US tortured Australian journalist Julian Assange for 12 years — and then forced him to plead a felony that the Constitution says he could not have committed

26 June 2024

Lady Liberty weeps

From AP News:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets Wednesday in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that secures his liberty and concludes a drawn-out legal saga that raised divisive questions about press freedom and national security.

The deal required the iconoclastic internet publisher to admit guilt to a single felony count but also permitted him to return to Australia without any time in an American prison.

The judge sentenced him to the five years he’d already spent behind bars in the United Kingdom, fighting extradition to the United States on an Espionage Act indictment that could have carried a lengthy prison sentence in the event of a conviction.

He was holed up for seven years before that in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of satisfaction. The Justice Department, facing a defendant who had already served substantial jail time, was able to resolve — without trial — a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process.

Assange, for his part, signaled a begrudging contentment with the resolution, saying in court that though he believed the Espionage Act contradicted the First Amendment, he accepted the consequences of soliciting classified information from sources for publication.

And so

Fascist America continues with a new legal precedent that says that the United States' perennial war criminality cannot be exposed by the domestic or international press.

So much for the First Amendment.

So much for the Founders' thought that a free press would keep Government accountable for its actions.

The moral? — The US has nothing decent to offer the world, anymore

America is actively funding, arming and militarily assisting a Nazi-run mass murder regime in Ukraine.

Actively funding and arming the genociding Zionist government of Israel.

And actively attacking all Liberty-affirming elements of the Bill of Rights in the United States.

We have, in short, become the planet's worst tyranny-affirming terrorist nation.

The Founders' United States is dead.

PeteFree.com

US tortured Australian journalist Julian Assange for 12 years — and then forced him to plead a felony that the Constitution says he could not have committed