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Following the 2016 US election, the US intelligence apparatus made it clear that the prosecution of Julian Assange was a top priority.
While it’s clear that President Trump and members of his campaign were fans of WikiLeaks during the 2016 US election – things changed following the publication of the “Vault 7” leaks in March 2017, which consisted of tools used by the CIA to hack into smartphones, computers and internet-connected televisions.
Vice President Mike Pence considered the leak equivalent to “trafficking in national security information,” threatening to “use the full force of the law and resources of the United States to hold all of those to account who were involved.”
Meanwhile, eleven days after the April 2, 2017 election of Ecuador’s new president, Lenin Moreno, then-CIA Director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began using strong language directed at Assange – calling WikiLeaks a “hostile non-state intelligence service.” Shortly thereafter, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that arresting Assange was a “priority.”
Five months later, Pompeo equated WikiLeaks to al-Qaida and the Islamic State – arguing that they “look and feel like very good intelligence organizations,” adding “[W]e are working to take down that threat to the United States.”
To that end, WikiLeaks tweeted on Tuesday a link to a TruthDig article by Gareth Porter, as well as a tweet by the State Department featuring Pompeo meeting with the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, Jose Valencia Amores.
Yesterday: https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1067050192673751040 …
.@SecPompeo greets Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia Amores at the Department of State. @cancilleriaec @usembassy_quito @EmbajadaEcuUSA
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It was a fool’s errand.
On the day Donald Trump was elected his supporters asked him to pardon the founder and frontman of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. They flooded social media demanding Assange be allowed to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London without arrest and extradition to the United States.
Stone silence from Trump and his administration.
A few months before the election, WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of over 30,000 emails and attachments taken from Hillary Clinton’s not-so private email server.
Trump held no aversion to exploiting the emails. He called them the Crooked Hillary emails and said they endangered the national security of the United States.
Democrats called foul, said Assange had colluded with Putin and the Russians.
In April, they filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Russian government, the Trump campaign, and WikiLeaks. They argue there was a widespread conspiracy to swing the 2016 election.
They have zero evidence of this. Evidence is no longer required. Accusations alone now serve to take down leaders and destroy careers.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are no longer of use to Donald Trump.
He dished out pardons to ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and neocon leaker Scooter Libby. Trump mulled other pardons, including a posthumous one for Muhammad Ali to wipe out his draft dodging conviction. It was reported in June Trump insiders are pushing to pardon the junk bond king Michael Milken and reverse his conviction on securities fraud. The Milken pardon is being pushed by Goldman Sachs alumnus and current Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Meanwhile, Julian Assange is left to twist in the wind.
Both Trump’s attorney general and his former CIA director, now secretary of state Mike Pompeo want Assange extradited to the United States where he will face trial and possible execution for espionage.
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