Mueller should have let his investigation go on for a few more months so that they could get Assange and corroborate everything Assange communicated with to Roger Stone and Russia.
Hopefully the U.S. gets access to Assange’s hard drives and phone data.
I assume if I were caught on camera trying and failing to pick a lock on somebody’s front door, I would face some sort of charges. I certainly wouldn’t try to pick a lock, and upon being presented with the video by police at my door, say “well I didn’t successfully break in, so I assume it’s okay”.
I wonder if there are any state level charges at play?
Republican neo-fascist projection and gas lighting: Conspiracy in league with a foreign power is what their leader could realistically be charged with so, naturally, they want to include a convicted transgender conspirator, Manning, who had nothing to do with Dear Leader’s crew but with the bonus that progressives such as AOC have advocated said transgender conspirator not be kept in solitary and otherwise tortured by them.
The more the merrier when it comes to conspiracy theories but the purpose is to present the contra case: Assange was really a liberal/socialist in league with Merika’s enemies and so were those associated with him in any way.
Assange may be loathsome but Republicans are evil and also in increasing control of a media and justice system they have turned to their own purposes. It’s all grist for the authoritarian mill.
The propagandist will not accuse the enemy of just any misdeed, he will accuse him of the very intention that he himself has and of trying to commit the very crime that he himself is about to commit. – Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
There won’t be a pardon. If Assange is pardoned, he loses his fifth amendment rights to remain silent. Which means he spills everything he has or gets more jail time for contempt.
DOJ now says it will file additional charges on Assange, as I suspected. I do hope the DOJ will file charges relating to the GRU and Stone indictments. That would really kick the Trump-Russia probe back into overdrive.
As for this particular indictment, think of it as a record with 1 great hit song with the rest of filled with bad to filler tracks. They have Assange on hacking a gov’t password to help Manning steal gov’t info. That’s pure hacking and is not tied to freedom of the press rights.
Lesson learned – don’t expose the war crimes of a country as powerful as the United States.
Reports are that the cat was removed a while ago and given to a no kill animal shelter to be put up for adoption.
Ecuadorian minister now saying they will be revealing the extent of his crimes against house-guestery, including smearing “fecal feces” on the wall.
Uncertain if it was his feces or the cat’s…
Also: #EDVA means there will be other co-conspirators indicted. Hannity, and Roger Stone, should be shitting their pants, right about now.
O good - although I really wish somebody at the embassy had just taken it home. But that’s at least an answer and it’s a no kill so yay! Thanks!
Well first of all at least as I read the summary above, no one is charging using a password to break into anything, it seems now that the charge is conspiracy.
So you’d have to change your analogy to two guys talking about trying to, say, guess the code on someone’s keypad lock on the door. And failing to guess it. And therefore never actually going to the door to try to break in. Imagine a judge hearing prosecutors trying to charge “breaking and entering” based on two guys having been overheard having that conversation.
Now as I said, if the charge is actually conspiracy, which does cover even just having a conversation about hacking – I’m just saying based on what I read above, and it’s just a summary so who knows, could be wrong, good luck with that was my point.
Going forward, the video of this fool wailing and crying while being carted off may replace “It’s A Wonderful Life” as required holiday viewing. I wonder how Manning is feeling this morning? Hahaha.
I guess they can charge him with other things, when he has been extradicted ?
Yeah I agree. First thing I saw on my phone this morning and I said O! O! O! Yes!
@clauscph - sure. They can always keep charging people with stuff. The only cut off to charging people are statutes of limitation. Otherwise - hell yes they are free to charge someone with whatever they have the evidence to charge them with.
First of all, I think we can all agree that Assange is a narcissistic dirtbag, much like the cretin he helped get elected POTUS.
But this hacking case seems pretty weak, at least based on the details we know so far.
I mean I get that his clear intent in trying to hack the password would be to help Manning steal classified info.
But what if Assange simply claims that he never actually even tried, that he was just stringing Manning along to keep his valuable source happy?
If all they have is a couple of messages showing he said he’d try and then saying he’d failed…that seems pretty thin.
Maybe prosecutors have more up their sleeves – but wouldn’t they want to put their best stuff up-front to help justify the arrest and the extradition request?
Feel free to persuade me otherwise, but my initial reaction is that based on what we have seen so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if Assange ends up with little more than a slap on the wrist, at least as far as these particular charges go.
I would be genuinely astonished if Barr permits anything of the sort. It seems more likely his DOJ will try to make links through Manning to a fabricated liberal conspiracy. JMO
I was thinking something similar.
I’m guessing that he passed the code off to Russian intelligence. They, having two dupes to take the fall, may well have kept everything after that to themselves whether they cracked it or not.
Question: assuming he does get extradited to the U.S., would he be eligible for bail pending his trial?
I’m mildly nauseous at the image of Assange living it up on his supporters’ dime, enjoying the fruits of the country he’s so severely damaged (mostly by helping a sociopath win the White House), while he awaits trial.
I mean to me he seems like a pretty obvious flight risk, so hopefully that will preclude bail. Though given the “white-collar” type of crime, not to mention Assange’s personal hue, I guess I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he ends up under house arrest at some supporter’s mansion.
Which leads to a final question: Does time spent under house arrest awaiting trial count towards “time served” in any eventual sentence, or not? I feel like that question came up during Manafort’s initial cushy house arrest situation, but I don’t remember what the answer was.
Yes. But the court will note that he’s a flight risk no doubt and set it really high.