Assange arrested in London; US seeks extradition

by Original Quill Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:29 pm

Julian Assange was arrested in London, after Ecuador, disgusted, give him up. The US has followed-up with a request for extradition, based on his hacking.

USA Today wrote:Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, faces US hacking conspiracy charge

Bart Jansen, Sean Rossman, Doug Stanglin and Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY Published 5:50 a.m. ET April 11, 2019 | Updated 1:23 p.m. ET April 11, 2019

WASHINGTON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Thursday to face a U.S. charge that he conspired to hack military computers after Ecuador's government ended his seven years of self-imposed exile and expelled him from its London embassy.

Police in the United Kingdom dragged Assange from the front door of the embassy Thursday morning. He now faces extradition to the United States.

In an indictment revealed Thursday morning, U.S. authorities say Assange conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal and publish huge troves of classified documents. Prosecutors said Assange at one point tried to help Manning crack a password to access military computers where the information was stored.

Over four months in 2010, Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of secret reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as State Department cables and information about detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Manning turned the records over to WikiLeaks, which passed them to journalists and published them on the internet.

Prosecutors said it was one of the most extensive leaks of classified secrets in U.S. history.

Assange is charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The charge, delivered by a federal grand jury in March 2018 but kept secret until Thursday, carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

The US, in its request for extradition, has abandoned any charges going to the infamous rape charges in Sweden, and any charges going to journalism. It focuses on the conspiracy/theft charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

by Original Quill Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:20 pm

Mr. Trump, advocate and cheerleader for Mr. Assange, has nothing to say.

He claims, now, that he has no knowledge of Wikileaks, despite favorably mentioning Assange and Wikileaks over 100 times in the closing weeks of the campaign.

by Guest Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:20 pm

Trump does a “Sergeant Schultz”

In the month before the November 2016 Presidential election, Donald Trump mentioned Wikileaks (which on October 10, 2016, he professed to “love”) at least 141 times in public. If you care to, you can watch all of those instances here.

“I know nothing about WikiLeaks, it’s not my thing,” he told reporters Thursday. “I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange, I’ve been seeing what’s happened with Assange and that will be a determination I would imagine by the attorney general who is doing an excellent job so he will be making a determination. I know nothing really about him, it’s not my deal in life.”

I wonder if Trump was a fan of “Hogan’s Heroes”?

Assange arrested in London; US seeks extradition Sgt-Schultz2

http://hurryupharry.org/2019/04/11/trump-does-a-sergeant-schultz/

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Assange arrested in London; US seeks extradition

Assange arrested in London; US seeks extradition

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