WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet on Wednesday, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.
The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Assange, 52, entering his plea in a U.S. district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.
Assange was accused of receiving and publishing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view and warned of a chilling effect on journalists. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
Assange raised his right fist as he emerged for the plane and his supporters at the Canberra airport cheered from a distance. Dressed in the same suit and tie he wore during his earlier court appearance, he embraced his wife Stella Assange and father John Shipton who were waiting on the tarmac.
Journalists do not pick sides. He had email from the RNC and DNC via Russian government sponsored hacks. He chose to release only DNC emails to the benefit of pro Putin candidate Trump.
Edit word
Edit edit: can’t find any info on RNC hacks parallel to the DNC ones
Could you explain why Russia would give him the RNC emails if they didn’t want them published? I’ve seen this claim go unchallenged many times.
I can’t explain their motives. I can only say WikiLeaks had them but did not release.
Edit: nope can’t say that. Apparently that was just an embolism. Nothing to see here just mopping up my pride.
Typing this into duckduckgo shows me nothing about the them having the RNC emails:
did wikileaks have rnc emails
Not a single link. Please provide the link that says they had them. If you can’t read in between the lines, I’m saying what you said is untrue but gets repeated constantly.
Journalists do and can pick sides. If you only ever report the opinion of the ruling party you’re a spokesperson and no journalist.
The “sides” may be political, moral or ideological. You’re still a journalist.
If this were not the case, Fox News world have been shuttered long ago.
Russia hacked the RNC, not Wikileaks
Well shit. That is what I remember. All my searches: ‘russia hack RNC’, ‘republican hack’ , ‘RNC hack’, etc. were flooded with 2021 results from a different hack. Nothing from WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, Gucifer, 2016 presidential hack, or 2016 Russia interference yielded anything fruitful.
Thank you! At least I feel less crazy.
