The WikiLeaks founder has been held in a prison outside London for the last five years and fought extradition to the United States. He is expected to return to Australia.
2016 Assange was a very different person than who he was in 2009. The espionage charges relating to the Chelsea Manning leaks were always bogus, but his involvement with the Trump campaign solidified him as a huge asshole in my mind.
Even back then, WikiLeaks was telling trump to claim the election was rigged and stolen. These are not the actions of a whistleblower, and it’s clear he was not a whistleblower (or working with whistleblowers) during this period and likely a mouthpiece for Russia to sow division in the US.
2016 Assange was a very different person than who he was in 2009. The espionage charges relating to the Chelsea Manning leaks were always bogus, but his involvement with the Trump campaign solidified him as a huge asshole in my mind.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/563996442/donald-trump-jr-had-direct-contact-with-wikileaks-during-campaign
Even back then, WikiLeaks was telling trump to claim the election was rigged and stolen. These are not the actions of a whistleblower, and it’s clear he was not a whistleblower (or working with whistleblowers) during this period and likely a mouthpiece for Russia to sow division in the US.
Agreed. Assange is not the good guy in this. No one is in this.