Same as the Old Boss, Julian Assange Edition – CounterPunch.org – CounterPunch

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

On February 9, the US Justice Department announced that US President Joe Biden, as in so many other areas, intends to serve Donald Trumps second term when it comes to persecuting heroes guilty of exposing US war crimes and embarrassing American politicians.

As Trumps presidency drew to an end, some activists held out hope that hed pardon political prisoner Julian Assange, whose incarceration at the hands of the Swedish, British, and US governments has, according to the UNs Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, gone on for more than a decade now (between British prisons and de facto house arrest in Ecuadors London embassy). No dice. Trump handed out plenty of pardons to political cronies, but left Assange in stir.

In January, British judge Vanessa Baraitser declined to extradite the founder of WikiLeaks to the US on trumped up (pun intended) espionage charges. Not because the charges are clearly nonsense, though they are. Nor because neither Assanges person or his alleged actions were subject to US jurisdiction, though they werent. She denied the extradition because she (probably correctly) considers Assange a suicide risk if hes handed over.

The Biden regime intends to appeal Baraitsers decision instead of dropping the false charges, firing the prosecutors who filed them, pardoning Assange, and awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, all of which would come to far to less than he deserves.

Bidens attitude is less surprising than Trumps. During the 2016 campaign, Trump praised WikiLeaks for releasing Democratic National Committee emails that detailed the joint campaign between the DNC and Hillary Clintons presidential campaign to ensure that she, and not US Senator Bernie Sanders, received the partys presidential nomination.

Prior to that, WikiLeaks had embarrassed then Secretary of State Clinton with its Cablegate release, which demonstrated that Clinton had ordered US diplomats to spy on UN officials.

And even before that, WikiLeaks had released Collateral Murder, a classified US military video of US troops murdering Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists in Baghdad. The murders took place before Obama became president, but his regime participated in the militarys cover-up of the incident and oversaw its failure to bring the killers to justice.

You can probably see why Joe Biden is less inclined than Donald Trump to let such a criminal walk free. If theres a mystery here, its not why Biden wont do the right thing; its why Trump didnt.

The wheels of justice may turn slowly, but if they grind exceedingly fine the British courts will deny extradition with finality and free Assange, while Biden, Trump, and numerous others will eventually answer to charges of violating US Code, Title 18, Sections 241 and 242 conspiracy against Julian Assanges rights and deprivation of those rights under color of law.

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Same as the Old Boss, Julian Assange Edition - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch