US prepares charges to arrest - Julian Assange

[jimnyc]

I am not so sure I see this going over too easy. First, will Ecuador just gladly hand him over? What about his law team? Whatever it is they are finding and changing that they have found/seen - it better be ironclad. I want this guy as bad as the next day, but a technicality and *boom* he's gone. I want checks and balances, and seeing the cheaters and others getting busted and seeing prison. Just something about these guys that reeks of doing it the wrong way. I just hope our guys are prepared and attack this the right way and make it stick.

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Sources: US prepares charges to seek arrest of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

Washington (CNN)US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.

Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move forward.

During President Barack Obama's administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn't alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then.

The US view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents.

Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, seeking to avoid an arrest warrant on rape allegations in Sweden. In recent months, US officials had focused on the possibility that a new government in Ecuador would expel Assange and he could be arrested. But the left-leaning presidential candidate who won the recent election in the South American nation has promised to continue to harbor Assange.

Last week in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, CIA Director Mike Pompeo went further than any US government official in describing a role by WikiLeaks that went beyond First Amendment activity.

He said WikiLeaks "directed Chelsea Manning to intercept specific secret information, and it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States."

"It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," Pompeo said.
US intelligence agencies have also determined that Russian intelligence used WikiLeaks to publish emails aimed at undermining the campaign of Hillary Clinton, as part of a broader operation to meddle in the US 2016 presidential election. Hackers working for Russian intelligence agencies stole thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee and officials in the Clinton campaign and used intermediaries to pass along the documents to WikiLeaks, according to a public assessment by US intelligence agencies.

Still, the move could be viewed as political, since Assange is untouchable as long as he remains in the Ecuadorian embassy, and Ecuador has not changed its stance on Assange's extradition.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news conference Thursday that Assange's arrest is a "priority."

Rest here - http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politi...ges/index.html

[NightTrain]

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a news conference Thursday that Assange's arrest is a "priority."

Well, that's the end of Julian's Big Adventure right there.

A phone call to Ecuador is all it will really take to have them boot him out the front door into the Men In Black's custody. Ecuador certainly isn't going to defy us over something like this when they stand to lose a great deal of money by a pissed off administration.

I admit that I have mixed feelings about this because we wouldn't know the extent of spying on Americans by our alphabet agencies and the big plus for me personally is that he exposed Hillary & the DNC's corruption. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's disgraceful nosedive is directly due to his anti-American efforts to expose any kind of political embarrassment to the world. It could be argued that he put Trump over the top - not that he wouldn't have gleefully broadcast any dirt on Trump, he just didn't have any ammo to use on him.

But he endangered and possibly even got some of our operatives & informants killed in areas that medieval style torture is the watchword. Can't excuse that.

So, while I do approve of some of his activities because it assisted my political desires, on the whole he needs to go to trial and have his day in court. And if he's found guilty, string his ass up.