
Julian Assange charged in superseding indictment - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged-superseding-indictment
======
nickysielicki
> In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group
> LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of
> targets for LulzSec to hack. With respect to one target, Assange asked the
> LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents,
> databases and pdfs. In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec
> leader that the most impactful release of hacked materials would be from the
> CIA, NSA, or the New York Times. WikiLeaks obtained and published emails
> from a data breach committed against an American intelligence consulting
> company by an “Anonymous” and LulzSec-affiliated hacker. According to that
> hacker, Assange indirectly asked him to spam that victim company again.

This is almost certainly sabu/Hector Monsegur. [1]

This guy put Jeremy Hammond [2] behind bars, and now he's being used to bring
down Julian Freaking Assange. More lives ruined than you can count on one
hand.

I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never published anything that
has been proven false. Not once. Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in
a prison on bullshit charges, and this is just another one.

Stand up for journalists. Real journalists.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Monsegur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Monsegur)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond)

edit: as pointed out below, Assange was moved from solitary confinement in
February.

~~~
thatlongthrow1
>I hope people don't forget that Wikileaks has never once published anything
that has been proven false.

[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760)

He has helped launder edited material from Russian state sponsored hackers in
the past. That is one instance, should I find more?

~~~
raxxorrax
The whole Russian story was a scam. We have documents saying that is was told
to abuse FISA powers. Not that I like the persons it was employed against, but
it is far larger than watergate if we had honest discussion about it.

If you still talk about Russia, you have been fooled immensely and for me it
is beyond comprehension how anyone could earnestly believe that story arc.

You are spreading lies.

~~~
AndyMcConachie
But it worked. Look at how easily we can be manipulated once we're told we're
under attack by a foreign power. Propaganda works.

James Comey knew this just as well as Senator McCarthy did. They didn't even
need to change the protagonist.

~~~
pessimizer
This time the candidates are going to fight over which is more antagonistic to
China. Turns out Russia is a weak country that has very little reach outside
of itself other than the activities of its billionaire oligarchs. China is a
far more believable big bad.

------
AsyncAwait
Whatever your opinion of Assange is, make no mistake that actual criminals he
released info on are still walking free, including war criminals killing
civilians and reporters, because the U.S. government does not want them
prosecuted.

------
henearkr
I feel nausea...

This and the new anti-encryption bills...

I am happy to know the existence such a lot of great American minds,
mathematicians, scientists, visionaries, because, else, with only the kind of
ugly news such as above, my image of US would have been tainted for good.

(*) I'm not American. I'm neutral about not being American, thanks to the
existence of both plus and minus items. By the way of course you can say the
same about pretty much any country.

~~~
xtracto
As someone not from the USA as well I have always chuckled at the "Land of the
free" sentiment that is there (how Americans really believe it when it is the
complete opposite).

Fortunately there are places like Germany where things like CCC.de can exist
and the Chaos Communication Congress can happen.

From my time living in UK, Germany, Mexico (where I am from) and travelling
every 3 months to the USA, my [subjective] appreciation is that Germany is
"freer" that the USA can ever aspire to be.

~~~
ultrarunner
While I’ve met some people who truly assert that statement (land of the free,’
I don’t think too many people are fully convinced (or, indeed, even want to be
‘free’)

------
tomalpha
It’s not hard to work out what it means, but the headline should probably
either be:

“Julian Assange Charged...”

or the original

“Wikileaks Founder Charged...”

The current half-and-half is a little strange (who founded Julian Assange?).

~~~
giarc
I agree, I figured they were charging someone else that helped found the
Julian Assange Foundation or something.

~~~
ficklepickle
My first sleepy-brained thought was that they charged his parents for creating
him.

------
mcv
> _" Since the early days of WikiLeaks, Assange has spoken at hacking
> conferences to tout his own history as a “famous teenage hacker in
> Australia” and to encourage others to hack to obtain information for
> WikiLeaks. In 2009, for instance, Assange told the Hacking At Random
> conference that WikiLeaks had obtained nonpublic documents from the
> Congressional Research Service by exploiting “a small vulnerability” inside
> the document distribution system of the United States Congress, and then
> asserted that “[t]his is what any one of you would find if you were actually
> looking.”"_

I don't remember that detail at all, but I did see him at HAR 2009, at a panel
discussion about censorship and how to fight it. Afterward we set up a
mailinglist for sharing information about censorship-related issues,
especially laws and protests against them. It was never terribly active,
unfortunately.

~~~
DJBunnies
I remember him very carefully offering a distinction of what hacking meant in
terms of him. He describes the old school term, meaning hacking programs
together to make something, not the one meaning to break into/steal.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
In the earlier days he very clearly stated he was a hacker “in the Australian
scene” and name dropped various IRC channels etc. I have no idea if it was
true or not, but I recognised some of the channels mentioned hence it stuck
with me.

------
op03
Feels like the last decade has shown Leaking to the General Public is not very
productive. As in outcomes are poor.

There is always something else lined up every 2 minutes to pull attention away
from the leak.

I am not sure if anyone studies "leaking effectiveness" but I am guessing in
info tsunami conditions larger the leak less impact it has. Cause no one knows
whose network of power is going to get impacted so everyone does nothing.

~~~
lapinot
So now more and more mainstream OS have storage encryption easily enabled,
everyone in tech seems to need to communicate about how much their product is
privacy friendly and you would still say that the last decade of tech leaks
hasn't been very productive? I'm not saying that it changed everything and
that we're now safe, far from that. But at least that topic is now
unavoidable.

~~~
op03
Valid point about technical changes. But most of the big leaks were sold as if
they would lead to social/political/economic changes.

~~~
kerkeslager
Technology doesn't exist in its own bubble isolated from society, politics,
and economy. Changes in mainstream OSs and mainstreaming privacy concerns are
absolutely the result of social, political, and economic change.

Keep in mind the companies involved in these technological changes make up a
huge portion of our economy, and their users affected by their app store
changes, for example, touch every sector. These changes come due to social
pressure--these companies aren't doing this out of the goodness of their
heart. And particularly with regards to Facebook, political pressure is being
placed on them to self-regulate with regard to user data to avoid government
regulation.

I am not accusing you of being anti-leaking (or pro-leaking), but it does
sound like you've fallen for an anti-leaking narrative here.

~~~
op03
I was just wondering about effectiveness of large leaks in a environment of
info overload. Not in any camp...more like a layman passing through :)) I get
your point about it all being interconnected though and thanks for making it.

------
cletus
So Americans love nothing more than to see the world as a collection of
slippery slopes so there'll be the Assange defenders who argue this is an
attack on press freedom but... I urge you to look a little deeper.

There are two major issues here:

1\. Assange actively participated in the acquisition of classified material.
This came up in the Chelsea Manning. Pointing to tools that can be useful.
Prompting action. That sort of thing; and

2\. Assange was playing politics. This should've been clear from Assange's
actions with respect to the DNC emails.

Think about (1) for a second. Imagine the Attorney General had committed a
crime. Proof of that was in a safe in his house. Which of the following is
acceptable conduct in obtaining that information?

\- Breaking into his house to get it;

\- Destroying the safe to get at the contents;

\- Holding him at gunpoint to open the safe;

\- Holding his family hostage until he provides the information;

\- Hiring someone to do any of the above;

\- Someone offers the information to you without you knowing how it came to be
in their possession;

\- Someone notifies you of the information's existence and location. You pay
them to acquire it. Or give them a gun. Or threaten them if they don't.

The point of these examples is to show that:

1\. There is no absolute defense here and certainly not "journalism". The
alternative is robbing banks as an expression of journalistic freedom; and

2\. If you commit a crime, you commit a crime and the authorities can
prosecute you for that.

The other side of this is recent administrations seem to have adopted a
disproportionate response approach to dealing with leaks and whistleblowers,
likely as a deterrent (they hope).

~~~
bluesign
Imagine for a second, someone telling you there is proof in safe, you telling
them to acquire this proof from this safe (which has access), then this person
is caught and later pardoned by potus.

Later they come after you.

I am not from US, but this kinda doesnt look right.

------
moomin
Hang on, did they just accuse Chelsea Manning of attempting to hack computer
systems? Is that a new allegation? To the best of my knowledge she only ever
used access she already had, not attempted privilege escalation.

Correct me if I'm wrong here.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
That was my understanding, as well. I was under the impression that Manning
already had pretty _carte blanche_ access to a lot of stuff, and that was how
she was able to get it in the first place.

Maybe one of the items she provided to Assange was encrypted, and he worked to
break the encryption, without consulting Manning.

~~~
nickysielicki
It's so much worse than this.

Via instant messenger, Manning asked Assange whether Wikileaks could crack
NTLM hashes. Assange said (paraphrasing), "Yeah, we can probably do that."
Manning sent the hashes. Assange said he'd work on cracking them. A few days
later, Manning asked if the hashes had been cracked. Assange replied that
there hadn't been any progress.

End of story. That's a federal crime. No hashes were cracked, let alone sent
back to Manning. No additional access was gained. He simply agreed to accept
the hashes from Manning, which were freely offered.

Maybe he agreed because he didn't want to spook his source. Maybe he never
even started hashcat. We'll never know.

edit:

source:
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/886185-pe-123.html)
(middle of page 6)

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
Ah. Yes. That makes sense.

People like Manning and Snowden expose nastiness, but, at the same time, we
absolutely need to ensure military and espionage secrets (Full disclosure: my
father was in the CIA, but quit on moral grounds -
[http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm](http://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm)).

People die when military secrets get exposed. That's often completely
unintended, but it happens anyway.

My father had a post similar to that held by Valerie Plame. If he had been
exposed (like she was), then all his contacts would have been murdered, along
with, I am sure, folks he worked with legit.

~~~
sitkack
When we have unfallable machinery in place to keep secrets safe, and no
honorable people to leak them what will we have then?

Is the world worse off because of the Pentagon papers?

You bring up Plame, but I think you are doing your readers a disservice in not
citing that she was exposed not by journalist, but by a people in power to
silence the truth that her husband was speaking.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Civil_suit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Civil_suit)

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I'm actually aware of the story. I'm outraged.

My father was quite liberal. You may have missed the part where I mentioned
that he quit the CIA on moral grounds?

It's just that if he had been outed, there's a better than even chance that
_I_ would have been killed, so you might say that I have a right to my
opinion.

~~~
sitkack
I can't argue against what could have happened, all leaks are not bad. Yes,
your timeline would have changed if your father had been killed by a leak.

But if we look at what _did_ happen with Wikileaks esp relative to what
Richard Armitage did to Valerie Plame and the CIA and that no known violence
has occurred against [redacted] folks from the Wikileaks releases.

All leaks and all leakers are not the same. Wikileaks put great effort in
working with journalists to carefully redact information and report the news,
to shine light where it needed shining. And Dick Army outed an agent and her
team and forced it to shut down to harm a political opponent.

If anyone belongs in jail it is Dick Army and not Julian Assange.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
"Nothing bad _did_ happen, so nothing bad _will_ happen." is not an especially
compelling argument.

If we talk specifically about this one instance, with this limited set of
actors, then nothing bad happened, but spilled secrets have killed _a lot_ of
people, throughout history.

Some, it is good (like cracking ENIGMA), and some, it is bad (like that old
H-bomb thingy). Both of those examples are because of dedicated espionage (and
luck). In both of those cases, there were people that believed they were on
the right side of history. There were also absolute scoundrels.

The simple fact of the matter is, it's dangerous to greenlight reckless
transparency. There's probably a number of folks that are ferociously
dedicated to finding out where other folks are, so they can do Very Bad Things
to them. In some cases, we might cheer them on, and in other cases, we might
be horrified at what happens.

One man's "freedom fighter" is another man's "terrorist." There's a number of
folks that regret that the Germans lost WWII. They are absolutely, ferociously
dedicated, and they'd like another crack at it. They would love to know a
whole lot of things. There's also people that would like to change leadership
in Damascus. Some of those folks are ones we'd like to have over for dinner,
and some are ones that'd like to have us for dinner.

It's not simple, and there's very, very few "white hats" in the game. Everyone
is convinced _they_ are the ones wearing the white hat, and anyone who dies is
just "collateral damage."

It's all fine and good, until _we_ become "collateral damage."

For example, I have friends with kids in the military. Some of them are in
clandestine service. They may be doing nasty things, or they may be preventing
others from doing nasty things to us. Chances are better than even, that it is
both (maybe at the same time). I don't want to see my friends have to deal
with their kids' death.

We can't have every person that feels they are in the right simply leaking
stuff. We also need to shine the light on some of the rot that grows in the
dark.

There's no simple solution.

I should add that I have lived in nations run by dictators and thoroughly
despotic governments. By the time I was 11, I had lived in two nations that
experienced brutal, genocidal war. It can get very, very bad. Many of the kids
I played with were likely tortured to death in secret detention centers. I
think that the "dark rot" can be downright evil, and it does need to be
unearthed. I'm not jingoistic, but I am someone that has been shown both sides
of the issues.

------
pell
I'm not a fan of Assange and I think the allegations in Sweden were credible.
But what is currently happening to him is beyond unjust.

~~~
wazoox
They were credible until they were revealed as complete fabrications by no
other than the UN human rights reporter:

[https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...](https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17013)

[https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2018/02/13/news/few_documen...](https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2018/02/13/news/few_documents_many_mysteries_how_our_foia_case_is_unveiling_the_questionable_handling_of_the_julian_assange_case-188758273/)

[https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2020-05-01/why-
julia...](https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2020-05-01/why-julian-
assange-must-urgently-be-freed.html)

~~~
timmytokyo
This is a highly deceptive description of the UN human rights rapporteur's
report. The report claimed nothing about the veracity of the allegations that
led to the Swedish investigation. Instead, it objected to the fact that
Assange was detained without formal charges being made by the Swedish
government.

To complain that this report reveals the allegations as "complete
fabrications" is in itself a complete fabrication, and you ruin your own
credibility by saying it.

~~~
hedora
The human rights rapporteur published an essay describing his experience
investigating the allegations made by Assange’s lawyers. (I don’t have the
link handy. It starts with a few paragraphs explaining that he did his best to
avoid investigating the matter because it seemed like a politically wrought
waste of time.

Among other things, he concluded that the investigation conducted by the
Swedish government violated many of their own standard procedures in
unprecedented ways, and also, at no point did the “accuser” accuse Assange of
a crime or attempt to press charges.

Apparently, during consensual sex, a condom broke (I think there was slightly
more to the story), and she wanted Assange to get an AIDS test. She asked the
police if there was any way to compel him to get one.

That somehow then escalated (against her wishes) to a rape charge and an
extradition battle.

So, “complete fabrication” is a slight exaggeration of the situation (the
“accuser” exists, but didn’t accuse anyone of a crime).

I think the facts more than support the statement that it was a “politically-
motivated, fabricated accusation”.

~~~
timmytokyo
There were two women who went to Swedish authorities and accused Assange of
committing a crime: one who reported that Assange tore his condom
intentionally before ejaculating, and a second who reported that she awoke to
find Assange penetrating her without her consent. You left out the second
woman. In fact it is this second woman whose lawyer requested in 2019 that the
investigation by Swedish prosecutors be resumed [1].

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/13/sweden-
reopens...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/13/sweden-reopens-case-
against-julian-assange)

So no, the allegations were not "revealed as complete fabrications" by the UN
rapporteur's report, and it is more than a mere exaggeration to say they were.

------
mhoad
I think this really kills the idea that Assange was ever a real journalist.
Directing cyber attacks and theft of information is not journalism.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Being a journalist is not an endorsement of character.

You can be a criminal and a journalist, a thief and a journalist, a horrible
person and a journalist.

~~~
strictnein
But how you obtain your information definitely does change whether or not you
should be called a "journalist". If your information is obtained through
blackmail, for instance, you are not a journalist you are an extortionist.

~~~
drak0n1c
Even mainstream Vox [1], NBC [2], and NYT [3] reporters have recently
contacted corporations and individuals threatening to name and shame them if
they do not issue an apology, assist with a story, or add their weight to a
deplatforming/demonetization campaign.

Do those acts of extortion render those individuals and their supporting
editors not-journalists too? I don’t think so. Ethical lapses, deplorable
though they may be, are perfectly compatible with still fulfilling the role of
a profession.

[1] YouTube adpocalypse effort led by Carlos Maza

[2] NBC’s repetitive naming of Google Ads and brands alongside cherry picked
comments on Zero Hedge and The Federalist to delist those competitors.

[3] NYT recent threat to doxx the Scott Alexander blog

------
interestica
"Julian Assange Founder"? Headline needs a fix. Though, it may be speaking to
that cog association that people have formed: 'Assange=wikileaks'....

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
bugger yes indeed, ... apologies. it originally said "wikileaks founder" which
I sloppily editorialized. I should not have bothered with it.

------
tehjoker
Let's not forget that the Obama administration refused to prosecute Assange
because they couldn't find a way to do it that wouldn't criminalize ordinary
journalism (talking to sources, encouraging them to give you more info,
telling them how to stay safe). The current administration is perusing this
case precisely because they would like the power to criminalize investigative
journalism, the only kind that's actually valuable. Without it, everything
that appears in the news is just stenography of state propaganda.

"As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing
Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom" by Glenn Greenwald

[https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-
conclud...](https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded-
prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to-
press-freedom/)

~~~
dashundchen
Also remember Julian Assange promised to turn himself in if Chelsea Manning
was granted clemency. Obama commuted Manning's sentence towards the end of his
second term and Assange immediately backtracked.

[https://thenextweb.com/world/2017/01/18/assange-
backtracks-o...](https://thenextweb.com/world/2017/01/18/assange-backtracks-
on-promise-to-turn-himself-in-upon-mannings-release/)

~~~
tehjoker
That isn't a great look for him, but given he's not a US citizen and the
alleged crimes were not committed in US territory, and the crimes in fact were
the publication of information embarrassing to the government means the US is
claiming global jurisdiction to criminalize press freedoms.

The issues at stake are greater than the dumb things the overconfident and
sometimes assholish Julian Assange says.

------
swalsh
Wow some actual hacker news.

------
paulchap
Maybe I'm just too much of a pessimist, but I think Assange (and others like
him) are naive to assume that bringing leaks to the general public really has
that much of an effect in today's world - people just don't care enough. You
won't find many people actually reading the documents... maybe they notice
those going viral, but that's probably it. People don't associate WikiLeaks
with the idea of transparency, they associate it with scandals. A tabloid
newspaper isn't something the majority of the population respects. WikiLeaks
seems to share that negative image. Most of my (Gen Z) peers don't even know
WikiLeaks exists.

~~~
annadane
What are they meant to do then? Nothing? I'm super confused by your comment

~~~
paulchap
I'm not saying they shouldn't have done what they did. I'm just saying that,
from what I've read from him, Assange totally miscalculated the effect this
would have on the public. The Manning Documents didn't lead to fundamental
changes in society. Neither did leaking US diplomatic cables.

I'm not really criticizing their actions (well, I'm calling them naive, which,
in retrospect, seems like a bad choice of words). If I'm criticizing anyone,
it would be our society in general, which only engages with information in a
very shallow fashion.

------
stormdennis
Given that there's no way countries would consider acceding to an extradition
request for one of their spooks how is it legal to extradite a citizen doing
the same thing the government does?

------
jb775
What this man did was a significant benefit to humanity, but an embarrassment
to the US. Most American leaders probably wouldn't refute that on an
individual level, but would be risking their political careers to openly admit
it.

Dropping charges entirely would send the wrong signal to the world. Hopefully
the UK just holds him indefinitely and treats him with respect. A US trial
would turn into a political shitshow.

------
jb775
> the broadened hacking conspiracy continues to allege that Assange conspired
> with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password hash to a
> classified U.S. Department of Defense computer.

Can you imagine the euphoria in the moment they cracked the hash? Feels like
something out of a Nicolas Cage movie.

------
tdhz77
Wikileaks is just a Russian propaganda unit disguised as wind of change.

~~~
jsf01
Interesting that Russia would publish self incriminating documents and
evidence of their own malfeasance within Ukraine and corruption elsewhere.
Really makes you think.

~~~
three_seagrass
Source? Because the majority of the 'leaks' posted by WL about Russia were
outdated/minimal.

Meanwhile, Julian Assanage has a television show on RT[1], the state-sponsored
media for the Russian government [2], meaning he's literally paid by a Russian
propaganda organization.

[1] [https://www.rt.com/news/456280-julian-assange-rt-
show/](https://www.rt.com/news/456280-julian-assange-rt-show/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Assessments_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_\(TV_network\)#Assessments_and_responses)

~~~
fwklein
RT was just one of a dozen media outlets Assange had offered his show to in
2012. His show was produced completely independent from RT. By the way, Larry
King had a show on RT. Is he a russian stooge now too?

~~~
three_seagrass
Except Julian Assange's show premiered specifically for and on RT[1], and it
would have been weird for RT to produce it as a news network. Larry King
didn't premier on RT and didn't leak emails from Russian state-sponsored
hackers Guccifer 2.0.

You've created an HN account for the sole purpose of astroturfing this thread
to apologize for Assange against Russian allegations - Why is that?

[1] [https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/assange-tv-
pres...](https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/assange-tv-presented-by-
the-kremlin/)

~~~
fwklein
>specifically for

No, it wasn't produced specifically for RT and nowhere does it say so in your
source, but RT were the only one of around 12 media outlets he offered it to
buy the rights of his show, so it did premiere there.

>You've created an HN account for the sole purpose of astroturfing this thread
to apologize for Assange against Russian allegations - Why is that?

I'm not astroturfing. I'm a HN reader since many years but never bothered to
make an account since I'm not knowledgable on most topics here anyways and
just read comments. But since I follow the case of Assange for a long time and
know a lot about it I made an account to correct people.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
It is not unexpected. Annoying, but not unexpected.

Incidentally, since Assange technically helped current president win, I am
surprised he is not getting more lenient treatment. With Hillary I fully
expected a vendetta.

~~~
timmytokyo
Indeed. On the day of the election, Assange and Donald Trump Jr. engaged in a
direct message conversation via Twitter, where Assange stated:

“Hi Don if your father ‘loses’ we think it is much more interesting if he DOES
NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of
rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do."

These are the words of a political actor, not a journalist.

A month after the election, Wikileaks requested an extraordinary favor from
Trump: to ask the Australian government for Assange's appointment as
ambassador to the U.S.

“Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well! In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton
placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go
after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest
that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to [Washington,] DC.”

With requests like these, it becomes clear why Assange was helping Trump win
the election. It was to improve his chances to escape detention in the UK. It
had little to do with exposing the truth.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-
sec...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-
correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/)

------
say_it_as_it_is
Assange helped Trump win the election. Now, the administration that he enabled
is coming for him. What a turn of events.

~~~
three_seagrass
I don't know why you're being downvoted.

Assange leaked the DNC emails, hacked by Russian-controlled Guccifer 2.0, in
weekly bundles as an effort to manipulate news headlines leading up to the
November 2016 election.

------
baby
inb4 people turn on Julian Assange because they think he's the reason Trump
got elected. SMH.

------
thatlongthrow1
Wikileaks used to be something, then Assange decided to filter leaks based on
whatever biases he felt that day. He alienated a lot of his initial supporters
doing this, focusing only on leaking content from "the west." Later fully
engaging with state sponsored hackers to meddle in the US election[1] while
again ignoring any leaks about Russia[2] and friends.

As far as I can tell there is nothing left of Wikileaks, its just Assange now.

[1] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt6BBwBXcAEL-
Fj?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt6BBwBXcAEL-
Fj?format=jpg&name=orig)

>"if you have anything hillary related we (Wikileaks) want it in the next
tweo(sic) days prefable(sic) because the Democratic National Convention is
approaching.."

[2] [https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-
down-l...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-
on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/)

>WikiLeaks declined to publish a wide-ranging trove of documents — at least 68
gigabytes of data — that came from inside the Russian Interior Ministry,
according to partial chat logs reviewed by Foreign Policy.

>“As far as we recall these are already public,” WikiLeaks wrote at the time.

>By June 2016, Assange had threatened to dump files on Clinton that would be
damaging to her campaign prospects. A month later, on July 22, WikiLeaks
published tens of thousands of emails out of the Democratic National Committee
— preceding the massive dumps in October of emails belonging to Clinton
campaign chairman John Podesta.

>In late August 2016, when WikiLeaks’s Clinton disclosures were in full swing,
Assange said he had information on Trump but that it wasn’t worth publishing.
(In a message to FP, WikiLeaks now says the organization “received no original
documents on the campaign that did not turn out to be already public.”)

Weird that data "already being public" didn't stop Wikileaks from forwarding
the content before when it came from Russian backed fronts:

[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/885395248612085760)

>@wikileaks

>Pro-Russia hacker site (or front) "Cyber Berkut" publishes alleged links
between Ukraine and Clinton

~~~
tsimionescu
So not only are Assange and the people who gave him information supposed to
risk their lives to bring these things out to the public, they are also
supposed to do it in an objective balanced manner?

Facts are facts. As long as they are printing true facts, they can only be
doing good, even if they are only printing the truth about one particular
country. Even if they were only printing leaks from a single policital party
in one country (which is not the case), as long as all that they are printing
is true, they are helping much more than they are hurting.

If you know that Russianoor Chinese or whatever else leaks exist, and if you
have enough access to know that they are also true and that WikiLeaks refused
to print them, why don't you print them yourself?

~~~
macspoofing
I don't think that's what OP meant. At one point, I also thought WikiLeaks was
going to be a new type of internet-era news organization pushing for full
transparency, regardless of the target. I was disappointed when it turned out
they were aimed solely at discrediting America and would editorialize and time
their drops for maximum damage. They decided to become that kind of an
organization, and they lost credibility in my and many other people's eyes.

>Facts are facts.

No. Facts are never enough. "The Sun sets in the west" is a true fact ... that
is compatible with both the heliocentric and geocentric models of our solar
system. Facts always need to be contextualized in some narrative or ideology
before they are useful (for a specific purpose). True facts can be used to lie
about the greater context. That's why objectivity and fairness is so important
for news organizations. WikiLeaks is a dishonest organization.

~~~
34679
Is it not possible that Wikileaks decided it was safer for them to report on
the US, given our supposed press freedoms?

~~~
macspoofing
It's possible. Has Wikileaks ever stated as such?

~~~
34679
Has Wikileaks ever stated "they were aimed solely at discrediting America"?

------
tareqak
The current title is “Julian Assange Founder Charged in Superseding
Indictment”. The original title is “WikiLeaks Founder Charged in Superseding
Indictment”. It really seems like someone forgot to remove the word “Founder”.

------
muststopmyths
"wikileaks" missing in the title

------
say_it_as_it_is
I do not see president Biden pardoning Assange

~~~
jessaustin
That's why I voted for Tulsi.

~~~
selimthegrim
Tulsi is on the BJP/VHP payroll and if you think Trump has a thing for Muslim
bans/camps and cozying up to dictators, you ain't seen nothing yet.

~~~
jessaustin
Nobody's perfect. Tulsi was the only presidential candidate to credibly
(because we remember the false promises of W, O, and T) speak about reigning
in our omnicidal war mania.

If you're referring to her "cozying up" to Assad... a) he's also Muslim, b)
[EDIT:] why tell lies? When Tulsi joined the diplomatic mission to Syria, it
was entirely appropriate given her service on the House Armed Services
Committee. She never said anything to support him. She just said she wasn't
afraid to talk with him. Furthermore, the international inspectors who
actually inspected the supposed gas attacks [0] determined they were obvious
false flags. Then the OPCW home office threw out their analyses and just had
bellincat write some bullshit. Of course it's easy to pretend one doesn't know
about this because NYT etc. will never retract their cheerleading for war.

[0] [https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/22/ian-henderson-opcw-
whistl...](https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/22/ian-henderson-opcw-
whistleblower-un-no-chemical-attack-douma-syria/)

------
dontfear
I love how part of the evidence is Julian’s public talks. I do not trust US
Attorneys because they have a habit of lying and twisting facts. The original
indictment against Julian was very short and ridiculous.

Let’s hope those around President Trump encourage him to pardon Julian on
principle. If it’s not him, a future President will pardon him.

------
hootbootscoot
... more shooting the messenger... villains.

------
LockAndLol
The judgement was made long before Assange even set foot in the US. This is
just a show to try and deter other people from exposing their dirty secrets.
If they could get Snowden, he'd be treated in the same manner for exposing
their misdeeds. It's a rigged game.

~~~
empath75
Snowden undoubtedly committed a crime, I don't think even he disputes that.

~~~
LockAndLol
Decades ago it wasn't a crime to own a slave, hit your wife or stop certain
groups from voting. Now it is. Just because what Snowden did (whistleblowing)
was a crime at the time, doesn't mean that it should've been / should be.
Especially if he was given no recourse. IIRC there were others before him who
tried to go through the "legal channels", but got nowhere.

