how Donald Trump jokingly urged WikiLeaks to publish 30,000 of Clinton's missing emails. Clinton and her crew ignored the humor and accused Trump of colluding with the "Russian puppet," WikiLeaks.
So what is Trump going to do? Aha! If he bars Assange's arrest, the FBI and the Democrats will accuse him of obstructing justice. But if he permits the Justice Department to persecute his "ally," he will look weak. It will look as though Trump's drive to launch criminal investigations of national security people who harassed him hasn't got much moxie, that the Deep State securocrats are stronger.
Oh, but that scenario would require collusion. The Deep State (as in, permanent CIA) would have to "reach" the Ecuadoran and the British authorities to assure that Assange was delivered in time to save Trump's foes. Oh well, let's forget about it. We all know that only Russians, not Deep Staters, collude.
The indictment was handed down in March 2018. So Attorney General Bill Barr had nothing to do with that part of the case. But it seems likely the Justice and State Departments were conferring with the Ecuadoran and British governments on the terms of the arrest. As the Daily Mail pointed out,
"It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," said Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman.
Trump has a complicated history with WikiLeaks, a Los Angeles Times report noted, claiming during the campaign to "love" the organization, which leaked stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and others that were damaging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Pompeo said the intelligence community had determined that Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU, used WikiLeaks as a conduit to release data obtained by hacking the DNC and others.
Pompeo was echoing the line espoused by his Democrat predecessor, John Brennan, the ex-communist sympathizer who became President Obama's CIA chief. In any case, Pompeo neglected to mention that various intelligence agencies, including British intelligence and the CIA, would have been tempted to use WikiLeaks in order to disseminate information that would damage an adversary. And, by the way, what difference is there in Putin's minions passing documents to WikiLeaks and Deep State officials passing documents to The New York Times and The Washington Post to damage Trump? If the data can be verified, it is likely to be published. The CIA gets information from all sorts of sordid sources. Would Pompeo say that, ergo, the CIA is "dirty" ?
So it seems I have answered the question in the headline. The Trump administration has been working to seize Assange -- and now Trump distances himself from the WikiLeaks founder, brushing him off with, "I know nothing about WikiLeaks." Yet, any conclusion that the Assange arrest doesn't endanger Trump politically is myopic. Trump may very well have been high-pressured into going along with the prosecution. Had he said anything about, for example, the bribe of Ecuador, Mueller might well have reacted by scribbling "obstruction of justice" on his yellow pad.
So Trump was forced to walk on eggshells with regard to Assange. But, to repeat, a Deep State conviction of Assange is assuredly a victory not only for the Deep State, but for Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Bill Barr is in a terrible pickle. And, to make his situation worse, we learn:
Fake terror charge unsealed
Experts consulted by Wired agreed that the Justice Department had skirted the issue of Assange's journalistic status by charging him as a hacker who had violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But, that consensus is questionable.
Federal prosecutors were able to void the five-year statute of limitation on the hacker charge by claiming that Assange had committed an "act of terrorism," according to Tor Ekeland, a hacker defense attorney quoted by Wired. "To get the benefit of the eight years, they’re trying to call this a terrorist act," Ekeland told Wired. "That seems a little weird."
What exactly was the intent of Assange's so-called "terrorism"? The intent was very obviously journalism. So, the Justice Department has not successfully dodged the issue of Assange being targeted for doing what journalists do. In order to be able to charge him, prosecutors had to characterize him as a terroristic journalist. This sounds like the sort of charge one would expect from Pyongyang.
It sure is hard to miss the parallel between the Justice Department's use of a fake terror charge in order to go after Assange and its use of fake rationalizations for FISA warrants in its vendetta against Trump.
Cali Dem sees 1st Amendment issue
On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said that the Assange indictment is “overbroad” in a way that raises “First Amendment concerns,” and that all journalists should worry that the precedent would be set that "sharing information" with the press can be construed as a criminal offense.
Conservative journalist raps spy system
From the conservative quarter, the columnnist Mark Steyn on Thursday termed the Assange indictment “extremely weak” and, speaking to the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, chastised the U.S. intelligence system.
“The idea that he's somehow goaded and encouraged Manning to steal this stuff. That the line he used... Manning tells Assange, 'that's all I've got left to give to you.' And Assange says 'curious eyes never run dry in my experience.' The idea that a corrupt federal criminal justice system could extradite and convict a man on the basis of those words ought to disturb every American,” Steyn told Carlson.
Why are Dems so elated?
Isn't Trump a dictator type who despises liberal journalists? What's to stop him from having "enemy" journalists indicted on bogus terror charges as a way of silencing them, and exacting revenge for giving him a bad time? In fact, once the Justice Department has this precedent in hand, it will be relatively easy for "the dictator" to have any journalist almost anywhere in the world seized and transported to the United States, where she or he would face federal terrorism prosecutions. Perhaps Democrats haven't thought through the full impact of the fake charge against Assange. Though I am not assuming Trump would stoop so low, it is evident that many Democrats and liberals suspect that he would use such a club to silence "the resistance."
The American Civil Liberties Union1 expressed similar concerns.
Ben Wizner, director of the group's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a written statement:
1. The ACLU has been faulted by Alan Dershowitz, an ex-ACLU member and retired Harvard law professor, as having turned partisan.
Supposedly, the British want him for ducking extradition to Sweden by taking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy. But this is all nonsense. Everyone knows his real "crime" is the publishing of files that governments use to control their business (and their populations). I wonder whether Ecuador turned against him because WikiLeaks dared publish a cache of Russian documents.
The U.S. Justice Department (FBI I suppose) has revealed its interest in the matter by (finally) officially revealing that Assange is wanted for assisting in computer intrusion, not for making like the New York Times and publishing secret documents.
But we all know that Assange became Public Enemy Number 1 when WikiLeaks published emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chief, John Podesta. Immediately on publication, the Clinton group roared that Clinton was a victim of a Russian conspiracy -- even though Assange denied obtaining the data from the Russian government. The "Russian collusion" theory against Trump then was given a huge partisan boost.
But the Deep State and the Democrats are terribly embarrassed: NO RUSSIAN COLLUSION, saith Robert Mueller.
What to do? What to do?
Get Assange! That will blow up Trump with his own bomb.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a Virginia Democrat, was elated, calling Assange’s arrest "great for the American people." He added, "We’re going to extradite him. It will be really good to get him back on United States soil. So now he’s our property and we can get the facts and truth from him." There is little doubt that his implication is that Assange's arrest is "great for the Democratic Party."
Recall how Donald Trump jokingly urged WikiLeaks to publish 30,000 of Clinton's missing emails. Clinton and her crew ignored the humor and accused Trump of colluding with the "Russian puppet," WikiLeaks.
So what is Trump going to do? Aha! If he bars Assange's arrest, the FBI and the Democrats will accuse him of obstructing justice. But if he permits the Justice Department to persecute his "ally," he will look weak. It will look as though Trump's drive to launch criminal investigations of national security people who harassed him hasn't got much moxie, that the Deep State securocrats are stronger.
Oh, but that scenario would require collusion. The Deep State (as in, permanent CIA) would have to "reach" the Ecuadoran and the British authorities to assure that Assange was delivered in time to save Trump's foes. Oh well, let's forget about it. We all know that only Russians, not Deep Staters, collude.
The indictment was handed down in March 2018. So Attorney General Bill Barr had nothing to do with that part of the case. But it seems likely the Justice and State Departments were conferring with the Ecuadoran and British governments on the terms of the arrest. As the Daily Mail pointed out,
Since early 2017, the U.S. has been prodding Ecuador to cut ties with Assange, who had been living in the nation's embassy in London for nearly five years.When he was Trump's CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, denounced Assange as a "narcissist" who works in concert with Russia, relying on "the dirty work of others to make him famous." Pompeo was irked that WikiLeaks had published some confidential files apparently provided by a government contractor. I speculated at the time that the CIA had set up WikiLeaks in order to give Pompeo a reason to back the Deep State's desire to nail Assange.
It sweetened the pot in February, when a collection of global financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that have their headquarters in Washington awarded Ecuador $10.2 billion in rescue loans.
"It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," said Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman.
Trump has a complicated history with WikiLeaks, a Los Angeles Times report noted, claiming during the campaign to "love" the organization, which leaked stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and others that were damaging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Pompeo said the intelligence community had determined that Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU, used WikiLeaks as a conduit to release data obtained by hacking the DNC and others.
Pompeo was echoing the line espoused by his Democrat predecessor, John Brennan, the ex-communist sympathizer who became President Obama's CIA chief. In any case, Pompeo neglected to mention that various intelligence agencies, including British intelligence and the CIA, would have been tempted to use WikiLeaks in order to disseminate information that would damage an adversary. And, by the way, what difference is there in Putin's minions passing documents to WikiLeaks and Deep State officials passing documents to The New York Times and The Washington Post to damage Trump? If the data can be verified, it is likely to be published. The CIA gets information from all sorts of sordid sources. Would Pompeo say that, ergo, the CIA is "dirty" ?
So it seems I have answered the question in the headline. The Trump administration has been working to seize Assange -- and now Trump distances himself from the WikiLeaks founder, brushing him off with, "I know nothing about WikiLeaks." Yet, any conclusion that the Assange arrest doesn't endanger Trump politically is myopic. Trump may very well have been high-pressured into going along with the prosecution. Had he said anything about, for example, the bribe of Ecuador, Mueller might well have reacted by scribbling "obstruction of justice" on his yellow pad.
So Trump was forced to walk on eggshells with regard to Assange. But, to repeat, a Deep State conviction of Assange is assuredly a victory not only for the Deep State, but for Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Bill Barr is in a terrible pickle. And, to make his situation worse, we learn:
Fake terror charge unsealed
Experts consulted by Wired agreed that the Justice Department had skirted the issue of Assange's journalistic status by charging him as a hacker who had violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But, that consensus is questionable.
Federal prosecutors were able to void the five-year statute of limitation on the hacker charge by claiming that Assange had committed an "act of terrorism," according to Tor Ekeland, a hacker defense attorney quoted by Wired. "To get the benefit of the eight years, they’re trying to call this a terrorist act," Ekeland told Wired. "That seems a little weird."
What exactly was the intent of Assange's so-called "terrorism"? The intent was very obviously journalism. So, the Justice Department has not successfully dodged the issue of Assange being targeted for doing what journalists do. In order to be able to charge him, prosecutors had to characterize him as a terroristic journalist. This sounds like the sort of charge one would expect from Pyongyang.
It sure is hard to miss the parallel between the Justice Department's use of a fake terror charge in order to go after Assange and its use of fake rationalizations for FISA warrants in its vendetta against Trump.
Cali Dem sees 1st Amendment issue
On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said that the Assange indictment is “overbroad” in a way that raises “First Amendment concerns,” and that all journalists should worry that the precedent would be set that "sharing information" with the press can be construed as a criminal offense.
Conservative journalist raps spy system
From the conservative quarter, the columnnist Mark Steyn on Thursday termed the Assange indictment “extremely weak” and, speaking to the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, chastised the U.S. intelligence system.
“The idea that he's somehow goaded and encouraged Manning to steal this stuff. That the line he used... Manning tells Assange, 'that's all I've got left to give to you.' And Assange says 'curious eyes never run dry in my experience.' The idea that a corrupt federal criminal justice system could extradite and convict a man on the basis of those words ought to disturb every American,” Steyn told Carlson.
Why are Dems so elated?
Isn't Trump a dictator type who despises liberal journalists? What's to stop him from having "enemy" journalists indicted on bogus terror charges as a way of silencing them, and exacting revenge for giving him a bad time? In fact, once the Justice Department has this precedent in hand, it will be relatively easy for "the dictator" to have any journalist almost anywhere in the world seized and transported to the United States, where she or he would face federal terrorism prosecutions. Perhaps Democrats haven't thought through the full impact of the fake charge against Assange. Though I am not assuming Trump would stoop so low, it is evident that many Democrats and liberals suspect that he would use such a club to silence "the resistance."
The American Civil Liberties Union1 expressed similar concerns.
Ben Wizner, director of the group's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a written statement:
Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest.Wizner added:
Criminally prosecuting a publisher for the publication of truthful information would be a first in American history, and unconstitutional. The government did not cross that Rubicon with today’s indictment, but the worst case scenario cannot yet be ruled out. We have no assurance that these are the only charges the government plans to bring against Mr. Assange. Further, while there is no First Amendment right to crack a government password, this indictment characterizes as ‘part of’ a criminal conspiracy the routine and protected activities journalists often engage in as part of their daily jobs, such as encouraging a source to provide more information. Given President Trump’s and his administration’s well-documented attacks on the freedom of the press, such characterizations are especially worrisome.
1. The ACLU has been faulted by Alan Dershowitz, an ex-ACLU member and retired Harvard law professor, as having turned partisan.
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