Tomorrow in the UK a judge will hold a hearing regarding Julian Assange’s extradition to the US. Will President Trump pardon Assange first?
A U.K. judge will rule Monday on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges after weeks of talk about a possible pardon from Donald Trump.
The decision from a London judge will come after President Trump, whose administration brought the charges, issued a plethora of pardons to political allies. And lawyers say the odds of clemency from Trump are better than a judge buying Assange’s arguments that his human rights will be trampled on in America.
“It’s very rare for the magistrates to refuse extradition requests from the U.S.,” said Anthony Hanratty, a lawyer at BDB Pitmans in London, who specializes in extradition cases. “There’s a quite strong presumption that the U.S. will comply with obligations in relation to human rights and legal process.”
Assange, 49, has been in custody or self-imposed exile in London for the better part of a decade. He initially sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 rather than face questioning in a Swedish sexual assault case, which was later dropped. Last year, when he was expelled from the embassy, he faced U.S. charges related to WikiLeaks disclosures.
He’s accused of working with U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to get classified documents from databases containing about 90,000 Afghanistan war-related activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related reports and 250,000 State Department cables.
Many people believe that Assange had rights as a reporter in releasing the documents provided to him by Chelsea Manning and that his actions were protected by laws related to freedom of the press. Some believe Assange is being harassed and indicted because of his actions in releasing the Democrat emails before the 2016 election that were ignored by Big Media but were reported at conservative sites like this one.
The potential crimes uncovered in the emails related to the pay for play Clinton Foundation and election donation fraud were ignored while the Deep State US Justice Department instead focused on the messenger, Assange.
Assange’s wife is asking President Trump to pardon Assange:
Others have joined in as well: