I touched on this before but USA Today has it spelled out:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be punished for embarrassing the DC establishment
“He is our property.” Those celebratory words of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., came on CNN soon after the news of the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
It was a sentiment shared by virtually everyone in Washington from Congress to the intelligence services. Assange committed the unpardonable sins of embarrassing the establishment — from members of Congress to intelligence officials to the news media. And he will now be punished for our sins. Despite having significant constitutional arguments to be made, it is likely that he will be stripped of those defenses and even barred from raising the overall context of his actions in federal court. What could be the most important free speech and free press case in our history could well be reduced to the scope and substance of an unauthorized computer access case.
For years, the public has debated what Assange is: journalist, whistleblower, foreign agent, dupe. The problem is that Assange is first and foremost a publisher
Moreover, he was doing something that is usually heralded in the news media. WikiLeaks disclosed disclosed controversial intelligence and military operations. It later published emails that showed that the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton lied in various statements to the public, including the rigging of the primary for her nomination. No one has argued that any of these emails were false. They were embarrassing. Of course, there is not crime of embarrassing the establishment, but that is merely a technicality.
Assange exposed a bit of the deep state to the public eye - can't have that now can we...
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