Julian Assange deserved punishment for aiding the hacker attacks. This was stated by former First Lady and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to her, the founder of WikiLeaks is not a journalist.
"This story is not about punishment for journalism - it is about providing support (from Assange. - RT ) in a hacker attack on a military computer in order to steal information from the US government," NBC television channel quoted her words.
She added that Assange must "answer for what he did."
Clinton was supported by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, one of Donald Trump’s most consistent opponents.
"Julian Assange was arrested, and I hope that he will soon be responsible for interfering in our elections," wrote Schumer on his Twitter.
Now that he has been arrested, he will soon be arrested in the elections.
- Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) on April 11, 2019In turn, Donald Trump's attorney Rudolph Giuliani believes that the information that Assange has can shed light on the "conspiracy" against the president.
“Maybe it will shed light on the conspiracy to organize investigations against President Trump on the basis of a false accusation of colluding with Russia to influence the result of the 2016 elections. Follow Ukraine. It is possible that with all its sources he may know something about it or provide information on how it all began, ”the Washington Examiner newspaper quoted Giuliani as saying.
Assange was arrested by British police on April 11. Ecuadorian diplomats allowed security officials to enter the territory of the embassy after President Lenin Moreno announced that he was withdrawing his political asylum to the founder of WikiLeaks. In his statement, Moreno said that the decision was made because of "repeated violations of international conventions." In addition, Assange was deprived of Ecuadorian citizenship.
The formal reason for the arrest was the non-appearance of an Australian journalist in a British court in 2012 at the request of the authorities in Sweden. It was then that Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy.
The first publications WikiLeaks
On the day of the arrest of Assange, the US Department of Justice issued a statement stating that the US authorities accuse the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, in collusion to hack Pentagon computers to gain access to secret information.
- In March 2019, Chelsea (Bradley) Mannig again appeared in court in the case of WikiLeaks
- © REUTERS / Ford Fischer / News2Share
Washington began the pursuit of Assange in 2010, when hundreds of thousands of documents were published on the WikiLeaks portal regarding US Army operations in the Middle East, which were received from US intelligence specialist Bradley Manning.
The documents contained information about the crimes of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, including evidence of torture, video recording of the shooting of civilians by an Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007, as well as information about a large number of civilian casualties caused by the actions of the American military.
In August 2013, a military tribunal was held, sentencing Manning to 35 years in prison. On January 17, 2017, three days before the expiration of his presidential powers, Barack Obama signed a decree commuting the sentence of a military man to seven years. Manning, who had replaced sex in prison and now calls himself Chelsea, was released in May 2017.
Enemy of the Establishment
During the isolation of Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, WikiLeaks published many different materials: secret documents concerning the Guantanamo prison, data from the US National Security Agency and information about the secret CIA cyber program called Vault 7.
To gallery page
However, today the American mainstream media are discussing his role in the alleged Russian intervention in the US presidential election in 2016. The leaders of the American intelligence services under Barack Obama claimed that the “Russian hackers” had hacked the mail servers of the National Committee of the Democratic Party and the campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton and transferred the received materials to WikiLeaks.
In 2017, Mike Pompeo, who at that time held the post of head of the CIA, called WikiLeaks "non-state hostile intelligence service", which was supported by Russia. The day before, commenting on the arrest of Assange, this statement was confirmed by the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence.
“Yes, we fully agree with this. That is why the Justice Department is seeking the extradition of Assange, ”Pence said on CNN.
Despite the fact that the recently concluded investigation by the Muller Commission did not show the existence of an agreement between Trump and the Kremlin, the arrest of Assange gave the American media an excuse to resume the discussion of Russian interference in the US presidential elections.
- © The Washington Examiner
"The United States must bring Julian Assange to responsibility as a Russian agent," the newspaper The Washington Examiner announces.
- © PolitiFact
“WikiLeaks: Russia's“ useful idiot ”, its“ agent of influence ”or something else?” Asks PolitiFact portal.
- © The New York Times
“The arrest of Julian Assange did not give answers to the riddles connected with Russia,” the newspaper The New York Times writes.
Between the hammer and the anvil
The arrest and extradition of Julian Assange in the United States put Donald Trump in an uncomfortable position, experts say. If the Prosecutor-General appointed by him, William Barr, softens the accusation or sentence to the founder of WikiLeaks, it will give Trump's opponents from the Democratic Party the right to point this out as proof of collusion with Russia, Vladimir Bruter, an expert at the International Institute for Humanitarian Political Studies, said in a conversation with RT.
“It was not for nothing that the arrest of Assange and the attempts to extradite him to the USA immediately followed the end of the investigation of Muller. It all looks weird. Obviously, in the USA, someone wants the story around “Russian intervention” not to end. It is possible that Trump is now facing a new choice, ”explained the expert.
It is likely that the democrats and the American media will use the personality of Assange as an argument in the new round of the case of Russia's “interference” in the 2016 elections, Vladimir Bruter believes.
“For them it will be a good reason to resume this topic. However, there are no grounds for this, since it is impossible to say that new facts came to light: it is obvious that while in the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange could not take any serious steps to hack the servers of the Democrats and Clinton, ”he noted.
At the same time, the American establishment will ignore the fact that Bradley (Chelsea) Manning has already been convicted in the case of publishing WikiLeaks secret data.
“Assange, not Chelsea Manning, is the sharp rejection of the democratic establishment, since the founder of WikiLeaks is a more promoted person. For the Democrats, this is a reason to promote the theme of Assange’s guilt in defeating the Democratic Party in the elections, ”said Vladimir Bruter.
Stalemate situation
Recall that on March 24, Attorney General William Barr sent to Congress a report on the results of the investigation of Special Prosecutor Robert Muller.
It was noted that the Muller Commission did not find evidence or signs of a “conspiracy” of Trump’s campaign headquarters with Russia. Attorney General Barr also said that no further charges would be brought under this investigation.
However, Democrats believe that the founder of WikiLeaks acted on request and that the materials were poured to him by “Russian hackers” at the direction of Moscow, said Yury Rogulev, director of the Franklin Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the USA, in an interview with RT. Earlier, the National Committee of the Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against Russia, Trump's headquarters and WikiLeaks, accusing them of breaking into a computer system and leaking electronic correspondence.
“In their opinion, Assange is not an independent figure, but an agent of the Kremlin. However, these accusations are unfounded, they simply conveniently formed into the concept of the Democrats in Trump’s “conspiracy” with Russia. The case of hacking the server of the US Democratic Party is not fully investigated. It is not yet clear whether the data from the server was stolen. Now in the expert community the opinion prevails that they were merged by a specific person, and not at all by hackers. In addition, no one can confirm the traces of this “theft”. The whole story is literally sucked from the finger, “- said Yuri Rogulev.
According to him, Trump does not want to rekindle the situation around his “conspiracy” with Russia and will not take any steps in the situation with Assange. At the same time, he replied that the scandal wasn’t needed by his opponents either.
“Democrats and the American media may use the personality of Assange as an argument in the debate about Russia's“ interference ”in the elections. However, it is also unprofitable for them to unwind this topic now, since Prosecutor General Barr announced the beginning of an investigation into why Trump was the focus of the FBI’s attention during the presidential campaign in the summer of 2016, ”explained Rogulev.
At the same time, he did not rule out that the founder of WikiLeaks would still be charged with more serious charges if the president and the prosecutor general insist on this.
“In US justice, there is a system of pressure on a suspect when he is forced to make a deal: either he gives up someone else, or he takes on some of the blame. Such a mechanism can also be applied to Assange in case of his extradition, ”the expert concluded.