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Biden Faces Growing Pressure to Drop Charges Against Julian Assange

posted by janrinok on Tuesday December 13 2022, @07:34PM   Printer-friendly

fliptop writes:

Biden faces a renewed push, domestically and internationally, to drop charges against Assange, who is languishing in a UK jail:

The Biden administration has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal assaults under Donald Trump.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that "a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy".

But the biggest test of Biden's commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used before for publishing classified information.

[...] Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange's protracted prosecution.

Five major media organizations that relied on his trove of government secrets, including the Guardian and the New York Times, put out an open letter earlier this month saying that his indictment "sets a dangerous precedent" and threatens to undermine the first amendment.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2022, @02:17AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2022, @02:17AM (#1282335)

    I think that Trump is a bit more complicated than many of you would like to believe. He did kill that free trade thing - transpacific something or other. He couldn't monetize that, after all. So, why did he kill it? I'm not really sure why, but the treaty was Un-American as hell.

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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2022, @03:00AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2022, @03:00AM (#1282337)

    I think that Trump is a bit more complicated than many of you would like to believe.

    He obviously seems very complicated to you. To the rest of us, he's pretty simple.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2022, @04:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2022, @04:06AM (#1282340)

      Oh, my kingdom for a +1 Touche mod point. Good sir, this post will have to suffice.

  • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday December 17 2022, @01:39AM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Saturday December 17 2022, @01:39AM (#1282801)

    He did kill that free trade thing - transpacific something or other. He couldn't monetize that, after all. So, why did he kill it? I'm not really sure why, but the treaty was Un-American as hell.

    Trump killed it, which was a very good thing, but immediately started talking about rejoining it with something that protects American intellectual property first. Killing it was a win for consumers and advocates of internet freedom, his ideas on replacing it wanted to allow "American" companies to crack down even more on consumers and internet freedom. Fortunately, he's easily distracted, and those ideas haven't come to fruition yet.