For those out of the loop: Assange recently plead guilty in exchange for being allowed to return to Australia without serving any additional jail time
For good background on hit case, check the wikipedia article, pretty neutral and factual reporting on the history. TLDR he revealed the US committing war crimes, the committers of which were never prosecuted. The US went after him with everything they had including planning an assassination attempt (which they never went through with). They tried to apply US law internationally to somebody who wasn’t a US citizen and wasn’t in the US. The UN said his detainment was illegal and torture. He’s been on the run, in some embassy, or jail for over 10 years for activity other news organizations regularly and legally engage in (leaking classified documents). Various US military, intelligence, etc agency heads have testified to congress that they couldn’t find a single death related to the documents he leaked, he didn’t put anybody at risk, in fact, Wikileaks sent every leak to the US govt before leaking it asking them for notes on what to redact. The US refused to participate in that process.
He also revealed the DNC was trying to bury Bernie, which the DNC didn’t even deny, they had to let a bunch of their top people go and do a bunch of primary reforms as a result. That’s when liberals started hating Wikileaks, because the DNC emails helped get Trump elected. They say the “timing” of right before the election makes his leak partisan. But wouldn’t you want that information before you vote? It is the job of wikileaks, or any journalist, to maximize the impact of information they are revealing on corruption. It’s not Julian’s fault the DNC was corrupt AF, all they had to do to avoid that was… not be corrupt.
There were also some sex assault allegations against him, which I tend to believe have some veracity to them however the accusers explicitly did not want him charged, but Swedish prosecutors pursued a case anyways, it was a ploy to get him to Sweden where he would be extradited to the US. He was never even charged, only “wanted to questioning” but somehow got an interpol notice for it. His lawyers offered over a dozen times for him to be interviewed but Sweden insisted on an “in-person” interview for some reason. Curious.
Oh, and he helped save Snowden’s life by getting him a flight out of China.
This is pretty heavily slanted in his favor dude. You’re leaving out the part where he picks and chooses what information to release based on his politics, how he had his own state sponsored show in Russia after he fled there, how he never released documents related to the Republican Party, etc. He ran an organization that’s explicit purpose was transparency, not “only being transparent when it fits my politics.“ There are also a lot of questions about how he (mis)handled some of that classified data and potentially put a lot of people in jeopardy.
US absolutely went overboard in how they went after him. It was shameful. But I think he did some good and some bad and you need to acknowledge a little more of the bad here. People try to make him out to be a saint or a super villain, when the simple reality is he fell somewhere in between at different times. We also can’t overlook the fact that he played a significant role in Trump winning the presidency, which a lot of people are still upset about. (Please people do not write a 10 paragraph essay about how terrible Clinton’s campaign was. That is also true. Two things can be true.)
This is pretty heavily slanted in his favor dude. You’re leaving out the part where he picks and chooses what information to release based on his politics,
As any journalist is entitled to do. Journalists have bias, especially investigative ones, they are allowed to ruthlessly pursue corruption of one party or one organization or whatever. His reporting was factual and led to reforms in the DNC primary system. We have a more democratic primary as a result. I've yet to see one source actually verifiably claim he got similar emails on the RNC like he did for DNC. This argument was used by the DNC to deflect from their own corruption.
how he had his own state sponsored show in Russia after he fled there
When you are a persecuted journalist, you will talk to whatever shows will air you. As for fleeing to Russia, you're thinking of Snowden not Assange. Assange was the one who got asylum from Ecuador and then was held in UK prison pending appeal.
Thank you!
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture - “[charges against Julian are an] abuse of judicial processes aimed at pushing a person into a position where he is unable to defend himself”
Amnesty International - “The US government’s unrelenting pursuit of Julian Assange for having published disclosed documents that included possible war crimes committed by the US military is nothing short of a full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression.”
Freedom of the Press Foundation: “The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely—and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do. Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret. In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices”
The Guardian: “The US should never have brought the case against the WikiLeaks founder. This attack on press freedom must be rejected.”
New York Times: “The new charges focus on receiving and publishing classified material from a government source. That is something journalists do all the time. They did it with the Pentagon Papers and in countless other cases where the public benefited from learning what was going on behind closed doors, even though the sources may have acted illegally. This is what the First Amendment is designed to protect: the ability of publishers to provide the public with the truth.”
