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Title: Filing indicates indictment was prepared for Julian Assange
Source:
NBC News
URL Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new ... repared-julian-assange-n937036
Published: Nov 16, 2018
Author: Ken Dilanian and Dennis Romero
Post Date: 2018-11-16 20:29:49 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 480
Comments: 2
A court document filed by mistake has revealed that the Justice Department is preparing to criminally charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In a slip unearthed by a former U.S. intelligence official and posted on Twitter, Assange’s name appears twice in an August court filing by a federal prosecutor in Virginia — an argument to keep sealed an unrelated case involving an accused child sex criminal. 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.” At another point in the document, the prosecutor wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” It's not clear what allegations could be connected to the filing, which was a motion to seal a complaint and supporting documents in the unrelated case. However, special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year cited WikiLeaks participation in Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that WikiLeaks disclosed thousands of emails stolen in a covert Russian intelligence operation to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, noticed that Assange's name was in the filing, and he tweeted about it. Hughes is also a former official at the National Counterterrorism Center. On Thursday night, WikiLeaks' Twitter account further publicized the filing. Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement that that court filing "was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing." The filing was first reported by The Washington Post. WikiLeaks and Assange loom large in the investigation of Russian influence on the election. The website released unflattering Hillary Clinton campaign emails beginning Oct. 7, 2016, just weeks before the presidential election. Mueller, who's directing a federal inquiry into election meddling, in July charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with conspiring to hack Democratic National Committee computers in an effort to disrupt the 2016 election. The indictment referred to WikiLeaks as “Organization 1,” and described its role in receiving and disseminating the emails, without addressing whether Assange knew the material came from the Russians. Barry Pollack, a U.S. lawyer representing Assange, criticized the move to charge the WikiLeaks founder. “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,” Pollack said in a statement. “The government bringing criminal charges against someone for publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy to take.” In a statement Friday the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, Ben Wizner, seemed to agree. "Any prosecution of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations," he said. "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." Mueller has been investigating whether anyone close to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, including his longtime associate Roger Stone, acted as a conduit of stolen emails between WikiLeaks and the campaign.U.S. intelligence agencies have said that WikiLeaks disclosed emails stolen in a covert Russian intelligence operation to help Trump and hurt Clinton.
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
(Edited)
Assange humiliated US intelligence. The US is going to make a point of making sure that he never breathes free again. That other fellow, can't think of his name, he'll be living in Russia until Trump's re-election allows Trump to go full-steam ahead with normalising Russian relations, and than that guy will either be sent back to the US or forced to go elsewhere, and as he is in transit, he'll be picked up, or picked off in a "tragic accident". You do not humiliate the intelligence services of any of the top 7 or so powers and get to go on and live out a normal, happy life after that, not even in obscurity. They remember, they hate you, and they will eventually find you and either kill you or put you in a cage. This is why you just don't tangle with them. As an individual, however much you hate the CIA, you're never going to defeat them, and they're never going to forgive you or forget you. They are very serious men and women who firmly believe that what they are doing is necessary for the survival of their nation. - This is not just true of the CIA but all major intelligence agencies. They're patriots, and clandestine solders, and they're willing to die - and kill - for their countries. It doesn't matter that YOU think their cause is wrong. They don't, and they're not going to change their mind. You can testify against the mob and live out a quiet life in the witness protection program. But you're never going to win a fight against the CIA if you make it personal, or against the Mossad, or the Russian agency, or the French or the British, or Chinese. Now, if you're a FOREIGN agent, there is professional courtesy. Russian agents don't hunt down retired CIA living at home, or vice-versa. Everybody in that game understands that the enemy intelligence agents at home are warriors like they are. There are rules to the game, because everybody in it wants to eventually be able to go off and live a quiet retirement - and if rival agencies started killing retirees of the other side then nobody would have peace. So, if you're IN the game and playing by the rules of the game, there ARE rules. But if you're some outsider punk, just a casual civilian with a cause, and you go and do what Assange did, it doesn't MATTER how just your cause - you did grievous harm, and they're never going to let you go. If a Chinese agent did the same harm, well, that's what formal adversaries do. You don't go "Get him" in his retirement somewhere off in the Chinese hinterlands - that's not cricket. Assange, though: he doesn't get to retire. Sorry. Whatever sort of hero he might be to some, you don't essentially declare war on US, British, French and Russian intelligence and get a hall pass. Not ever. He will be made to pay for his "Idealism" - if that's what it really was - with his life, either by its shortening, or by it's being spent in a cage. Already he's in a cage, of sorts, at the Bolivian embassy. There are many things we can do with our lives. Engaging in a personal war with the CIA is not a productive use of one's time. And lest anybody forget that, the lesson will be taught every time by the example of what happens to every single person who does, without exception. Good? Bad? Doesn't matter what you think, or what I think. THEY think what they are doing is vital (I think they're probably right, to tell you the truth - there's some really bad shit in the world - I give our CIA the benefit of the doubt), they're in possession of a lot more information than we are, whatever else one may say about them, they ARE hardcore patriots, they're smart people (it's tough to get a job there), They believe in what they do, and if you pull an Assange, and what you do exposes people and gets them killed somewhere, they do not forget and do not forgive. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Assange really did the right thing is some meta- sense, in an "eyes of God" sense. Well, then he will join the long line of martyrs from Jesus and Stephen through the Apostles and Joan of Arc and all of the other martyrs, who "did the right thing" in a world that was not good enough to hold them. Martyrs leave an example, and very occasionally change the world, but they pay for it with their lives. Jihadis are martyrs for their causes too. And that's the problem. Your Joan of Arc may be my jihadi. Assange may be your Joan of Arc. He's a jiihadi to the agencies he damaged. Either way, he's going to end up a martyr for his cause. He should have picked a different bear to poke.
Yep, just like McStain was while posing with them.
#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Jihadis are martyrs for their causes too.
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