[News:] Assange lawyers to argue U.S. extradition request is political

(London, U.K.) Julian Assange, the imprisoned journalist and publisher, appeared via video-link in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on February 19.

The WikiLeaks founder, 48, has been incarcerated in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, a Category A maximum-security facility, since September after his political asylum was revoked by Ecuador and he was forcibly removed out of its embassy by British police.

On Wednesday, he appeared to confirm his name and date of birth in a case-management hearing. Lawyers outlined the evidence they intend to present as his extradition proceedings set to commence at Woolwich Crown Court on Monday, February 24.

Assange’s lawyers said that they intend to present a statement regarding a meeting between the WikiLeaks founder and former U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Cal) that took place in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2017.

Edward Fitzgerald QC told the court that a statement from Jennifer Robinson, also an Assange barrister, showed that Rohrabacher was prepared to speak to Trump to arrange “a pardon or some other way out if Mr. Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said the evidence is admissible.

Those DNC leaks, a trove of emails released by Wikileaks in 2016, highlighted criminal behaviour by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her chief of staff, John Podesta. They also showed widespread collusion between her campaign and that of the management of the DNC in the run up to the to Democratic primaries — a race which she went on to rig against Bernie Sanders.

Following the WikiLeaks release, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then head of the committee, lost her job and others were sacked, but the Democratic Party has yet to address the impropriety. Instead, they blamed WikiLeaks for colluding with Russian hackers, a discredited and on-going fabrication.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has repeatedly colluded with security and intelligence officials in efforts to depose President Trump; first with the Steele Dossier, then with the Mueller investigation and lastly with the failed impeachment proceedings. All three were sold to highlight the president’s yet unproven collusion with Russians.

By the time the August 2017 meeting with Rohrabacher took place, Assange had already publicly declared that the DNC e-mails had not come from Russia or any state actors. Additionally, the meeting took place several weeks after a technical memo prepared by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) stated that the leaks had not come from a hack, but an internal leak.

That fueled growing evidence that the source of the documents was in fact Seth Rich, a DNC staffer that was murdered a few months earlier.

Assange, whose publication receives highly sensitive information from governments and their military apparatuses, never identifies the sources of the documents he receives. Failure to protect their identities discourages future whistleblowers from providing public-interest information.

In spite of this, Assange heightened the speculation that Rich was the source of the e-mails in a televised interview shortly after the VIPS memo was released. In an angry response to an accusation of “sitting on documents,” he blurted out that whistleblowers suffer greatly for providing Wikileaks with information before referencing the 27-year-old’s death.

A number of close Assange associates have since confirmed to The Watchdog that Rich was in fact the source of the e-mails.

They added that Rich’s death followed a number of similar occurrences for the Wikileaks organisation — both with their sources, but among their staff as well. For example, two of Assange’s closest friends and lawyers, Michael Ratner and John Jones QC, died in sudden and mysterious circumstances, they said. They added that others who have publicly supported WikiLeaks have also been falsely smeared with fake allegations of sexual misconduct as Assange has.

The Australian national became an antagonist of U.S. military interests after he released the Afghan war logs in 2010, a trove of documents that highlighted numerous war crimes and military incompetence. The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel — who jointly published the revelations alongside Wikileaks — were “unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material.”

Assange’s lawyers are expected to argue against his extradition on the grounds it is political. The case continues.

This article was updated to reflect a statement made by Dana Rohrabacher following the hearing.