Tag: Julian Assange

The Story: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, visited in a London prison by a UN human rights lawyer and two medical experts, is reportedly...

The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange following his expulsion from Ecuador’s embassy in London on April 11 sparked debate among journalists about the dangerous precedents his case could set. Are the journalists who won awards reporting leaks Assange published hypocritical if they now support his arrest? Would successfully prosecuting Assange on accusations of a hacking conspiracy that involved helping Chelsea Manning crack passwords to disclose classified material allow the prosecution of journalists for reporting other classified materials leaked to them in the future? The Justice Department’s year-old indictment against Assange, which you can read here, includes an accusation of conduct that could arguably be considered a breach of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics: Assange agreed to help Chelsea Manning “crack” a password to a Defense Department computer. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an advocacy group that provides pro bono legal representation to journalists, weighed in on Assange’s arrest with prescient discernment. “It bears repeating that no one is outside the protection of the First Amendment. The singular allegation that Assange may have attempted to crack a password takes this case out of the ‘easy’ category for press freedom advocates. The government would be mad, reckless — or, worse, actively anti-democratic — to bring a similar case without the password-cracking angle.” Assange’s case raises compelling questions about what the First Amendment protects and what it does not. Cultivating a source, protecting a source’s identity, communicating with a source securely—the indictment describes all of these activities as the ‘manners and means’ of the conspiracy.” Would the Justice Department necessarily prosecute other journalists for these daily news gathering practices if it wins its case against Assange? As the Committee writes, “time will tell how this plays out.”

Good Wednesday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today. _____________________ • In his two years in office, Donald J. Trump has become president of the United Base of America, making little effort to expand his coalition beyond the voters who propelled him to the White House in the first place. While other presidents sought to broaden their public support, Mr. Trump is heading into his re-election campaign sticking with his own tribe. • Mr. Trump vetoed a bipartisan resolution that would have forced an end to American military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, rejecting an appeal by lawmakers to his own deeply rooted instincts to withdraw the United States from bloody foreign conflicts. • The Trump administration took another significant step to discourage migrants from seeking asylum, issuing an order that could keep thousands of them in jail indefinitely while they wait for a resolution of their asylum requests. • There’s a real chance Democrats are headed toward a contested convention in 2020. Some members of the party establishment are wondering whether they should try to impede Senator Bernie Sanders’s candidacy before then. • Now that all the 2020 candidates have filed their first financial records, where does everyone stand? Here’s a visual breakdown of their fund-raising and spending, and here are nine takeaways from the reports.

President Trump turned up the heat on the immigration debate to scalding this week. NPR's Ron Elving joins us. And, you know, Homeland Security officials had been denying this idea was really under consideration right up until the president said he was still thinking about it. ELVING: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned under pressure. And that's a trade-off that the president apparently likes. SIMON: We didn't get the Mueller report this week, redacted or otherwise, but Attorney General Barr still managed to keep his name in the news. So it was amazing to hear him make such statements without having that information. President Trump was once a big fan of Julian Assange's, wasn't he? ELVING: Said he was. SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks so much.

Our Political Fights Are Intense Because We No Longer Agree on the Rules Matthew Walther, writing about Julian Assange in The Week, lists how many Democrats and Republicans changed their minds about Assange depending upon whose secrets he was exposing and concludes: [if Assange exposes Trump’s secrets], we can expect to see both sides revert once more to their circa 2010 defaults. One of the reasons our politics is so contentious and angry is that we can’t agree on what the rules are. But a vocal chunk of Americans don’t really care about what the policies are; they would much rather argue that their side is right. For many people, it depends upon the partisan status of the person accused. For many Americans, when the side they like uses heated rhetoric, it’s speaking truth to power. Is the desire to make more money inherently greedy? For years, the mantra of Bernie Sanders was that the wealthy were driven by an intensely selfish desire: “How many yachts do billionaires need? Boy, Joe Biden’s efforts in the fight about forced busing and desegregation sure are getting a lot of attention these days, aren’t they? At the time, the motivation for spotlighting the teens was clear: to disagree with their often-heated and sometimes factually wrong assertions about gun violence amounted to “attacking children” in the eyes of their pro-gun control allies. Say, who’s the president married to again?

A huge row is brewing after Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested yesterday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has lived for the past seven years. The government of Ecuador revoked his asylum and invited police officers to take him away from its premises in Knightsbridge. He was found guilty of failing to surrender to court. Assange now faces extradition to United States for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, over the leaks of millions of classified government documents. His colleagues at Wikileaks claim he could face the death penalty, but Washington insists that the computer hacking charge against him carries a maximum of five years. Further charges could yet be brought. It sets the scene for a political battle, as while Theresa May has welcomed Assange’s arrest, Jeremy Corbyn says his extradition “for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed”. She invoked the case of Gary McKinnon, who hacked into US computers but whose extradition was blocked on human rights grounds by May in 2012, when the prime minister was home secretary. But Labour’s position could yet change if it becomes clear that Sweden would go on to extradite Assange to the US. However things play out, the case is sure to cause friction within Labour.

FULL REMARKS: While meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House, President Trump answers reporters' questions on his relationship with North Korea, the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Attorney General Bill Barr's testimony that there…

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been found guilty of breaching his bail during an appearance at Westminster Magistrates' Court following his arrest. Assange has also been charged with computer hacking and conspiracy by U.S. authorities. FOX News operates the FOX…

Assange is facing extradition to the U.S. by British authorities following a UK guilty verdict for breaking his bail conditions. Townhall.com politics editor Guy Benson says Julian Assange is not a 'freedom fighter.' #AmericasNewsroom #FoxNews FOX News operates the FOX…

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reacts to the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. #CNN #News