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Does Glenn Greenwald still think that Julian Assange is an nonpolitical transparency advocate? He just reported that Assange could be extradited from Ecuador’s embassy in Britain as early as next week but he seems to be rather indignant about this.

“A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the President’s office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to the Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the UK within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week. On Friday, RT reported that Ecuador was preparing to enter into such an agreement.”

“The consequences of such an agreement depend in part on the concessions Ecuador extracts in exchange for withdrawing Assange’s asylum. But as former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told the Intercept in an interview in May, Moreno’s government has returned Ecuador to a highly “subservient” and “submissive” posture toward western governments.

“It is thus highly unlikely that Moreno – who has shown himself willing to submit to threats and coercion from the UK, Spain and the U.S. – will obtain a guarantee that the U.K. not extradite Assange to the U.S., where top Trump officials have vowed to prosecute Assange and destroy WikiLeaks.”

If true that would be pretty ungrateful seeing how much Wikileaks did to win the election for Trump and Greenwald makes no reference to the recent news that the Trump WH in 2017 actually tried to get an immunity deal for Assange in exchange ostensibly in exchange for not releasing the trove of CIA leaks but you suspect the real prize for Trump was Assange’s promise that he would somehow prove Russia wasn’t behind all the hacks.

Greenwald seems preoccupied what will happen to Assange if/when-which seems reasonably likely-he ends up on US custody. But he totally sidesteps the central question of the central role Assange played in helping Russia interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf.

He instead acts as if this is a clear cut case of cracking down on journalism.

“THE FAR MORE IMPORTANT question that will determine Assange’s future is what the U.S. Government intends to do. The Obama administration was eager to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, but ultimately concluded that there was no way to do so without either also prosecuting newspapers such as the New York Times and the Guardian which published the same documents, or create precedents that would enable the criminal prosecution of media outlets in the future.”

“But the U.S. Justice Department has never wanted to indict and prosecute anyone for the crime of publishing such material, contenting themselves instead to prosecuting the government sources who leak it. Their reluctance has been due to two reasons: first, media outlets would argue that any attempts to criminalize the mere publication of classified or stolen documents is barred by the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment, a proposition the DOJ has never wanted to test; second, no DOJ has wanted as part of its legacy the creation of a precedent that allows the U.S. Government to criminally prosecute journalists and media outlets for reporting classified documents.”

“But the Trump administration has made clear that they have no such concerns. Quite the contrary: last April, Trump’s then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, now his Secretary of State, delivered a deranged, rambling, highly threatening broadside against WikiLeaks. Without citing any evidence, Pompeo decreed that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” and thus declared: “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.”

What’s interesting, however, is at the same time Pompeo made those bellicose comments, the Trump Administration-including Trump’s CIA that Pompeo was head of at the time-was as noted above, working on a deal for Assange. Pompeo’s comments came at the end of these negotiations after they had been derailed and Assange leaked a trove of CIA documents.

“On April 7, 2017, Assange released documents with the specifics of some of the CIA malware used for cyber attacks. It had immediate impact: A furious U.S. government backed out of the negotiations, and then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo slammed WikiLeaks as a “hostile intelligence service.”

I documented this stunning offer of immunity by the Trump WH to someone who did so much to help Trump win in a previous chapter. 

The big question is does Greenwald still think Assange is nothing more than the leader of a nonpolitical transparency organization?

By now it’s simply impossible to maintain this belief. There is so much documented evidence of the fact that Assange-like Russia-wanted to hurt Clinton and help Trump in 2016. We have his declaration before the 2016 South Carolina Democratic primary that Hillary Clinton must be defeated. We have DM messages even further back, in 2015, that clearly document his singleminded desire to defeat Clinton in favor of a Republican candidate.

This part of the story hasn’t been emphasized or understood. In an earlier chapter I wrote about the fact that the Russians didn’t just prefer Trump they also preferred the GOP-which is demonstrated by their interference in the Congressional races as well, in their hacks of the DCCC to sabotage Democratic candidates.

Of course, Wikileaks itself was involved in the leaking of these damaging DCCC emails, etc. But then this preference was shared by Assange and his pretty selective ‘transparency’ organization.

Indeed, as far back as 2013, Assange was on the record as preferring the GOP as noted to the link above.

Again, there is so much documented evidence that Assange acted like a GOP operative regarding American politics that we can’t possibly be exhaustive and document it all in one sit in. But you also have his emails to Donald Jr and the fact that Wikileaks gave Clinton’s emails to Cambridge Analytica a month before they were released as I noted in a pervious chapter. 

But the coup de grace are the documents released in Mueller’s indictments last Friday showing Assange had directed the military Russian operatives working through Guccifer 2.0 to time the release of the DNC”s emails as close as possible to the Democratic convention that July-as I noted in yet another previous chapter. 

What  misses is that there are competing concerns regarding Assange. Yes there is the quite justified outrage over his leaks of the diplomatic cables back in 2011. But the issue of most immediate concern today is Assange’s major part in interfering and rigging the 2016 election.

You think Mueller doesn’t want to talk to Assange?

That Greenwald still doesn’t seem to recognize that Assange is anything more than just a nonpartisan government transparency activist may be in part because he himself is what Putin would call a useful idiot-during the election as I’ve documented in the past, after the primary, Greenwald had 16 pieces negative about Clinton/Democrats and zero regarding Trump and the GOP.

Calling him a useful idiot gives him the benefit of the doubt-it assumes he doesn’t realize the function he served for Russia’s interference. Assange is clearly much more than a useful idiot-he quite consciously coordinated with Russia to swing an American election.

Augment?

Prediction in October 2018 of a possibly imminent Assange arrest?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-is-optimistic-it-will-prosecute-assange-1542323142

UPDATE: Ok so since I wrote this chapter more than a year ago a lot Assange’s world has been turned upside down. Greenwald’s warning Ecuador could stop granting Assange asylum came true-not the following week but almost nine months later Ecuador finally ejected him from the embassy in the UK and the moment he got out he was arrested by British police. 

So what’s next for the alleged transparency activist  who’s been running an unpaid Super Pac for Trump and his GOP co-conspirators all these years?

Just before he was ejected from the embassy and arrested by the British police an indictment against him in a Virginia court was unsealed. 

Julian Assange’s dramatic arrest this week by United Kingdom authorities at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the unsealing of an indictment in federal court in Virginia ended years of speculation about whether the WikiLeaks founder would face criminal charges in the United States.

But Thursday’s flurry of activity was just the first step in what could be a yearslong legal battle to bring him to the US.

The UK is pursuing Assange’s extradition on behalf of the US government, but extradition cases between the two countries are complex affairs. Assuming the defendant doesn’t agree to surrender and contests the removal, there are not only multiple levels for appeals, but multiple forums, too. Defendants have spent years in custody as they fought extradition — one terrorism suspect, Babar Ahmad, who eventually pleaded guilty, was arrested in the UK in 2004 and held for eight years before he was extradited to the US in 2012.

There’s a good chance that however long it takes, Assange will remain behind bars. He was arrested this week not only on the US indictment, but also on a charge in the UK that he violated bail in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced sexual assault allegations. Amy Jeffress, a lawyer who previously oversaw cooperation between US and UK authorities for the Justice Department, said Assange’s past bail violation would undermine any argument he made for release now.

“He’s already shown he’s noncompliant with conditions and I think it’s unlikely a judge would release him given that history,” Jeffress said.

Sweden had dropped the charges in 2017 but reopened them after he was bounced from the embassy. So he faces charges in the US, UK, and Sweden.

So where does he go next? The following month after he was thrown out of the embassy the UK signed an order for him to be extradited to the US. 

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid has officially signed an extradition order to send Julian Assange to the United States. It’s the first step in what could prove to be a lengthy legal battle over whether the WikiLeaks founder should face prosecution in the United States for his actions surrounding the publication of classified materials from former US Army analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010.

In May, the US Department of Justice indicted Assange on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. According to the indictment, they accused Assange of having “repeatedly sought, obtained, and disseminated information that the United States classified due to serious risk that unauthorized disclosure could harm the national security of the United States.” The WikiLeaks chief faces up to 10 years in prison for each count of violating the Espionage Act.

He also faces a single charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion in the US for allegedly working with Manning to hack into a Defense Department computer to access classified Iraq War documents.

Yet there’s no guarantee he’ll ever see the inside of a US federal courtroom. The extradition order is merely the first step in the process, and Assange’s lawyers will almost certainly challenge it.

“It’s a decision ultimately for the courts,” Javid told the BBC. “I want to see justice done at all times, and we’ve got a legitimate extradition request so I’ve signed it, but the final decision is now with the courts.”

Having said all this there are legitimate concerns about a bad precedent for press freedom. It’s true that Assange engaged in many actvities that no decent journalist would ever countenance-he knowingly made up that vicious Seth Rich conspiracy-and there are many cases of him acting like a GOP oppo guy more than a journalist and of putting out fake documents.

Still there is the legitimate concern that this could set a precedent where a journalist for the NYT, WaPo, and CNN could be charged. In a perfect world you’d like to be able to bring Assange to the US without setting any precedent but obviously that’s not how it works.

If anything the expanding of the charges against Assange from charges of hacking to actual espionage may make his eventual extradition less likely

BY CHARGING Julian Assange with 17 violations of America’s World War I-era Espionage Act on Thursday, federal prosecutors in Virginia might have undermined their own chances of securing the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder from the United Kingdom.

That’s because the new charges relate not to any arcane interpretation of computer hacking laws, but to WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of American military reports and diplomatic cables provided by the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010.

The fact that WikiLeaks published many of those documents in collaboration with an international consortium of leading news organizations — including The Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, El País, and Der Spiegel — ensured that the charges against Assange were immediately denounced by journalists and free speech advocates as an unconstitutional assault on press freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

Even if the initial charges of hacking might allow for avoiding a precedent the espionage is a lot more worrisome.

UPDATE: In a much more recent post, EmptyWheel argues the DOJ may have believed that they could prosecute Assange without setting a bad precedent because Assange is accused of aiding and abetting the criminal activities of a hostile foreign power. 

It’s not clear what’s driving the move to prosecute Assange-is it the Trump political people or career DOJ people? If it’s the Trump hacks it’s pretty ungrateful and a major change of heart-back in 2017 there was actually a furious attempt by Trump’s co-conspirators to free Assange.

The NYT has an unbelievable story about how Paul Manafort went to Ecuador to try to get Julian Assange turned over. I say it’s unbelievable because it is 28 paragraphs long, yet it never once explains whether Assange would be turned over to the US for prosecution or for a golf retirement. Instead, the story stops short multiple times of what it implies: that Manafort was there as part of paying off Trump’s part of a deal, but the effort stopped as soon as Mueller was appointed.”

As noted in Chapter A, the Times would soon totally repudiate its own reporting after the MSM decided the Guardian story that had Manafort meeting with Assange three times from 2013-2016-the last one in 2016 coming just before he joined the Trump campaign in March of that year had cooties-so any story linking Manafort and Assange thereby had cooties.

Back to EmptyWheel:

“The story itself — which given that it stopped once Mueller was appointed must be a limited hangout revealing that Manafort tried to free Assange, complete with participation from the spox that Manafort unbelievably continues to employ from his bankrupt jail cell — doesn’t surprise me at all.

After all, the people involved in the election conspiracy made multiple efforts to free Assange.

WikiLeaks kicked off the effort at least by December, when they sent a DM to Don Jr suggesting Trump should make him Australian Ambassador to the US.

Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well! In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to DC “That’s a really smart tough guy and the most famous australian you have! ” or something similar. They won’t do it, but it will send the right signals to Australia, UK + Sweden to start following the law and stop bending it to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons. 12/16/16 12:38PM

Weeks later, Hannity would go to the Embassy to interview Assange. Assange fed him the alternate view of how he obtained the DNC emails, a story that would be critical to Trump’s success at putting the election year heist behind him, if it were successful. Trump and Hannity pushed the line that the hackers were not GRU, but some 400 pound guy in someone’s basement.

Then the effort actually shifted to Democrats and DOJ. Starting in February through May 2017, Oleg Deripaska and Julian Assange broker Adam Waldman tried to convince Bruce Ohr or Mark Warner to bring Assange to the US, using the threat of the Vault 7 files as leverage. In February, Jim Comey told DOJ to halt that effort. But Waldman continued negotiations, offering to throw testimony from Deripaska in as well. He even used testimony from Christopher Steele as leverage.

This effort has been consistently spun by the Mark Meadows/Devin Nunes/Jim Jordan crowd — feeding right wing propagandists like John Solomon — as an attempt to obstruct a beneficial counterintelligence discussion. It’s a testament to the extent to which GOP “investigations” have been an effort to spin an attempt to coerce freedom for Assange.

Shortly after this effort failed, Manafort picked it up, as laid out by the NYT. That continued until Mueller got hired.

There may have been a break (or maybe I’m missing the next step). But by the summer, Dana Rohrabacher and Chuck Johnson got in the act, with Rohrabacher going to the Embassy to learn the alternate story, which he offered to share with Trump.

Next up was Bill Binney, whom Trump started pushing Mike Pompeo to meet with, to hear Binney’s alternative story.

At around the same time, WikiLeaks released the single Vault 8 file they would release, followed shortly by Assange publicly re-upping his offer to set up a whistleblower hotel in DC.”

image

Those events contributed to a crackdown on Assange and may have led to the jailing of accused Vault 7 source Joshua Schulte.

In December, Ecuador and Russia started working on a plan to sneak Assange out of the Embassy.

UPDATE: See Chapter A for an attempt by Oleg Deripaska’s lawyer to get Assange limited immunity in exchange for somehow proving Russia wasn’t behind the hacks of the leaked emails.

UPDATE: In October files were released that confirmed the plan to move Assange to Russia. 

How does Randy Credico explain this seeing as Assange has ‘nothing to do with Russia?’

End of UPDATE

A few weeks later, Roger Stone got into the act, telling Randy Credico he was close to winning Assange a pardon.

“These efforts have all fizzled, and I suspect as Mueller put together more information on Trump’s conspiracy with Russia, not only did the hopes of telling an alternative theory fade, but so did the possibility that a Trump pardon for Assange would look like anything other than a payoff for help getting elected. In June, the government finally got around to charging Schulte for Vault 7. But during the entire time he was in jail, he was apparently still attempting to leak information, which the government therefore obtained on video.

So it’s not clear who was running the parallel effort to indict Assange-again it may have been the career DOJ people.

To be sure, personally I don’t want any precedent that enables legitimate journalists to be charged with espionage in the future. While above I hypothesized that Mueller would have liked to interview Assange that’s another question he would quite possibly have refused to answer-if the Democrats had asked him it back on July 24.

UPDATE: Regarding to what extent Mueller investigated Wikileaks’ itself see this tweet by Emma Best.

https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1063088682402373633

https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1062795548908912640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1062795548908912640&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fevilsax.pressbooks.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D4483%26action%3Dedit

Once again giving us the flavor of the sort of ‘journalist’ Assange is. Again, I agree that despite how dodgy and unpalatable Assange is you do have to worry over precedent in going after journalists. But there’s little question that Assange’s conduct is appalling relative to journalistic standards-in this instance threatening another journalist. Meanwhile this story confirms once again Assange’s closeness to Russia.

Certainly Emma Best has done as much as anyone to give us the flavor of just how appalling Assange’s conduct actually is-here’s yet another exhibit-a former Wikileaks source said they misled people about their files. 

But the positive side of bringing Assange to the US would be what information we could learn about his 2016 activities. Could there be a plea deal where he testified before Congress about these activities?

Of course, there are a number of hurdles with that-like we don’t know if and if so when he will be extradited to the US. We also have to be far from confident the House Democrats would aggressively seek to have a public hearing with  Assange. So far the big picture is the Dems have not been very aggressive and they’d likely have to be pretty aggressive to convince a US Judge to compel Assange’s testimony before Congress.

FN: OTOH as we saw in Chapter A the Senate Intel Committee did invite Assange to an interview in early August, 2018-soon after Greenwald’s piece pushing the panic button.

From this you might conclude that maybe the House Dems would be aggressive enough-after all the GOP led Senate Intel already did ask him to testify. But we’ve seen time and again where the Dems have criticized the GOP for failing to be aggressive enough and then punt when they got the ball.

 

 

 

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