What makes it impossible to believe the DOJ under one outgoing president declined to prosecute a case, and then a new DOJ under a new infamously press-hostile president took it up?
Extradition requests are not platonic and timeless, they are issued by specific people for specific reasons at specific times.
No, people don't get to retroactively make up new excuses as for why this doesn't count.
This is was what always was going to happen. The motivation for the US to extradite him was always clear. And exactly what people predicted was going to happen, did indeed happen.
And the people who predicted otherwise were wrong, and should be made fun of for how wrong that they were, and how misinformed they were to think anything else could have happened.
The Obama administration prosecuted Manning, and would have had an equal amount of reason to prosecute Assange, and the extradition request is exactly what happened at the end of the day.
The only possible situation for me to believe that they were not prospecting Assange would have been if Obama simply pardoned Assange, which did not happen.
> how misinformed they were to think anything else could have happened.
How exactly am I misinformed? What facts am I wrong on? What inconsistency is there if I believe that Obama's DOJ genuinely never intended to charge Assange with anything?
> The Obama administration prosecuted Manning, and would have had an equal amount of reason to prosecute Assange
No, because Manning and Assange did different things. A key claim in Assange's defense in this case is that Manning did all the illegal things!
> The only possible situation for me to believe that they were not prospecting Assange would have been if Obama simply pardoned Assange, which did not happen.
Obama repeatedly stated he would not pardon anyone not convicted of a crime (e.g. in the context of Snowden) and as far as I know held true to this for all 1927 of his pardons.[0] So why would he pardon Assange, who was not even accused of a crime?
> So why would he pardon Assange, who was not even accused of a crime?
What do you mean why? To prevent literally what is happening right now, and to make it impossible for any US government agency to ever prosecute either Assange or Snowden.
Thats why! Because he is subject to an extradition request. All of that could have been prevented, with a pardon.
This is Kafkaesque levels of reasoning here. Literally what was predicted was going to happen, did indeed happen.
And every justification for "Well, why would you pardon someone who is not being arrested", is literally proven wrong, because this is what ended up happening! The current state of Assange is the proof and the reason why everyone who was arguing against a pardon were wrong.
> Obama repeatedly stated he would not pardon anyone not convicted of a crime
Yes, because he wanted those people to be sent to jail. Because of the efforts that he was doing to get them sent to jail. Thats why. Obama could have stopped all this stuff from happening, but he didn't. Thats the evidence.
Extradition requests are not platonic and timeless, they are issued by specific people for specific reasons at specific times.