WASHINGTON A coalition of civil liberties and human rights groups urged the Biden administration on Monday to drop efforts to extradite the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain and prosecute him, calling the Trump-era case against him a grave threat to press freedom.

The coalition sent a letter urging a change in course before a Friday deadline for the Justice Department to file a brief in a London court. American prosecutors are due to explain in detail their decision formally lodged on Jan. 19, the last full day of the Trump administration to appeal a ruling blocking their request to extradite Mr. Assange.

The litigation deadline may force the new administration to confront a decision: whether to press on with the Trump-era approach to Mr. Assange, or to instead drop the matter.

Democrats like the new Biden team are no fan of Mr. Assange, whose publication in 2016 of Democratic emails stolen by Russia aided Donald J. Trumps narrow victory over Hillary Clinton. But the charges center instead on his 2010 publication of American military and diplomatic documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, and they raise profound First Amendment issues.

The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinely and that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do, the letter said, adding: News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound public significance.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation organized the letter. Other signers about two dozen groups included the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Project on Government Oversight and Reporters Without Borders.

Most of the charges against Assange concern activities that are no different from those used by investigative journalists around the world every day, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a separate statement. President Biden should avoid setting a terrible precedent by criminalizing key tools of independent journalism that are essential for a healthy democracy.

For now, the Justice Department remains committed to appealing the denial of its request to extradite Mr. Assange, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for its National Security Division.

The deadline to either continue working to extradite Mr. Assange by filing the brief or drop the matter reflects a common legal policy dilemma when a new administration takes over and confronts matters inherited from its predecessor. Newly installed officials face too many issues to make careful decisions on all at once, so some get punted.

But litigation calendars can force early decisions about whether to proceed or shift direction in some cases. It is often easier to stay the course, based on an argument that the issue can be revisited later when there is more time. But once the new administration has started down that path, it owns the policy as a matter of political and bureaucratic reality and so can effectively get locked in.

Complicating matters for making any decision to keep or jettison the Trump-era policy to go after Mr. Assange with criminal charges, the Biden administrations intended leadership team is not yet in place at the Justice Department. The Senate has yet to confirm Mr. Bidens nominee to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland.

In the meantime, the department is being temporarily led by a caretaker career official, Monty Wilkinson, the acting attorney general to whom the letter was addressed.

After Mr. Assange published the documents provided by Ms. Manning in 2010, the Obama administration engaged in extensive deliberations under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. over whether to prosecute Mr. Assange but never charged him with a crime.

By contrast, Ms. Manning, a low-level Army intelligence analyst who downloaded the archives of documents and sent them to WikiLeaks, was convicted at a court-martial trial in 2013 of leaking the documents and sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama commuted most of the remainder of her sentence in 2017.

But law enforcement officials under Mr. Obama shied away from bringing charges against Mr. Assange. They feared that there was no legally meaningful way to distinguish his actions from those of conventional investigative national-security journalism as practiced by mainstream news organizations like The New York Times. The Obama team did not want to create a precedent that could chill or cripple traditional journalism, according to people familiar with its deliberations.

In March 2018, however, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump Justice Department obtained a grand jury indictment against Mr. Assange. It initially sidestepped press freedom issues by narrowly accusing him of participating in a hacking-related criminal conspiracy with Ms. Manning, rather than focusing on his publication of government secrets.

That indictment was unsealed in April 2019, when Mr. Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and arrested. (He had taken refuge there in 2012, initially to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questions about sexual assault accusations, which he has denied. Sweden had rescinded its arrest warrant for Mr. Assange in 2017.)

The Justice Department by then under Attorney General William P. Barr then obtained a superseding indictment expanding the charges against Mr. Assange to include allegations that his journalistic-style activities violated the Espionage Act. A second superseding indictment later added more allegations related to the notion of a hacking conspiracy.

Notably, there is some overlap in personnel from earlier internal debates about the dilemma raised by Mr. Assange. The top national security official in the Trump Justice Department, John C. Demers, remains in place atop its National Security Division for now; the Biden transition asked him to temporarily stay on for continuity purposes even as most other Trump political appointees resigned.

Mr. Demerss predecessor from 2013 to 2016, John Carlin, has returned to the Justice Department and is currently serving as the acting deputy attorney general. Mr. Carlins predecessor, Lisa O. Monaco, who ran the National Security Division from 2011 to 2013, is Mr. Bidens nominee to be deputy attorney general but has not yet been confirmed.

The letter from the rights groups portrayed the Trump-era Justice Departments decision to proceed against Mr. Assange as jeopardizing journalism that is crucial to democracy more broadly, and noted that the Trump administration had positioned itself as an antagonist to the institution of a free and unfettered press in numerous ways.

They added: We are deeply concerned about the way that a precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be leveraged perhaps by a future administration against publishers and journalists of all stripes.

Since the original indictment was unsealed, lawyers for Mr. Assange have fought the extradition request, arguing that the United States was prosecuting him for political reasons.

A British judge in January largely rejected those arguments, holding that he had been charged in good faith. But she denied his extradition anyway citing harsh conditions for security-related prisoners in American jails and the risk that Mr. Assange might be driven to commit suicide. It is that rationale that the brief due on Friday would appeal.

Elian Peltier contributed reporting from London.

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Biden Administration Urged to Drop Julian Assange Case - The New York Times

A woman who accused Julian Assange of sexual assault a decade ago has broken her silence, detailing the alleged attack for the first time in a tell-all book.

Anna Ardin, a church deacon who was previously referred to as Miss A, alleged the WikiLeaks founder tricked her into having sex without a condom in 2010 while staying at her apartment in Sweden.

In the book, called In the Shadow Of Assange: My Testimony, she admits having a crush on Assange and offered him her spare bedroom.

Back in 2010, the WikiLeaks boss was being thrust into the international spotlight as his website revealed secret government cables about the war in Iraq and a video showing the US military killing civilians.

In the book from which details and excerpts have been published by Swedish media Ardin writes that she had considered sleeping with him at the time, in part out of revenge on an ex-partner who she knew would notice if she was successful.

She recalled thinking: It might be a pretty fun thing, and no big deal to score with Julian Assange.

She claims she helped Assange arrange seminars as she worked to make the plan a reality, However, she claims events turned sinister at her apartment one night alleging Assange pushed her down roughly after they agreed to have sex, then sabotaged his condom and coaxed her into have unprotected sex.

She also said the 49-year-old refused to shower during his stay and left turds floating in the toilet.

She wrote that by the time he left, her apartment smelled strongly of unwashed body, of dried-in sweat.

In promoting the book, she told Swedish media: Julian is definitely not a monster. But he crossed my boundaries.

Ardin wrote that she and Assange went to a party the following night and that she continued to let him stay in her apartment.

The Julian who took part in the (party) is totally different from the one who humiliated and abused me the previous evening, Ardin wrote in her book, adding that Assange is in many ways a fantastic person.

Ardin told Swedish media she feels as though she was sexual abused, but admitted others might see the incident as a grey zone.

It feels like society is ready to talk about these grey areas now, she said.

Ardin wrote she had no plans to report Assange to the police but did so after another Swedish woman, known only as Miss W, contacted her a few days after the alleged incident with a similar story.

Miss W claimed that she had been sexually assaulted by Assange who had forcibly penetrated her without a condom, The Timesreported.

Assange has denied all allegations of sexual assault and has accused Ardin of working with the CIA to set him up after he spilled US secrets, a claim she has adamantly denied.

Anne Ramberg, the former head of the Swedish Bar Association, tweeted against Ardin, writing that comments by the aggrieved lady who provided her home and bed to Assange were extremely worrying.

Ms Ramberg, who supports Assanges innocence, said the new book does not tell the full story.

Anyone who has not read the preliminary investigation should do so, she tweeted. To now write a book and make a career of what is described as abuse seems extremely questionable.

Two years after the alleged assault took place, in 2012, Assange hid in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over the charges. He claimed that Sweden could then extradite him to the US where he said he would not face a fair trial over charges linked to WikiLeaks.

He remained at the embassy for seven years until Swedish prosecutors dropped the case in 2019, saying evidence had weakened due to the considerable amount of time that had passed since the alleged assaults.

A British court ruled last month that Assange will not be extradited to the US after a judge found his mental health was so fragile he was likely to kill himself if he is sent overseas to face espionage charges.

But the United States immediately confirmed they will appeal this decision, in a last-ditch attempt to force Assange to face the US justice system.

He is now in Belmarsh Prison in London awaiting the decision.

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Julian Assanges sexual assault accuser speaks of incident for the first time in tell-all book - NEWS.com.au

The prosecution of Julian Assange for charges related to his publications of government documents on the whistleblower website Wikileaks poses a grave threat to press freedom, EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation and other human rights organizations argue. In an open letter published today, we call on President Bidens acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson to halt the prosecution and the threat of extradition.

The majority of the charges against Assange relate to the Espionage Act, a federal law passed in 1917 designed to punish espionage. The laws broad language criminalized those who obtain and/or transmit materials related to the national defense (read the text of the law). While the authors of the law may have intended to keep the scope broad in order to encapsulate a wide range of espionage activities, today that law is being turned against publishers of information that seeks to hold government officials to account for unethical behavior.

As we argue in our letter, prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act raises the specter of prosecuting other journalistic institutions for routine investigative and publishing practices. As we state in our letter, a precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be leveragedperhaps by a future administrationagainst publishers and journalists of all stripes. Both the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act raise serious constitutional concerns, and the selective enforcement of these laws is used to threaten journalists, whistleblowers, and publishers who seek to cast light on government malfeasance.

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530-0001

February 8, 2021

Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson:

We, the undersigned press freedom, civil liberties, and international human rights advocacy organizations, write today to share our profound concern about the ongoing criminal and extradition proceedings relating to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

While our organizations have different perspectives on Mr. Assange and his organization, we share the view that the governments indictment of him poses a grave threat to press freedom both in the United States and abroad. We urge you to drop the appeal of the decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Westminster Magistrates Court to reject the Trump administrations extradition request.

We also urge you to dismiss the underlying indictment. The indictment of Mr. Assange threatens press freedom because much of the conduct described in the indictment is conduct that journalists engage in routinelyand that they must engage in in order to do the work the public needs them to do. Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret. In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices. In addition, some of the charges included in the indictment turn entirely on Mr. Assanges decision to publish classified information. News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound public significance. We appreciate that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting bona fide national security interests, but the proceedings against Mr. Assange jeopardize journalism that is crucial to democracy.

The Trump administration positioned itself as an antagonist to the institution of a free and unfettered press in numerous ways. Its abuse of its prosecutorial powers was among the most disturbing. We are deeply concerned about the way that a precedent created by prosecuting Assange could be leveragedperhaps by a future administrationagainst publishers and journalists of all stripes. Major news organizations share this concern, which is why the announcement of charges against Assange in May 2019 was met with vociferous and nearly universal condemnation from virtually every major American news outlet, even though many of those news outlets have criticized Mr. Assange in the past. It is our understanding that senior officials in the Obama administration shared this concern as well. Former Department of Justice spokesperson Matthew Miller told the Washington Post in 2013, The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists.

It was reportedly the press freedom implications of any prosecution of Mr. Assange that led Attorney General Eric Holders Justice Department to decide against indicting him after considering doing so. It is unfortunately the case that press freedom is under threat globally. Now more than ever, it is crucial that we protect a robust and adversarial presswhat Judge Murray Gurfein in the Pentagon Papers case memorably called a cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous pressin the United States and abroad. With this end in mind, we respectfully urge you to forgo the appeal of Judge Baraitsers ruling, and to dismiss the indictment of Mr. Assange.

Respectfully,

(in alphabetical order)

Access Now

American Civil Liberties Union

Amnesty International - USA

Center for Constitutional Rights

Committee to Protect Journalists

Defending Rights and Dissent

Demand Progress

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Fight for the Future

First Amendment Coalition

Free Press

Freedom of the Press Foundation

Human Rights Watch

Index on Censorship

Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

National Coalition Against Censorship

Open The Government

Partnership for Civil Justice Fund

PEN America

Project on Government Oversight

Reporters Without Borders

Roots Action

The Press Freedom Defense Fund of First Look Institute

Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts

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EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation and 22 Other Press Freedom Organizations Call on Attorney General to Drop Assange Prosecution - EFF

He has been called truth-telling hero, evil and perverted traitor, heroic, trickster, mythical reviled. Robert Manne called him the most consequential Australian of the present time. The new US President has called him a high-tech terrorist.

The protean narratives of Julian Assange, who will be 50 in July, have been brewing since 2010, when his website published The Afghan War Diaries, Iraq War Logs and Collateral Murder, a video showing the US military killing two Reuters employees in Iraq.

Supporters of Julian Assange outside Londons Old Bailey during his extradition hearing.Credit:Leon Neal

December marked 10 years since Assange has been arbitrarily detained in Britain, according to Felicity Ruby and Peter Cronau in their introduction to A Secret Australia a collection of 18 essays that survey the impact WikiLeaks has had on Australias media landscape and the consequences of our governments attraction towards Americas intelligence and military empire.

The potpourri of authors and thinkers includes Julian Burnside, Antony Loewenstein, Scott Ludlam and Helen Razer, who critique the powers opposed to openness and transparency and examine the evidence, not the likelihoods, the probabilities, the suspicions, and assumptions around the subversive, technology-based publishing house.

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What Assange and WikiLeaks said about Australia - Sydney Morning Herald

Julian Assange, the Australian founder of the infamous website WikiLeaks, appeared in a British court in early January to attend a hearing as to whether he would be extradited to the United States. The United States has been rather adamant on his extradition, trial, and near certain conviction for his involvement in publishing American military related documents which violated espionage-related laws. Assange has spent much of his recent life in either prison or in self-imposed confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy thereby making extradition a diplomatic nightmare. Citing the past decades worth of mentally debilitating living situations as well as numerous thoughts of suicide already, Reuters reports that Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the American request for extradition on the grounds that suicide would be more likely than not for Assange given the almost certain nature of his future imprisonment should extradition occur.

Assanges case is a pinnacle example of where freedom of speech and freedom of the press can ride a fine line for governments when the freedom to speech can directly lead to the endangerment of others. For Assange, the publication in question is a 2010 report of American military action that occurred in 2007, where Apache helicopters opened fire in Baghdad killing a dozen people, including two innocent Reuters news staff. Due to the lack of reporting on this event, WikiLeaks and Assange took it upon themselves to make this public, as well as thousands of other classified intelligence documents, thus violating espionage laws and endangering American soldiers.

The polarizing nature of weighing freedom of speech against military intelligence, as is present in the Assange case, has led to inconsistent policy on what to do about Assange. This story began during Barack Obamas presidency to which he determined that America would not seek to prosecute Assange due to the dangerous precedent it could set for freedom of speech and investigative journalism, as reported by Reuters. However, under the Trump administration America has been actively pursuing extradition since 2019, and Judge Baraitsers ruling to not extradite Assange will be appealed by America.

Trumps stance on WikiLeaks appears to be one of the most dangerous parts of this story due to the ever-changing rhetoric about the company. In 2016, Trump praised WikiLeaks for leaking thousands of emails regarding general election opponent Hillary Clinton. This is dangerous when paired with the reality of the active pursuit of Assange juxtaposed to praise of the company; it creates the sentiment of illegal-activity-is-okay-when-it-suits-me, which can arguably encapsulate the whole Trump administration. It will be important to watch as to whether or not the Biden administrations policy returns to Obamas non-prosecution stance.

Assange has been receiving more and more support from various nations saying that his work was essential to freedom of speech, with even Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador offering Assange political asylum which would end the extradition saga should he go to Mexico.

Judge Baraitsers assessment that Assange would be at an even greater risk of suicide should he be extradited to America is correct. The reality of Assanges future is laid out by Reuters where they speculate that a trial would not be fair and would result in Assange being placed in near isolation in a maximum-security prison. This takes a toll on even the strongest of minds let alone the one that has already been living in self-imposed isolation. If it is Assanges life that must be considered first and foremost, then stopping the relentless pursuit of him would be the best step forward. The documents that were published are no longer relevant and no longer pose a threat to American soldiers or other covert operations, as such the precedent set would be that justice will be given under any circumstances even after ten years.

This is a dangerous path to go down for a country that has been built under the supposition of free speech. As such, the best path forward would to be to return to the Obama-era policy where prosecution will not be pursued. Should WikiLeaks violate espionage laws again a better path forward may be to go after the site and not the founder through the court system to ensure legitimacy.

Continued here:
Julian Assange Remains Safe From Extradition After Judge Rules He Is a Suicide Risk - The Organization for World Peace

A decade ago I wrote an article for the Guardian about the fundamental unfairness of the US extradition treaty. Back then, British citizens risked being hauled before American courts over allegations of criminality in the UK. Politicians on the left and right issued condemnations. The US pressed on regardless.

Today, there are different cases, but substantially the same system with the same unaddressed problems.

In 2011 the computer hacker Gary McKinnon was the target. He had broken into US computer systems in search of classified documents about unidentified flying objects. American authorities, unconcerned about his diagnosis with Aspergers syndrome, accused the would-be UFO hunter of intimidation and coercion.

Eventually, the then home secretary Theresa May blocked the extradition. But the government of the day, with its characteristically la carte attitude towards human rights, did not address the fundamental issue: the extradition treaty itself. It remains, and so does the risk to any of us of being plucked from our homes on behalf of the US authorities.

This week it is the turn of the businessman Mike Lynch to try to fend off an extradition attempt. He sold a British company he had founded to the US firm Hewlett-Packard, and the two parties subsequently fell out. A British civil court is already considering the dispute, but the US insists on a criminal case on its soil. Lynch must appear before a judge to argue for permission to remain in his own country.

It would be wrong to say that nothing has changed since 2011. A measure known as the forum bar now exists. This enables courts to stop some extraditions if they decide that a substantial measure of alleged criminal activity took place in the UK, and that it would be in the interests of justice for the extradition to be refused.

However it is no guarantee of success. Yes, the extradition of Julian Assange was recently refused, but on grounds that, were he exposed to what Americans euphemistically call special administrative measures in US prisons, his mental health would deteriorate to the point where he would take his own life.

What are those measures? The court was told about a prisoner barred from associating with other prisoners even outside his cell and from communicating with his lawyer via email. Long periods in solitary confinement are common. Little wonder a British court found that, given Assanges mental health, extradition would be oppressive.

But the forum bar has not dissuaded the US. Its attempts to claim Britons for its justice system are as audacious as ever. We remain unprotected by our own government.

Despite all this, last month a Conservative minister, Chris Philp, rejected the case for making any change at all. Where a grave injustice was threatened, he said, then UK courts could act. With that, the House of Commons shut up shop for the day and MPs went home.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of this debate is its Groundhog Day character. Time after time the British public is shocked by the extradition system, politicians normally implacably opposed to one another agree something must be done, and the treaty endures. Why is that? Assiduous lobbying by the US perhaps, or just timidity?

The lack of reform makes looking back at my decade-old article on this subject rather wearying. Back then I asked why, if a case concerned allegations of criminality in Britain, the US should object to its being tried in the UK. The question remains unanswered.

For now, the best hope is simply that our courts can repulse repeated extraterritorial attempts by the US to forcibly remove British citizens. We should not have to live with the risk of undergoing that ordeal on the say-so of US prosecutors. Ministers must act. It would reflect a sorry political failure if I had to write another piece about an unjust extradition system in 2031.

Read this article:
Britons should not face extradition to the US for alleged crimes on UK soil - The Guardian

In the weeks between the U.S. election and the inaugural, Mexicos president took several actions that seemed surprisingly hostile to the United States. Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador (widely known as AMLO) was one of only three world leaders who did not recognize President Joe Bidens election victory until after the formal Electoral College vote. In December, AMLO oversaw the approval of a new security law that will greatly constrain U.S. anti-drug operations in Mexico. In early January, he offered political asylum to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who faces felony charges in the United States for publishing classified documents.

Then, in mid-January, his government exonerated a Mexican general and former defense minister, Salvador Cienfuegos, arrested in the United States for collaborating with a drug cartel. (This came after the United States agreed to extradite Gen. Cienfuegos in response to a Mexican demand to preserve effective security cooperation. The Mexican government then publicly released the Drug Enforcement Administration evidence against the general, information provided to Mexico in confidence and protected under the bilateral treaty on mutual legal assistance.)

This litany of friction upset cross-border security cooperation and threatens to generate a broader crisis in the relationship. Thats why AMLOs actions set off speculation among Mexico watchers over his motivation. Some argued he was indulging in yanqui-bashing for the sake of domestic politics. Others believed he was signaling his strong preference for the previous U.S. president, Donald Trump, with whom AMLO was notably friendly.

Both explanations are flawed. AMLO has never been reflexively anti-American nor interested in an antagonistic relationship with his northern neighbor. And just because he worked with Trump does not mean he will be opposed to Biden. More likely, AMLO is trying to preemptively set his preferred terms of cooperation with the new U.S. administration.

Understanding Lpez Obradors actions requires first understanding that he is a man on a mission. He has dedicated his career to building a more egalitarian and more prosperous Mexico, under the guidance of a benevolent yet powerful state that pilots the economy and society. Now that he is president, but limited to a single six-year term, he is also in a hurry. He has instituted and enshrined in the constitution a series of social-welfare programs directed at long-neglected sectors of society, and initiated infrastructure projects designed to benefit poorer regions of the country. He has increased regulation on firms while trying to rebuild the dominant position of the state oil company (Pemex) and electricity firm (CFE) to reestablish Mexican energy independence. And he is actively limiting checks and balances on presidential power to ensure the long-term survival of this project. He will not stand for anything that could delay or derail his plans. Since coming to office in 2018, he has pressed forward in the face of a vocal opposition, a global pandemic, and mounting evidence that his plans will fail in the long term.

AMLO is now approaching the Biden administrationwhich has signaled a desire to establish a good working relationship with Mexico even as it promotes clean energy, democracy, and human rights as the pillars of its Latin American policyas another potential domestic impediment. He doesnt want to be disruptive or antagonistic toward Biden on the world stage, but he does want to preemptively push back against resistance the new U.S. president might display to AMLOs domestic policies. Its a signal that, while AMLO desires a constructive relationship with the United States, he will strongly oppose anything emanating from Washington that questions, let alone counters, his domestic agenda.

AMLOs brushbacks certainly dont bode well for U.S.-Mexico relations at the start of the Biden administration. Cooperation on security affairs had already declined under AMLO, with suspicions stoked on both sides. Mexico accused the U.S. DEA of fabricating evidence against Cienfuegos, the Mexican general and former defense secretary, and the U.S. Justice Department accused Mexico of bad faith and threatened to stop sharing information that is crucial to effective operations against organized crime. Collaboration in the fight against crime and violence in Mexico will inevitably suffer in the near term, including efforts to combat a burgeoning traffic in fentanyl which is contributing to a serious public health challenge in the United States.

Yet AMLO has already walked back some of the provocations, signaling that he ultimately would prefer a constructive relationship with the United States. The restrictions on U.S. law enforcement operations in Mexico have been loosened, for example. AMLO has also suggested that U.S. authorities arrested the general on the eve of the election for political reasons, implying that it was an aberration, not representative of U.S. behavior toward Mexico. And AMLO argued that his release of confidential information from a Trump administration investigation should not get in the way of good relations with Biden.

AMLOs objective is to prevent his powerful neighbor from exploiting its advantage to pressure Mexico to alter its domestic policies. For two years now, Mexican relations with the United States have reflected a desire to deny Trump a reason to translate his anti-Mexico rhetoric into anti-Mexico policy. Aware of its great importance to Trump, Mexico willingly modified its migration policies. AMLO deployed the National Guard to prevent Central American migrants from crossing Mexico to get to the United States. He also allowed the United States to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexican border towns for their day in U.S. court. And in exchange, the Trump administration kept quiet as AMLO pursued what he calls Mexicos Fourth Transformationa domestic policy program that has involved the Mexican president weakening democratic institutions, effectively eliminating private investment in the energy sector, contravening Mexican commitments on climate change, and most recently threatening to eliminate institutions dedicated to enforcing freedom of information and anti-trust efforts (which would directly contravene provisions in the United StatesMexicoCanada Agreement trade agreement, or USMCA, the revision of the NAFTA that Mexico signed in 2019).

Given the Biden teams emphasis on democracy, human rights, and climate change, and its stated concern about the treatment of U.S. investors in Mexico, AMLO is expecting greater U.S. pressure to modify elements of AMLOs beloved domestic-policy project. To prevent this, he is returning to his roots as a Mexican nationalist, protecting Mexican sovereignty in a tactical shift to limit U.S. meddling in Mexican affairs.

At the same time, AMLO is fully aware that the deep integration between the two countries economies means that a good working relationship with the United States is also essential to his domestic-policy success. He understands that cross-border integration of supply chains means that the most sophisticated sectors of the Mexican economy cannot operate without a seamless trading relationship. And he knows that this export sector is the engine that will pull Mexico out of its current depression and provide significant tax revenues on which his expansion of the state depends.

In dealing with AMLO, the United States must adhere to an adage about Mexico that is true once again: Mexico is more prone to cooperate when policy differences are expressed quietly, behind closed doors, than when they are aired in public. The Biden administration will need to take AMLOs sensibilities into account as it selects where, when, and how to challenge him. It should also rely heavily on the USMCA. AMLO has proven to be hesitant to take actions that run contrary to the terms of this treaty.

AMLOs dual objectivesthe need for good relations with the United States, but also to constrain the likelihood of U.S. efforts to press Mexico for policy changepoints to a Mexico that will be a prickly partner for the new Biden administration, but not an anti-American antagonist. Dealing with Mexico will be more challenging than it was four years ago, but with deft diplomacy the relationship can be productive.

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What Mexico's AMLO Really Thinks About Biden - Foreign Policy

Ivanka Trump intensively lobbied the former President over his list of pardons and commutations as part of a plan to run for office in the future, a bombshell report reveals.

The report claims Ivanka lobbied her father Donald Trump over some 140 commutations and pardons, and worked closely with a criminal justice reform organisation beloved by Kim Kardashian.

Ivanka plans to use the platform of criminal justice reform, popular in the US, to build herself a political future, the report from Axios claims, citing multiple sources.

"It would not be surprising if it's among the causes she champions in her next chapter," the source said.

Mr Trump's last-minute list of pardons and commutations made headlines, as it was released just 12 hours before the former President left office. He pardoned 73 individuals and commuted the sentences of 70 others.

The list angered some supporters of Mr Trump who'd long campaigned for the pardoning of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. The pair were notably absent from the Presidential pardons.

Among those included were a mix of rappers, white collar criminals, as well as the President's former campaign adviser Steve Bannon. Mr Trump also pardoned Elliott Broidy, a former fundraiser for the Republican party, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws in 2020.

Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner "intensively lobbied" Mr Trump in the days leading up to the announcement, multiple sources claimed.

The former senior White House adviser attended numerous meetings at the White House during the process and took calls from empty offices.

Ivanka was working with non-government organisations including #Cut50 - an advocacy group working to cut incarceration in the US. The organisation is also known because its founder, Jessica Jackson, is mentoring Kim Kardashian in her quest to become a lawyer.

Ms Jackson said she's worked with Ivanka on numerous commutations and non-political pardons.

She said she became the White House's go-to person on the issue.

The people Ivanka is said to have personally lobbied for include:

It follows reports Ivanka is considering a run for Florida governor against Republican senator Marco Rubio. Other reports claim Ivanka could run for Congress in New Jersey - the Trump family also own property in the state.

The senior aide to the former President was often considered a moderating influence on her father - but following the election the President's daughter took on a more aggressive tone, and sparred with her critics online.

In November, the 39-year-old clashed with CNN anchor Jake Tapper after she claimed the US had experienced a fall in emissions.

She hit out at a state investigation into 2017 inauguration funds, calling her own deposition a "politically motivated demonstration of vindictiveness and waste of taxpayer dollars".

She also referred to New York authorities' investigation into Mr Trump's taxes a "fishing expedition" and claimed Mr Trump is being pursued as part of a "vendetta".

Originally published as Ivanka's sneaky role in Trump's pardons

See original here:
Ivanka's sneaky role in Trump's pardons - Morning Bulletin

The human rights community has a lot to celebrate now that Donald Trump is no longer President of the U.S. There are no more bans on travelers from several Muslim countries. Migrant families are no longer separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. There is strong federal action against the climate crisis and rejoining the Paris Accords. There is a more unified and direct coronavirus response that will avert thousands more preventable deaths and return American life to normal faster.

But not everyone is happy.

The outgoing president refused to secure a pardon for WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange. As its name suggests, the site is a database or wiki of leaked documents from various governments and militaries. Since its 2006 founding, the site has generated no shortage of controversy, with opponents slamming the site for publishing classified information and potentially jeopardizing national security. Assange was arrested in April 2019 in London after being evicted from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had been in hiding since 2012. He has been held in British custody since pending possible U.S. extradition; despite being denied earlier this month, the U.S. plans to appeal. If they win, Assange could spend the rest of his life behind bars. Incoming president Joe Biden has also not shown any desire to even consider pardoning the WikiLeaks founder.

But supporters, including press-freedom and human-rights advocates argue the site has exposed hidden government corruption and transparency crises, and that security concerns that arose following a major 2010 leak never significantly materialized.

That year, WikiLeaks published more than 700,000 files showcasing wrongdoings by American troops in the Middle East. The documents revealed hundreds of previously unknown killings of Afghani civilians by U.S. forces as well as the Iraq Wars civilian death toll being much higher than reported. One video even showed U.S. soldiers massacring multiple civilians and two Reuters journalists in 2007. These leaks revealed a shocking lack of transparency and accountability within the American government and especially the military, and they also underscored the countrys overinvolvement in foreign affairs and harmful obsession with war.

More recently, WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of hacked campaign emails from the Democratic National Committee during Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential run. They unraveled very alarming behavior by Committee officials towards then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, including one anti-Semitic comment directed at Sanders, who is Jewish. A few months later, thousands of emails between Clinton and campaign advisor John Podesta were leaked, revealing her hidden infatuation with Wall Street and lack of respect for the working class. The series of leaks, in addition to her suspicious use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, revealed just how untrustworthy Clinton is. Her popularity and chances of electoral victory both plunged in the final weeks of the 2016 race, costing her the election.

The documents sparked fierce backlash since they were obtained with the assistance of the Russian government, but publishing secret information obtained through questionable methods is surprisingly common in modern journalism. In 2014, for example, the Washington Post and Guardian won Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting of classified NSA files leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is facing up to 175 years behind bars for conspiring to hack government computers and espionage but was also not pardoned by Trump.

One of the most high-profile cases of this practice arose when Daniel Ellsberg leaked classified documents from the Pentagon about the Vietnam War that the New York Times then published without its permission. The Pentagon sued the paper, alleging detriment to U.S. national security. But the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 1971 that the Times was allowed to publish the leaks, now known as the Pentagon Papers.

Over the years, Assange, Snowden and WikiLeaks have fought hard for press freedom and limited government. Trumps refusal to pardon this hero should anger everyone who cares about these issues, especially considering his choice to pardon the Blackwater US military contractors, who were responsible for the deaths of several Iraqi civilians, but not the founder of the website that helped bring these atrocities to light. The former presidents hypocritical 11th-hour actions are also indicative of his overall personality: a desire to do what makes himself happy, not what makes his people happy. In an exclusive interview with Sputnik News, journalist and WikiLeaks proponent Kevin Gosztola argued that Trump only supported people who have a few million dollars as opposed to his countrys best interests.

Unfortunately, there is no indication President Biden is considering stepping up to the pardon plate. In 2010, when he was Barack Obamas vice president, he called Assange a hi-tech terrorist. Biden has remained surprisingly mum on the WikiLeaks founder since then, especially during his presidential campaign, and it is hard to imagine him retracting his decade-old disparagement anytime soon. Unfortunately, that means a pardon for Assange is unlikely within the next several years, and the worst-case scenario of U.S. extradition and imprisonment remains probable.

The demise of the Trump administration is great news for human-rights advocates in the U.S. and beyond, considering its numerous failures and violations. Incoming President Biden has pledged to reverse almost all of its wrongdoings, from its infamous Muslim ban to its botched coronavirus response. But his ignorance and implied complicity in the prosecution of a journalist who has helped hold governments and politicians accountable marks a dark moment for global press freedom and significantly stains his pro-rights agenda.

Continued here:
OPINION: Trump failed to pardon Julian Assange is a dark moment for press freedom, limited government advocates - UNCW Seahawk

A U.S. flag attached to a QAnon symbol flies outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

During a childhood of compulsory Catholic masses, hundreds upon hundreds of them, I perfected the art of retreating deep into an imagined world, such that I never did learn the liturgy. But this I remember: The Romans were ridiculous, objects of pity and derision get with the program; this man is magic. Narratively, early doubters existed to make the rest of us feel superior in our belief. Ninety nine uniformed schoolgirls stared at the image of a spiked corpse and ate what we were told was his flesh. It was a beautiful thing to do.

Six days into this new year, ecstatic believers attacked the Capitol. The images from this riot are, in large part, images of unrestrained joy. Followers of QAnon forced their way through, believing that, there, they would receive further instructions from the president. He was going to greet them, affirm them, assume the throne for another four years. Rhapsodic with purpose, his disciples crushed against one another. Ecstasy is always and everywhere the enemy of the state. Brought outside ourselves, we are dangerous to order.

Theres an American positivity about QAnon, a hale resistance to fatalism. QAnon brings good news. The enemy (pedophiles, eaters of babies, the pope) is apparent, and the good guys are winning. There is a plan in place to clear the world of wicked-doing, and an all-powerful man executing that plan. January 6 was meant to be The Storm, a day of reckoning. But when that didnt materialize, Qs faithful regrouped and bounced back. The Joe Biden you see on TV is merely an actor, keeping the peace while strings are pulled backstage. Donald Trump will return to the presidency sometime in March. Positivity, it turns out, is endlessly plastic.Dark to Light, tweeted Ashli Babbitt the day before she died.

QAnon is not a state religion, but it is a religion for which the state has made space.The infiltration of our political infrastructure by evil and secret powers is not a conspiracy, writes someone calling himself SerialBrain2 in the collaborative work, QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening. I would express this thought differently than SerialBrain2 does. That said, we live our lives in the shadow of the largest secret bureaucracy in the history of the world. How large we dont know, as the budgets are classified. There exists, absent any conspiracy at all, a vast alternative geography of agencies and their contractors, staffed by well over 100,000 ordinary Americans who cannot tell their families what it is they do. More than one percent of Americans have security clearance, which suggests less a security state than caste system.

The infiltration of our political infrastructure by secret powers post-9/11 is not a product of paranoia; it is a solid foundation on which to build an enduring set of beliefs about a Satanist pedophilic cabal. The relevance of the NSA in this story cannot be understated, writes one Joe M in Great Awakening. The National Security Agency figures with particular prominence in this theology because it has been particularly aggressive in granting itself godlike powers. It has undertaken illegal mass surveillance of Americans based on justifications so secret even its own lawyers cannot read them; it has repeatedly lied about bulk information collection until leakers or whistleblowers force it to do otherwise. There are, across the bureaucracy, an unknown number of programs so classified few in Congress can be informed of them, and those few with access cannot tell us what they learn. Against such a vast backdrop of unknowing, it is hard for those charged with oversight to know how to even frame an inquiry. In his recent book Dark Mirror, Barton Gellman quotes former Michigan representative Justin Amash: You have to start just spitting off random questions. Does the government have a moon base? Does the government have a talking bear? Does the government have a cyborg army?

Does the government have a talking bear? Is the government run by a cabal of Clintons and Bushes trading in small children? Donald Trump drew attention to an absence and projected upon it an imaginary world. Instead of objecting to the individual crimes of that state, he pointed to the whole structure a secret, parallel government of officials running secret programs with secret money, unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas. Trump supporters could not know what went on at Langley or Fort Meade, so Donald Trump painted a picture for them: A bunch of men no one had elected, whose names no one knows, were conspiring to destroy the man they had chosen to lead them. This was the deep state.

Q is a whistleblower; he would not exist without Edward Snowden. (Q stands for Q clearance, which Q, ostensibly some sort of deep state official, would like us to believe Q has.) Q is the source you conjure when you feel truth is only available via disenchanted insiders. Qs various prophecies are incredibly fucking weird, which doesnt necessarily distance them from other texts to which people turn for spiritual guidance. There is, as one often finds in American abortion politics, a particular focus on the perfect innocent savaged by the selfish cosmopolitan; reading Great Awakening is like reading the story of Julian Assange as narrated by Marquis de Sade. And yet, with repetition, anything becomes mundane. Theres a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, says Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I think we have the president to do it. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! True believers speak of Satanism with the bored fluency of someone selling condos.

Ashli Babbitt made her way into the Capitol, deep within a raging crowd, first through a door on the northwest side of the building, then up the stairs, around the second floor, and, finally, close to the House Chamber where members of Congress lay scared on the floor. There were doors flanked by windows, and behind them an officer with a gun drawn. Men around Babbitt smashed through the windows with the end of a flagpole and a helmet. Wrapped in a Trump flag, she pushed her way to the front of the crowd. A fellow believer hoisted her into space left by the glass. Now shes a martyr to the cause.

Softened by centuries, how does the narrative reveal itself? The state is corrupt, rigged against The People for the benefit of a perverse global oligarchy. A golden-haired leader emerges to save the children of the innocent. At the eleventh hour, he is betrayed by his most loyal subject, and the Storm is delayed. Believers are forced underground. Now they wait, and plan, and wait some more. Hell come again.

By springtime, half a million Americans will be dead. It doesnt matter whether the prophecy is right or the prophecy is wrong. In the negative space around the bright rise of belief, the rest of us argue using words that no longer work. Do you even know how to frame the question? Surrounding the birth of every new theology, forgotten or ridiculed, are the people who watched their neighbors come apart from the world. Dark to Light. We are the dark. Its stifling in here, and full of fear.

The one story you shouldn't miss today, selected byNew York's editors.

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QAnon and the Bright Rise of Belief - New York Magazine