---------- Original message ----------
From: "Kevin J. Johnston" <freedomreport.ca@pb02.
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2021 23:24:12 +0000
Subject: Pat King's BIG ANNOUNCEMENT is Live at 6:30PM Calgary Time on
Saturday, Aug 14
To: motomaniac333@gmail.com
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---------- Original message ----------
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2021 22:10:15 -0300
Subject: YO Patrick King Methinks the ANONYMOUS Troll "General Sands"
using Jullian Assange's name should try telling me something I don't
aleady know N'esy Pas Gordon Kromberg?
To: Julian Assange <julian@julianassange.com>,
gordon.kromberg@usdoj.gov, wikiusticeJulianAssange@gmail.
hussain@theintercept.com, charlesglassbooks@gmail.com
Cc: "Jacques.Poitras@cbc.ca" <Jacques.Poitras@cbc.ca>, djtjr
<djtjr@trumporg.com>, washington field <washington.field@ic.fbi.gov>,
"Boston.Mail" <Boston.Mail@ic.fbi.gov>, jbosnitch
<jbosnitch@gmail.com>, andre <andre@jafaust.com>, "David.Coon"
<David.Coon@gnb.ca>, briangallant10 <briangallant10@gmail.com>,
"Dominic.Cardy" <Dominic.Cardy@gnb.ca>, jesse <jesse@viafoura.com>,
"Armitage, Blair" <Blair.Armitage@sen.parl.gc.ca>, "postur@for.is"
<birgittajoy@gmail.com>, "donjr@email.donjr.com"
<donjr@email.donjr.com>, "erin.otoole" <erin.otoole@parl.gc.ca>,
oldmaison <oldmaison@yahoo.com>, ministryofjustice
<ministryofjustice@gov.ab.ca>, "Kaycee.Madu" <Kaycee.Madu@gov.ab.ca>,
"jcarpay@jccf.ca" <jcarpay@jccf.ca>, "freedomreport.ca"
<freedomreport.ca@gmail.com>, "stefanos.karatopis@gmail.com"
<stefanos.karatopis@gmail.com>
<premier@ontario.ca>, "Frank.McKenna" <Frank.McKenna@td.com>,
votemaxime <votemaxime@gmail.com>, Viva Frei <david@vivafrei.com>,
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"art@streetchurch.ca" <art@streetchurch.ca>,
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"chris.scott@
<chris.scott@
<lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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<sheilagunnreid@gmail.com>, "premier@gov.ab.ca" <premier@gov.ab.ca>,
"Newsroom@globeandmail.com" <Newsroom@globeandmail.com>,
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"blaine.higgs" <blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>, "David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca"
<David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca>, Norman Traversy <traversy.n@gmail.com>,
"pm@pm.gc.ca" <pm@pm.gc.ca>, "Ian.Shugart"
<Ian.Shugart@pco-bcp.gc.ca>, "Kevin.leahy"
<Kevin.leahy@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "themayor@calgary.ca"
<themayor@calgary.ca>, "mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca"
<mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "don.iveson@edmonton.ca"
<don.iveson@edmonton.ca>, "theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<howard.anglin@gmail.com>, "fin.minfinance-financemin.
<fin.minfinance-financemin.
<Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>, "Brenda.Lucki" <Brenda.Lucki@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>,
"barbara.massey" <barbara.massey@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
<derekstorie85@gmail.com>, "Paul.Lynch"
<Paul.Lynch@edmontonpolice.ca>
<Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "martin.gaudet"
<martin.gaudet@fredericton.ca>
<balfour@derbarristers.com>, "ian@mccuaiglaw.ca" <ian@mccuaiglaw.ca>,
cps <cps@calgarypolice.ca>, "proyal@royallaw.ca" <proyal@royallaw.ca>,
motomaniac333 <motomaniac333@gmail.com>, "local@chco.tv"
<local@chco.tv>, "John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca"
<John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca>, "jyjboudreau@gmail.com"
<jyjboudreau@gmail.com>, "Brad Greulich, Executive Secretary"
<memberservices@libertarian.
On 8/13/21, Julian Assange <julian@julianassange.com> wrote:
> I'm not Patrick King. I'm General Sands, owner of
> JulianAssange.com<http://
> MillionMaskMarch.com<http://
http://www.millionmaskmarch.com/
The Truth Will Set You Free
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDWMikBYnsk&t=22s&ab_channel=TMRHProductions
Mordékai - Me V World (Official Music Video)
2 Comments
Copyright © 2021 ANONYMOUS | Signify Dark by WEN Themes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO_56FzK3s8&t=154s&ab_channel=JoeStunner
NOTHING - "Inspector Sands"
Inspector Sands shadowed Julian Assange for a decade from 2010-2020. It was a journey which included Inspector living in Anonomobile, London, Ecuador & Washington, DC. During the film, Inspector accidentally hijacks Anonymous Million Mask March from CIA unbeknownst it was a George Soros operation which morphed from Occupy into Antifa. Inspector was attacked by CIA media, detained thirty times by US Federal agents, stalked by WikiLeaks, crowds of well-meaning but deceived Assange supporters and even MKUltra Frankensteins. Like all real superheroes, Inspector fought off killer mobs, was kidnapped and imprisoned for defending orphans. Inspector was arrested at Assange’s home in the Hampstead cannibal kids case tied to WikiLeaks insider MI5 agent Annie Machon whose landlord is agent Belinda McKenzie who framed Inspector & Sabine McNeill. It’s why Assange leaked spirit cooking for Inspector which then sparked Pizzagate.
True spy thriller? Absolutely, and the plot thickened when US Marshals asked Inspector for assistance at National Press Club in Washington, DC. Fast forward 7 years into the making of The Julian Assange Documentary, and Inspector (whose dad was Fort Belvoir) discovered Assange is a CIA MKUltra victim after seeing he’s completely framed in 9/11. It wasn’t too hard to figure out once the shocked passed knowing the WikiLeaks journalist who worked on all releases Stefania Maurizi’s boss’s boss is CIA MKUltra founder Allen Dulles. Inspector also discovered Assange’s family is not his family but is instead The Family cult known as CIA’s The Finders having tied him to twenty-two child sex slave torture camps. Further, it was Inspector who first revealed Assange’s trial at Old Bailey was conducted by Corporation of London outside UK jurisdiction with Lisa Baraitser’s acting company pretending to be Judge Vanessa.
Looking deeper, Assange came from Occupy which was a Soros op,
and Soros came from Rothschild. Soros is further funded by CIA via
USAID and funds Clintons credited with Assange for sparking Arab Spring
resulting in US Army War College Sisi in charge of Egypt. Same people behind the violence in Catalonia.
WikiLeaks also triggered Osama bin Laden’s 2011 hoax raid which ended
in the deaths of dozens of Navy SEALs. No bin Laden body or trial,
because sadly Intelligence already knew bin Laden died 2001 from kidney
failure which is why Pakistan’s PM was assassinated right after she said
it. Bush funded Assange’s DARPA training. It’s why Assange said 9/11 wasn’t that important anymore.
There was a reason WikiLeaks was not transparent.
WikiLeaks was a CIA front. The masses were fooled. There was a reason
all those whistleblowers found themselves dead or in prison; and, for
some, the punishment of isolation was just an extension of CIA training.
The reason no Intelligence agencies or journalists ever found Sarah
Harrison or Snowden in Moscow Airport is because they weren’t even
there. Snowden was CIA, and 99.95% of everything “he leaked” was never
made public. All those awards for leaking 0.05% of nothing were for
dumping CIA trash. All those stories were made up right down to the
deaths of Aaron Swartz & Marine James Dolan murdered actually
instead for their software program SecureDrop CIA’s Snowden now uses to funnel all mass media secret intake docs to Russia.
Soros funded Snowden & Manning and the trial’s two exclusive reporters Alexa O’Brien & Kevin Gosztola. Now Soros funds US State Department’s foreign service agent Rebecca Vincent at Reporters Without Borders for Assange’s trial. In 100 countries many mainstream and alternative media outlets are run by CIA with Soros. Democracy Now w/ Amy Goodman, Young Turks w/ Cenk Uygur and Pete Santilli are all Soros. Yanis Varoufakis w/ DiEM25: Soros. What about Alex Jones? He says he’s a cannibal. Fact is: Assange leaked “Collateral Murder” video while he was in Washington, DC and then just flew out no problem at all. US Homeland Security’s Blue Cell founded UC Global and guarded Assange the whole time he was in the embassy. We found the Knightsbridge secret tunnel and trap door leading to MI6 under the floor in the skateboarding video.
When you give to Julian Assange, you give to CIA, because all his lawyers are CIA. Like Assange’s chief lawyer CIA asset Baltasar Garzon, Assange’s lawyers were working for CIA including US DoJ’s Mark Summers, Geoffrey Robertson, Edward Fitzgerald, Gareth Peirce who freed bin Laden’s right-hand man, Rothschild’s agent Mark Stephens who holds Assange’s Power of Attorney and Special Agent Joseph Farrell funded by Soros who holds Assange’s surety. Garzon funded by Rothschild’s financial partner Rockefeller is a convicted spy felon who helped CIA ensure Pinochet never stood trial for their child sex slave torture camps in Chile. Even Rockefeller University was busted for 40 years of pedophilia. Garzon is the disbarred judge who worked with CIA to indict bin Laden, and Assange’s chief DC lawyer Barry J. Pollack is the lawyer for US War Court’s Chief Defense Counsel with more access to 9/11 secret docs than even the judge in Guantanamo. Send Assange to Guantanamo? Wouldn’t matter, cuz his lawyer is the lawyer for the guy who runs Guantanamo. Assange was placed on house arrest at a mansion belonging to Vaughan Smith whose dad was UK Queen Secret Messenger Service, and Soros funds Smith’s Frontline Club.
What happened? It was Rothschild. Jacob Rothschild heads Rothschild
dynasty. We call him JR like the asshole in the TV series Dallas. With
his own gold-plated boulevard running through the now former capital of
Israel’s Tel Aviv, he’s the 84-year old Antichrist running CIA’s boss
Mossad. His Genie Energy partner CIA head Robert James Woolsey busted
Assange in 1993 with Clinton. Woolsey also busted Assange’s cohort Kim
Dotcom who had access to all bin Laden’s bank accounts. Woolsey is the guy who runs WikiLeaks
for Rothschild with all the Russian ties. Woolsey is Assange’s CIA
handler and Snowden’s boss. Baraitser is also tied to Woolsey &
Snowden via Alexandre Djouhri, Nicolas & Oliver Sarkozy at Carlyle
Group aka Booze Allen.
Rothschild funds Assange via Tony Tabatznik’s */ *
Bertha Foundation with Robin Hood Holdings where Assange’s lawyer
Jennifer Robinson works. More on her later. Tabatznik is tied to
psychiatric torture camps in South Africa where Stella is from and hung
with Assange’s chief DC lawyer now dead Michael Ratner of Center for
Constitutional rights funded by Soros. Assange also worked with 9/11
liar Donald Trump via Genie’s other partners Ira Greenstein & CIA’s Rupert Murdoch
who had the 9/11 Pentagon attack & Jeffrey Epstein fake dead body
exclusives. That’s how Trump Heights came about. Like Trump, all Genie
partners were busted with Epstein.
CIA’s WikiLeaks was a whistleblower trap. Whistleblower Summit w/ Thomas Drake is run by Clintons, and Assange’s lawyer Amal Clooney raised millions for Clintons. Clooney’s best friend and Assange’s lawyer Jenn Robinson
was the last person journalist Michael Hastings talked to before CIA
blew him up. Jenn’s mentor is AUS High Court Commissioner Judge Michael
Kirby who’s a pedophile convict. Jenn works for CIA’s Garzon, Soros,
Murdoch & Rothschild who holds UK Queen’s purse. Get this: Assange’s
lawyers and friends Helena Kennedy who defends mass murderer
pedophiles, Vivienne Westwood
who had a kid with CIA’s Malcolm McLaren and raised him in porn,
Assange’s fake kid’s godmother M.I.A. (married to Rothschild’s financial
partner NXIVM sex slave cult Bronfman) and Clooney work for, have
sleepovers with and fund UK Royals busted for mass child sex slavery at
Windsor Castle with Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Jimmy Savile
& Peter Nygard. Even Assange’s pals Gaga, Pussy Riot and Pamela
Anderson all friends of spirit cooking’s Marina Abramovic funded by
Rothschild. Eight Rothschilds busted with Epstein
alongside Murdoch, Trump & Clintons, and Woolsey’s pal Rothschild
crony Alan Dershowitz is Trump’s, Assange’s, Epstein’s & Weinstein’s
lawyer. Assange pal Roger Waters hangs w/ Ghislaine Maxwell, and
Rothschild funded her dad Mossad’s Robert Maxwell. Even Murdoch’s kid’s
godmother Nicole Kidman has Satanic rituals at Rothschild’s directed by
Kubrick who hangs with Assange. Are you starting to get the picture?
World Cup bench winner Adil Rami swears Pam was a forced publicity stunt. Assange’s head was pasted onto the lap photo of Pam. There’s a reason it looked like an elf Christmas card and why his thumb was deep purple. Murdoch made Pam. Playboy is a CIA front, and we found that out through Castle Bank when Hollywood couldn’t get busted because of national security. Stella Moris on the other hand isn’t even Stella Moris. She’s Sara Gonzalez Devant tied to US Joint Staff Stephen M. Saideman and many times over pedogate. Saideman is NATO, Council on Foreign Relations, Carlyle Group, Booze Allen, US Army War College, US Navy War College & US National War College. Robert David Steele says every US military base abroad is trafficking children, and those kids are trafficked. She faked pregnancy and portrait photos of Assange with Murdoch and continues to lie about a relationship with Assange. Stella works for CIA’s Garzon. All the people who vouch for Stella belong to CIA, Soros and Murdoch.
Now listen to this, the guy who says he’s Assange’s dad and vouches for Stella is John Shipton, but he never spent any time with Assange as a kid, isn’t on the birth certificate and never made eye contact with Assange during the hearings. No photos of Shipton ever anywhere with Assange, and Shipton acquired ownership of WikiLeaks domains from CIA Chief Nicholas Natsios of Cryptome who WikiLeaks called their godfather. Even Assange’s adoptive father Gavin MacFadyen funded by Soros was CIA MKUltra from Colorado having been institutionalized as a kid working for US Department of Defense.
Assange was born in a CIA MKUltra hospital that was busted for exactly that. His own birth certificate isn’t even signed. The Family cult is CIA’s The Finders. They took orphans, bleached their hair white to make them all look alike on their faked passports, beat them, starved, raped, drugged and then inducted them into CIA. That’s what happened to Assange. Christine Assange is an actress having made no public appearances in eight years; and, according to Assange’s supporters, her Twitter is run by an imposter. Locals say she still lives in the hills where the cult is. No photos of Christine Assange with boy Julian before he was age 39, and the only legal address Assange has is a PO Box at University of Melbourne in Australia where the cult leader had a wing named after him.
Same Melbourne where Clintons were the morning of 9/11 after being blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing to cover up the Whitewater investigation headed by US Rep Dana Rohrabacher who headed the fake bin Laden raid and made the Assange deal with Trump. Same Clintons who were in The White House 1993 WTC bombing to 2001 WTC bombings. Same Melbourne where Vatican Treasurer Cardinal George Pell was busted for decades of mass child rape and then freed. Same place where Amal Clooney’s husband George hung with Assange at Hellfire S&M (painful public sex) Club who just celebrated their 25th anniversary at Royal Melbourne Hotel in the abandoned underground police station where more than half the force walked off disgusted with corruption. Same police who said they worked with Assange in pedophilia but never released the results of that investigation.
We have proof of everything. We want you to hear the story directly from Inspector and not from people who say they’ve talked to her. Assange sent his Press, PR, friends and paparazzi to Inspector. Even Assange’s colleague Michael Moore asked Inspector to work with him, but she told him he’s a Clintoncunt so that was that. WikiLeaks had secret “prolific” conferences about Inspector, and we have every reason to believe Assange leaked the Pop Will Eat Itself love letter referring to Inspector. “A love letter, surely,” Assange said. Inspector wishes to free Assange but with full accountability questioning his ties to 9/11, Rothschild, UK Royals, Soros, Murdoch, Epstein, Trump, Clintons and “The Family” cult as CIA’s “The Finders”. Covering all that up would just be covering up for CIA. You understand.
There are plenty more stories about characters in this documentary ranging from the mole on Lisa Baraitser’s face matching Vanessa Baraitser’s who’s a psychiatrist specializing in inducing stress; WikiLeaks adviser Ben Laurie heading Google Security; FBI informant Cassandra Fairbanks & Glenn Greenwald who got their starts in porn working for Soros; Jeremy Hammond’s dead fake mom & dad busted for pedophilia; now Manning’s dead mom, Pam sticking up for Weinstein, vacationing w/ child sex trafficker Peter Nygard and hanging w/ Murdoch, Epstein & Hollywood pedophiles; Stella’s partner M.C. McGrath tied to Epstein; Assange ignoring Stella the whole time flirting instead w/ other women; Occupy DC head Kevin Zeese’s employee Nichole Caudill’s marriage certificate to Assange w/ her 300 lb husband; Assange dumping Sarah Harrison for having sex w/ Snowden; Jacob Appelbaum’s sex w/ “Risk” filmmaker Laura Poitras; Snowden’s & Thomas Drake’s lawyer Jesselyn Radack claiming Assange’s PR man Trevor FitzGibbon raped her but lies about Assange; Assange pal Siggi’s pedophile offenses who got thrown under the bus to hide Assange’s ties to CIA and CIA’s Anna Ardin & Sofia Wilen. Then there’s the murders of Seth Rich, John Jones, MI6’s Gavin MacFadyen, Arjen Kamphuis and good preacher Adrian Lamo. Tons left to talk about like Daniel Ellsberg as a CIA asset per Douglas Valentine; Assange as a CIA asset per Robert David Steele; Assange’s US Army bodyguard Dan Sommer w/ more ties to US State Dept & US Embassy in Iceland, and Birgitta Jonsdottir partnering w/ Assange enemy & Clinton funders Intercept who took his leaks and doctored them like they did before and again w/ BlueLeaks. There’s even Hillary Clinton bribing Assange for pedophilia involving JR’s son Nat Rothschild, but what’s most important is Rothschild.
Frankly, what we have here is JR running Corporation of London NOT subject
to UK jurisdiction w/ $32T in offshores at London Stock Exchange w/
Bank of England and in Reno. Same outfit behind Pentagon Reservation and
why it’s a reservation. JR runs Top 10 US think tanks, Top 5 AI firms,
partners at Genie with US Treasury Secretaries AND via
institutional investing runs Facebook, Google, YouTube, Amazon,
Microsoft busted w/ Epstein, US private prisons via Vanguard,
Blackstone/BlackRock AND runs The White House via
Genie’s partners Ira Greenstein & Woolsey. Furthermore, JR runs UK
Queen who heads UK, Belmarsh, AUS, CAN, Order of the Garter knighting
even Spain’s king and 6M secret society Freemasons who founded US Gov.
It’s Synagogue of Satan’s Rothschild Zionists pretending to be Jew (Rev.
3:9). Moreover, Rothschild funded both sides of WW1/WW2 & UN
Security Council’s China/Russia/UK/US fake fight just like Republicans v
Democrats fake fight, cuz they’re both run by CIA. Same with Biden,
Bush & Bill Clinton. US is run by CIA run by Mossad run by
Rothschild who’s royalty in China where Trump has his private army with
US Navy SEAL Erik Prince aka Frontier Services, Blackwater, Xe, Academi.
JR’s Genie partner Murdoch’s News Outdoor owned all the billboards in
Russia. 9/11 Cheney? He’s JR’s partner at Genie. The name of the covert
military criminal government intelligence enterprise FBI Chief Ted
Gunderson talked about tied to Satanic rituals you ask? You got it: BAE Systems
formerly British Aerospace run by Rothschild whose employee ran the
largest pedophile ring busted in history tied right into Pentagon. It’s a
reservation, you know.
The questions remaining are these: How
much of Assange’s lies were under CIA MKUltra duress? Will Assange ever
publicly speak again? If so, did they wash his mind like they did all
the other MKUltra victims? Will they replace him with a body double like
the fat guy they wrapped up like a taco they used in the arrest? Will
anybody ever hear Assange say Stella is his lover instead of just taking
CIA’s word for it ? *
What we believe is Julian Assange defected CIA, because otherwise he
would have taken the photos with Pam and Stella instead of them having
to photoshop him into their photos.
STAY TUNED for more …
From: Julian Assange <julian@julianassange.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2021 17:07:43 +0000
Subject: Re: MillionMaskMarch.com & JulianAssange.com All Traffic
Redirect to Patrick King
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
<Frank.McKenna@td.com>, votemaxime <votemaxime@gmail.com>, Viva Frei
<david@vivafrei.com>
Cc: "kingpatrick278@gmail.com" <kingpatrick278@gmail.com>,
"art@streetchurch.ca" <art@streetchurch.ca>,
"martha.oconnor@gov.ab.ca" <martha.oconnor@gov.ab.ca>,
"chris.scott@
<chris.scott@
<lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com>, "lmichelin@bprda.wpengine.com"
<lmichelin@bprda.wpengine.com>, sheilagunnreid
<sheilagunnreid@gmail.com>, "premier@gov.ab.ca" <premier@gov.ab.ca>,
premier <premier@ontario.ca>, "Newsroom@globeandmail.com"
<Newsroom@globeandmail.com>, "gertjan@shaw.ca" <gertjan@shaw.ca>, mcu
<mcu@justice.gc.ca>, "blaine.higgs" <blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>,
"David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca" <David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca>, Norman Traversy
<traversy.n@gmail.com>, "pm@pm.gc.ca" <pm@pm.gc.ca>, "Ian.Shugart"
<Ian.Shugart@pco-bcp.gc.ca>, "Kevin.leahy"
<Kevin.leahy@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "themayor@calgary.ca"
<themayor@calgary.ca>, "mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca"
<mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "don.iveson@edmonton.ca"
<don.iveson@edmonton.ca>, "freedomreport.ca@gmail.com"
<freedomreport.ca@gmail.com>, "theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<howard.anglin@gmail.com>, "Cc: motomaniac333"
<motomaniac333@gmail.com>, "fin.minfinance-financemin.
<fin.minfinance-financemin.
<Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>, "Brenda.Lucki" <Brenda.Lucki@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>,
"barbara.massey" <barbara.massey@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>
JulianAssange.com<http://
MillionMaskMarch.com<http://
JulianPaulAssange.com<http://
redirecting to Patrick King. We're just not sure why he supports
Donald Trump who continues to lie about the 9/11 attacks.
General Sands
________________________________
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Sent: Thursday, August 5, 2021 12:51 PM
To: Julian Assange <julian@julianassange.com>; Frank.McKenna
<Frank.McKenna@td.com>; votemaxime <votemaxime@gmail.com>; Viva Frei
<david@vivafrei.com>
Cc: kingpatrick278@gmail.com <kingpatrick278@gmail.com>;
art@streetchurch.ca <art@streetchurch.ca>; martha.oconnor@gov.ab.ca
<martha.oconnor@gov.ab.ca>; chris.scott@
<chris.scott@
<lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com>; lmichelin@bprda.wpengine.com
<lmichelin@bprda.wpengine.com>; sheilagunnreid
<sheilagunnreid@gmail.com>; premier@gov.ab.ca <premier@gov.ab.ca>;
premier <premier@ontario.ca>; Newsroom@globeandmail.com
<Newsroom@globeandmail.com>; gertjan@shaw.ca <gertjan@shaw.ca>; mcu
<mcu@justice.gc.ca>; blaine.higgs <blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>;
David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca <David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca>; Norman Traversy
<traversy.n@gmail.com>; pm@pm.gc.ca <pm@pm.gc.ca>; Ian.Shugart
<Ian.Shugart@pco-bcp.gc.ca>; Kevin.leahy <Kevin.leahy@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>;
themayor@calgary.ca <themayor@calgary.ca>; mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
<mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>; don.iveson@edmonton.ca
<don.iveson@edmonton.ca>; freedomreport.ca@gmail.com
<freedomreport.ca@gmail.com>; theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<howard.anglin@gmail.com>; Cc: motomaniac333
<motomaniac333@gmail.com>; fin.minfinance-financemin.fin@
<fin.minfinance-financemin.
<Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>; Brenda.Lucki <Brenda.Lucki@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>;
barbara.massey <barbara.massey@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>
Subject: Re: MillionMaskMarch.com & JulianAssange.com All Traffic
Redirect to Patrick King
Some of the emails I get are Too Too Funny
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Julian Assange <julian@julianassange.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2021 14:29:17 +0000
Subject: MillionMaskMarch.com & JulianAssange.com All Traffic Redirect
to Patrick King
To: "kingpatrick278@gmail.com" <kingpatrick278@gmail.com>
Cc: kingpatrick278 <kingpatrick278@gmail.com>, "art@streetchurch.ca"
<art@streetchurch.ca>, "martha.oconnor@gov.ab.ca"
<martha.oconnor@gov.ab.ca>, "chris.scott@
<chris.scott@
<lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com>, "lmichelin@bprda.wpengine.com"
<lmichelin@bprda.wpengine.com>, sheilagunnreid
<sheilagunnreid@gmail.com>, "premier@gov.ab.ca" <premier@gov.ab.ca>,
premier <premier@ontario.ca>, "Newsroom@globeandmail.com"
<Newsroom@globeandmail.com>, "gertjan@shaw.ca" <gertjan@shaw.ca>, mcu
<mcu@justice.gc.ca>, "blaine.higgs" <blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>,
"David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca" <David.Lametti@parl.gc.ca>, Norman Traversy
<traversy.n@gmail.com>, "pm@pm.gc.ca" <pm@pm.gc.ca>, "Ian.Shugart"
<Ian.Shugart@pco-bcp.gc.ca>, "Kevin.leahy"
<Kevin.leahy@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "themayor@calgary.ca"
<themayor@calgary.ca>, "mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca"
<mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "don.iveson@edmonton.ca"
<don.iveson@edmonton.ca>, "freedomreport.ca@gmail.com"
<freedomreport.ca@gmail.com>, "theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<theangryalbertan@protonmail.
<howard.anglin@gmail.com>, "Cc: motomaniac333"
<motomaniac333@gmail.com>, "fin.minfinance-financemin.
<fin.minfinance-financemin.
<Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>, "Brenda.Lucki" <Brenda.Lucki@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>,
"barbara.massey" <barbara.massey@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>,
"david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
From: Julian Assange
Sent: Thursday, August 5, 2021 9:56 AM
To: kingpatrick278@gmail.com <kingpatrick278@gmail.com>
Subject: JulianAssange.com & MillionMaskMarch.com All Traffic Redirect
Testing Patrick King's email for mass redirect:
JulianAssange.com<http://
JulianPaulAssange.com<http://
MillionMaskMarch.com<http://
Thank you,
General Sands
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Donald Trump Jr." <donjr@email.donjr.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2021 15:58:10 +0000
Subject: Get a copy of this beautiful American painting
To: david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
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Dear Friend, |
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https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged-superseding-indictment
WikiLeaks Founder Charged in Superseding Indictment
New Allegations Assert Assange Conspired With “Anonymous” Affiliated Hackers, Among Others
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A federal grand jury returned a second superseding indictment today charging Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.
The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019. It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged. According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.
Since the early days of WikiLeaks, Assange has spoken at hacking conferences to tout his own history as a “famous teenage hacker in Australia” and to encourage others to hack to obtain information for WikiLeaks. In 2009, for instance, Assange told the Hacking At Random conference that WikiLeaks had obtained nonpublic documents from the Congressional Research Service by exploiting “a small vulnerability” inside the document distribution system of the United States Congress, and then asserted that “[t]his is what any one of you would find if you were actually looking.”
In 2010, Assange gained unauthorized access to a government computer system of a NATO country. In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack. With respect to one target, Assange asked the LulzSec leader to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs. In another communication, Assange told the LulzSec leader that the most impactful release of hacked materials would be from the CIA, NSA, or the New York Times. WikiLeaks obtained and published emails from a data breach committed against an American intelligence consulting company by an “Anonymous” and LulzSec-affiliated hacker. According to that hacker, Assange indirectly asked him to spam that victim company again.
In addition, the broadened hacking conspiracy continues to allege that Assange conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password hash to a classified U.S. Department of Defense computer.
An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Assange is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each count except for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, for which he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and Stacey R. Moy, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office Counterintelligence Division, made the announcement. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Doherty-McCormick, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kellen S. Dwyer, Thomas W. Traxler, Alexander P. Berrang, and Gordon D. Kromberg, and Trial Attorneys Adam L. Small and Nicholas O. Hunter of the Justice Department’s National Security Division are prosecuting the case.
Assange is currently detained in the United Kingdom on an extradition request from the United States. Assange’s extradition to the United States is being handled by the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and UK authorities, including the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales.
A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information are located on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 1:18-cr-111.
https://challengepower.info/the_actors/usgov/doj/gordon_d._kromberg
Gordon D. Kromberg
Prosecuting Assange case as part of the Grand Jury in Alexandria, Virginia.
bio: “Mr. Gordon Kromberg is an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he has served since 1991. He has been the lead prosecutor in many cases of defendants attempting to support Al Qaeda and ISIS, and other terrorist groups. After 9/11, Gordon served on the United States Justice Department’s Terrorist Financing Task Force, and helped coordinate a nationwide enforcement effort to combat terrorist financing. Gordon is a graduate of Princeton University and the New York University School of Law, and a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps.”
From Craig Murray:
When the best thing your most supportive colleague can say about you, is that out-and-out Islamophobes do enjoy temporary popularity in the immediate aftermath of a terror attack, then there is a real problem. There is a real problem with Gordon Kromberg, and Lewis may very well come to regret resting the weight of the credibility of his entire case upon such a shoogly peg.
Washington Post: "Relentless Terrorism Prosecutor Faces Accusations of His Own":
When Al-Arian's Tampa attorney, Jack Fernandez, asked Kromberg to delay the defendant's transfer 30 days until after the Islamic religious holidays of Ramadan, Kromberg responded: “If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can't do is eat before sunset. I believe Mr. Al-Arian's request is part of the attempted Islamization of the American Justice System. I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian's grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”
“He's a loose cannon,” said an expert in legal ethics who reviewed court documents in the Arian case. “If I were the Justice Department, I wouldn't want him on the front lines of these highly visible, highly contentious prosecutions.”
Washington Post:Mischaracterizing My Son in 'Va. Jihad Case':
Mr. Kromberg's parting thrust was to link the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon with Masaud's trip to Pakistan more than a week later, knowing that my son had planned his trip since July 2001 and that nothing linked him to that tragedy. That statement was the lowest blow of all, but the court did not chastise him for it. I assume Mr. Kromberg said it for the benefit of reporters in the courtroom, so that it would be printed.
Wall Street Journal: Introducing Gordon Kromberg, a Federal Prosecutor on the Hot Seat :
Through a spokesman, Kromberg declined to comment to the WaPo. But according to the story, Kromberg's critics say he has joked about torture, improperly confronted another suspect in public and has lamented “the Islamization of the American justice system.”
Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America By Joel J. Miller:
Speaking at a 1999 conference on asset forfeiture reform hosted by the Cato Institute, Gordon Kromberg, assistant US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, defended civil forfeiture precisely on the basis that it can be used to punish people when a prosecuter cannot muster enough evidence to prove guilt.
Muslim Public Affairs Council: Justice For All?:
Lawyers are generally taught that deliberately using race, religion or ethnicity in prosecuting a defendant violates Equal Protection rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. In light of his repeated anti-Arab and anti-Muslim statements, it seems that Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg needs to be reminded of this fundamental principle.
Gordon Kromberg, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has made repugnant statements about Muslim women, has suggested to a jury that Muslims believe it's religiously acceptable to lie, and has promoted the notion that Muslims are killers due to their nature. MPAC today filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility calling on the Department of Justice to review Mr. Kromberg's statements and to investigate the discriminatory remarks made by him about Arabs and Muslims.
Representing the U.S. government, Kromberg argued before a district judge last fall that Dr. Sami Al-Arian should not be released in to his daughter's custody because, “in this particular culture,” a woman could not prevent her father from fleeing.
The motion released by Dr. Al-Arian's attorneys calling in to question the bias of Prosecutor Kromberg states that Kromberg joked about the torture of a Virginia man name of Ahmed Abu Ali, who was then being held in Saudi Arabia. The suspect's lawyer, Salim Ali, said that when Mr. Kromberg was asked about Abu Ali's prospects for returning to America, Kromberg smirked and stated “He's no good for us here. He has no fingernails left.” Kromberg later stated in a declaration that he had no recollection of making the statement.
New York The Sun: A Prosecutor Is Called 'Relentless':
“Kromberg is absolutely relentless in his pursuit of everything that could be pursued in the way of forfeiture or prosecutions in this area. He's just indefatigable, relentless, tireless,” Mr. FitzGerald said. “If you say he's doing the country's work to fight terrorism, that's good, he's a good fighter, but a lot of people say it's overkill, he doesn't listen to reasonable arguments. Everything is black until somebody takes him to court to prove it's white.”
While most observers are wondering what is behind the continued pursuit of a case that was all but concluded, recent revelations have pointed in the direction of one particular individual: a federal prosecutor who has made no secret of his anti-Muslim and anti-Arab beliefs. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg’s past actions and statements reveal a disturbing trend that supports the view that Dr. Al-Arian is being punished for his political activism on behalf of the Palestinian people.
The ghost lawyers of Julian Assange - Long version
- 23 août 2019
- Par basicblog
- Édition : Libérez Assange. Ethiques et Medias
Ghosts, ghosts, we said ghosts? We exaggerate, a little. There exists a one, real for sure, who even enjoys cameras. The Australian Jennifer Robinson fills in the space since the kidnapping of Assange at the Embassy of Ecuador; well, the politicly correct London lawyer would rather say "arrest". That is better option to get the doors of the NBC or the BBC wide open. Clean on her, indeed she is, in front of the photographer of dressmaker Johanna Johnson here in 2014, while defending Julian Assange for three or four years.
Nikoo Hamzavi shoots of Jennifer robinson. Photos assembled for our article. © Nikoo Hamzavi As to whether she shines equally throught her barrister
battles, the answer is less clear. Her quality as a human rights lawyer
is being built when she visits the New West Papuan separatist Benny
Wenda accused of leading a bloody rebellion. He escaped from prison in
2002 and in 2003 he obtained political asylum in Great Britain. At
conferences, Jennifer Robinson leaves implicitely the impression that he
is the main separatist Papuan, appearing innocuous with his traditional
dressing, fighting against Indonesian military occupation. The reality
is that his radical separatism is far to be unanimous, and the exiled
papuan is gradually cut off from the reality of his territory. In 2008,
the local blog West Papua Free asked Benny Wenda "to stop telling lies to English people".
Multiple testimonies warn about the hatred climate that Benny Wenda
exports from the depths of his exile, while the local situation was said
to be progressively improving. In 2013, he launched the Free West Papua Campaign
with the aim to trigger a referendum for independence, a campaign
backed by Andrew Smith, an active Secretary of State during Tony Blair
ruling period. In 2017, he creates the United Liberation Movement for West Papua,
and claims that 1.8 million Papuans signed a "secret petition" for
independence. Such effectiveness in a hostile environment should inspire
French citizens who support the yellow vests demand for a referendum
against privatization of the Paris Airports network (4,7 million
signatures are constitutionally required). Benny Wenda finally creates
the West Papua Army (WPA), financed by the hell knows who in this area
deemed poor, although very rich in mineral resources. WPA is accused by
English citizens of enlisting children in war, as well as local
newspapers.
For not less than 16 years, Jennifer Robinson has been portraying the nice papoo Benny Wenda against the wicked Indonesia. Geopolitics is simple as a mediatical enterprise.
For the rest, traces of her arguments coming out of trial audiences are hardly heard of. In the rare transcripts of the Assange case after his arrestation, the chosen words are banal : "[He is] in a health service in the prison of Belmarsh because of his poor health" . The very poor reporting of the media and the closed sessions held hearings only partially explain this observation. But the lawyer gives little convincing details of what happened or was said, and by whom, during the hearings. On her account @suigenerisjen, the state of health of Julian Assange is left uncommented since July, while his health is deteriorating. That is quite annoying, while the hottest of the on-going scandal lies precisely here : authorities imposing on a forced march the judgment of a man who has been made incapable of defending himself by the very authorities who judge him. No sign of indignation appears in the few tweets where she writes her own words ; the defense of "journalism" remains her main preoccupation. When listening to the media talks of the lawyer, what remains in our minds from Julian Assange a disembodied abstraction, a symbol for freedom. And the political side is not brighter : among the repetitive free speech matters, Jennifer Johnson passes on the denial expressed by the United States regarding the diagnosis of psychological torture asserted by the UN fellow Niels Melzer. Paralellizing too many tasks ?
Screen copy, Jennifer Robinson tweet © basicblog
Assange's supporters against the Wailing Wall
On
May 30, 2019, Julian Assange has spent six weeks in Belmarsh prison.
His health state prevents him to appear at the Westminster Court, which
sentences him to 50 weeks for « violating the conditions of his
provisional release » by taking refuge at the Embassy of Ecuador. The
press suggests that the experienced lawyer Gareth Peirce is present at
the hearing. The woman reknowned for having defended many Irish people
wrongly accused of being IRA bomb attacks responsible (cf note 2),
declares that Julian Assange « is not very well » . The same day,
Swedish lawyer Per Samuelson (assisting to the hearing ?) is said to
have spoken to Assange ; Samuelson is echoed by BBC news: « ... it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him » ; the channel relays an anonymous WikiLeaks « spokesperson » expressing « serious concerns
» about Assange's health. At the beginning of August, the water flowed
under the bridges since the UN fellow Niels Melzer recognized the
« psychological torture » undergone by Assange. The highly engaged
Australian journalist John Pilger tweeted: « Treated worse than a murderer » ; he « saw him in Belmarsh » and suggests not to « forget Julian #Assange » .
In
the courts, the media, on twitter often, pours a litany of
uninterrupted laments; parallel flows that never intercept, such as a
rain of tears on a night without wind. Lawyers do not seem to engage in
frontal legal proceedings related to the health of Assange, they do not
shout out collectively in public places how unacceptable this is. The
indignation is dampered through the thick walls. Everything stays
smooth, the critical spirit about the lawyers action and communication
is locked inside the relique chest.
Journalist John Pilger's twitt. © Screen copy But citizens have a scoop. In court, there are procedures.
Recourse. Jurisprudence. I swear, I swear ! There are even procedural
defects; illegal acts committed by prosecutors, Parquet, Crown
Prosecution Services. We would never dare thinking that the Daughty Street Chambers,
a venerable human rights institution, an unfathomable reserve of
lawyers who delivered to Assange Geoffrey Robertson, one of its
founders, Jennifer Robinson, Amal Clooney, Gareth Peirce, John Jones, do
not know enough international law, national laws, jurisprudence? The
barristors of Daughty Street Chambers and their international
reinforcement would have forgotten the dictator, criminal and torturer
Augusto Pinochet, escaping prison for reasons .... of health condition ?
Remember, it was happening in a well-known western city ; in an island
separated from a continent by an arm of the sea; a continent that
contains Sweden. Bingo! It was in London, in the year 2000.
Barely 20 years old, a bygone era? Gosh how fast vanishes the new millennium.
Is this a defense ? - No sire, it is an ominous specter.
On
July 18, the Associated Press or The Independent, the New York Times,
or Yahoo News who knows, publish a repeating title: « Julian Assange
drops appeal » against 50 weeks jail term for skipping bail and hiding
in the Ecuadorian embassy . WikiLeaks’publisher Kristin Hrafnsson
confirms two days later. It is lawyer’s duty to announce and justify
such a decision, but they let the job be done and they remain silent in
the meantime. But overall this is non-sense. How can Assange drop appeal
if, as everyone testifies, his mental and physical health deteriorates
day by day, preventing him from attending the hearings, and if prison
deprives him of the necessary conditions for him to exchange serenely
with his lawyers and relatives ? He is incapable of deciding anything by
himself nor in association, and his defense lets him claim that he
« drops the appeal » ? No lawyer has confirmed or denied. They
therefore all confirm by default something in total contradiction with
their own statements. Worse : they do not justify nor explain the
decision. They do not question the existence of the letter in which
Julian Assange would apologize to the judges, nor do they question the
validity of a letter written in an off control mental situation, since
he is incapable to « conduct a normal conversation » , words
pronounced in court by lawyer Per Samuelson. But if Assange apologizes,
he is guilty... guilty of what ?! The potential impact on public opinion
is disastrous, and lawyers are cooking behind the scenes. Journalists
do not raise sparkling inconsistencies.
Web search. Julian Assange drops appeal against 50 weeks jail sentence. © Screen copies Besides Jennifer Robinson's lenient words on freedom of
expression and besides snippets of sentences that lawyers allow to
dilute in the press, lies a ghostly defense. First we have just a vague
idea of who is present at jurisdictional hearings and of what is
discussed inside, second we simply don’t know who precisely constitutes
the active team of lawyers paid by WikiLeaks today. The French lawyer
Juan Branco participated to the legal circle around Julian Assange.
Unfortunately, neither in his interviews, nor in his article for Le Monde Diplomatique,
he dwells on the composition of the « legal team » or on the details
that make all the difference ; his interview of 23 June at comptoir.org
raises astonishingly naïve political considerations : « It is now up
to the US authorities to explain themselves, and in the United Kingdom
to justify the detention of the only political prisoner withinWestern
Europe recognized as such by the UN » . Do you recall the time when
the biggest military powers felt obliged to « explain » or « justify »
oneself ? Before anything starts to happen, the lawyers together with
resurrected (thus dis-disinformed) citizen forces need to put a huge
pressure to the US and UK authorities.
The lawyers
do not organize regular collective press conferences, drawing full
landscape of what happens, forcing media to engage into a virtuous
circle, exposing to the people their strategy to counter multi-state
adversity, for everybody’s sake. As a consequence, citizen or defense
groups have no ground to follow suit, to support them, to pool. No,
legal experts do not need us. Public opinion never had any impact on a
court decision, right ? Justice is always objective and independent of
powers, right ? The powers are at the service of the common good, free
from any private or ideological interest, right ? That's what WikiLeaks
revelations have shown…. did they ??
We
use to say the best ones die first. Fully determined lawyers might exist
in the team. Some did, surely. John Jones joined Assange's defense in
2015, with his extradition procedure related skills. However, having
dealt in La Hague tribunal with complex cases plunged into territories
at war, he is psychically fragile. The pressure of the WikiLeaks context
worsens his condition ; psychiatrist Pereira advises him to stay at the
Nightingale clinic in London, where he works. John Jones jumps under a
train on April 18, 2016, in the early morning. The experienced Coroner
Mary Hassell refuses to qualify the case as a suicide, and expresses
strong critics, besides John’s mother and wife’s, with regard to medical
and medical monitoring ; John’s mother was shocked by the celerity of
the « bipolar disorder » diagnosis made by Dr. Pereira, and
quite astonished by conditions in which the facility hosted and followed
her son. Against the advice of Mary Hassell, the investigation stops
quickly. Is it related to the blame she receives in June 2016 for a less
than minor pretext (see note 1) ? The extremely poor newspapers
reporting regarding John Jones death prevents us from answering ; one
serious inquiry though was done by the local online newspaper Ham &
High (it was relayed by WikiLeaks, read it on https://archive.is/OKVbu
to get the full picture). Logically, two hypotheses justified the
continuation of the investigation : either the incompetence of the
medical team having led to the death of John Jones, or the possible
intention to neutralize a man who worked against the extradition of
Assange towards Sweden (no need to aim at his death for this, prolounged
illness is enough).
Document édité public, blâme du coroner Hassell Daughty Street Chambers did publish a short but decent tribute. Defend.wikileaks.org for its part, just as the name of Anna Ardin is absent from the site (see our paper Is WikiLeaks still trustworthy?, discussing lawyers too ), does not mention in his TimeLine dating back to 2009, neither elsewhere, the name of John Jones. Nor did they instaure a synthetic follow-up of legal defense structure and members, by the way.
So this is a structure? - No, sire, it's a destructuration
Flash
back. In September 2010, the Swedish lawyer Leif Silbersky is dismissed
by Julian Assange for his lack of availability. The lawyer firmly
contests. He had assisted Assange during his testimony on August 30,
2010 to counter Anna Ardin's allegations of sexual offenses; the minutes
show his professionalism and his relevance. This much reputable and
combattive lawyer had defended and won high profile cases.
He was replaced on September 7th
by the Swedish lawyer Björn Hurtig. His voluntarism is undeniable, but
the main progress he brings to the file is due to the citizen Goran
Rüdling, who reveals tweets that Anna Ardin tried to erase without
success, messages that seriously discredit her victim story. At the same
time, Assange is urgently planning the release of US, Afghan and Iraqi
cables, for which he has scheduled meetings with Espresso and Der
Spiegel. Björn Hurtig having made sure with the prosecutor Marianne Ny
that his client is allowed to leave Sweden, so does Assange on September
27th. Björn Hurtig does not suspect the danger of this precarious
authorization, and the prosecutor is quick to launch an international
arrest warrant, while Assange has become temporarily unreachable.
Assange
lands in England, where his situation deteriorates through several
phases. The English lawyer Mark Stephens enters the game. He is not of
the seraglio, defended the minor leaders of the big strike of 1985, he
is considered defender of the lost causes. But at the trial of February
2011 in London, following the request for extradition in Sweden by the
Swedish justice, Mark Stephens is absent, and Björn Hurtig is in a
subaltern position. The leading defense lawyer is the Australian
Geoffrey Robertson, founder of the legal institute Doughty Street
Chambers in London (call the DSC), from which comes the Baroness Helena
Kennedy, present but not talkative according to the minutes of the
sessions . Assigned to residence, Julian Assange isolates himself little
by little. He speaks on the sidelines of the hearing, difficult,
wearing a tie that suits him badly, on the advice of the tenors of
Daughty Street Chambers, perhaps? From now on, Julian Assange is
defended by well established lawyers, well-off among the society elite ;
not exactly the image we have from Julian Assange’s spirit.
Julian Assange in a press conference during after a trial audience. © Screen copy He launches in (on whose proposal?) the publication of an
autobiography with a questionable publisher, probably with the idea of
financing his growing legal fees. It ends up with an “unauthorized
biography“, which was not the plan… WikiLeaks is certainly drained by
the illegal blocking of Visa and other PayPal, but the financial
management of WikiLeaks, which leaves his mentor out of money, deserves a
thorough study.
During 2011, the Swedish Per Samuelson
fits into the defense as a free electron, resulting in mitigated
improvement ; he still appears today, commenting on the state of health
of his client. From 2011 up to now, the well-installed Daughty Street
Chambers appears central in Assange defence.
Approached
by Geoffrey Robertson, Jennifer Robinson becomes visible starting 2010
among Assange defenders. His now famous colleague Amal Clooney of the
DSC enters the dance, who exerces her imagination up to proposing the
appointment of Assange as Minister of Technology of Ecuador ; aborted
idea that will not take her customer out of the embassy hole. It is
however enough to read the complete 2010 depositions (police interview
of witnesses and protagonists of the so called agressions in Sweden), to
get a strong impression of Assange as a victim rather than aggressor.
Credibility of Ann Ardin is questionable from the start. Why then going
for such convoluted solutions ? Would not a trial counter-attack have
been possible ? Journalists are not enough curious, it seems, for us to
answer.
The nature of the defense
[ About Baltasar Garzon, Assange defender of prime importance, see "Last minute annex" area. Added on August 28th ]
If
we exclude satellite lawyers, dead, or gagged by the press (the one
that Jennifer Robinson wants "free"), the unconventional and combative
profiles, likely to echo the internalized spirit of Assange, focused on
crypto-codes lines writing and his ideals more than pomp and tinsel,
remain the women and men orbiting around Daughty Street Chambers sphere.
Its founder Geoffrey Robertson is a staunch supporter of independent
journalists in the South, via the NGO Media Legal Defense Initiative,
funded by the billionaire George Soros Open Society Institute ; we will
come back to him, inevitably. Robertson is also a member of the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a position which highlights a CV. Helena Kennedy is a member of the World Bank Institute's External Advisory Board,
journalist in her spare time, and a dedicated advocate for women.
Jennifer Robinson's practice includes defense of the media, providing
services to the New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press and Bloomberg
News, no less.
All these human rights specialists
are of course involved in a myriad of charitable organizations so varied
that one wonders where they find the time to live, or to be
photographed. Jennifer Robinson for example, is engaged since year 2011
in the Bertha Foundation, where she directs legal assistance. The
Hungarian branch of Bertha is TASZ; Hungarian is one of the
nationalities of the billionaire George Soros, who finances at great
expense Tasz and Bertha. Bertha's mantra is the "social justice"
advocated by the foundation in African or Latino countries. No doubt it
hosts sincere activists. The arising question is (as for the Bill
Gates’s or Clinton’s Foundations), to what extent it works for justice
(or economical development), and to what extent it is a Trojan horse of
the Western-managerial model in countries that still have a chance to
guard against it.
South African Bertha foundation agenda, mounted screen copy elements. © Bertha web site Screen copy Well. By distancing oneself from the myth of competence and human rights, what evidence shows on ? That Julian Assange has in front of him and not with him, a legal microcosm which is interleaved with the institutionnal logics from which he fought all his life the most deleterious effects. Daughty Street Chambers may represent a presentable face of the western nebula, but it remains deeply engulfed. The process of long-standing relations with the free prominent media ties DSC to these media, which are also money income sources; it is human, all too human. Only the direct confrontation with the Institution and its vectors that are the media held by the major financiers can develop the power of a defense carried by the glaring realities that the man helped to reveal. Under the conditions mentioned above, "defense" can only be misled into abstraction ; imagine the Don Quixote of the legality fighting against windmills in the name of a "freedom of the press" of a press which for a long time disguises the embarrassing realities, and you get an idea of the expected efficiency. Behind the symbol of freedom brandished as a banner, however, stands a man. The lawyers seem to have forgotten him, they do not transparently or strongly trigger legal procedures to obtain the decent care that this human needs to survive and defend himself.
All roads lead to Georges Soros
At the end of 2010 already, the German autodidact historian and political analyst Alex Benesch published this title: " George Soros, the globalist behind WikiLeaks
? ". Almost at the same time, Julian Assange was under house arrest
with surveillance bracelet in the mansion of Vaughn Lockhart Smith, an
aristocratic friend and journalist who had worked in immersion with NATO
troops, and had founded the Frontline Club, supported by a certain
George Soros via his Open Society Institute.
Alex
Benesch recounts the experience of John Young, who has been an initiator
since 1996 of the cryptome.org site, similar to WikiLeaks and still
active: "When he criticized the [WikiLeaks] project to collect $ 5
million in donations in a single year he was quickly removed from the
mailing list ... " He stops communicating with WikiLeaks, which does
not prevent him from publishing WikiLeaks leaked emails (!), including
this one: "We [WikiLeaks] are surprised by the very early
interest of the press, which we would have been happy later on, but now
it makes things difficult, as it interferes with our delicate
negotiations with the Open Society Institute and other donors. "
Strong
rumors have been raging for a while about the instrumentalisation of
WikiLeaks by Georges Soros. Business-wise Revelations, such as the one
harmful to the Swiss bank Julius Baer, have hit George Soros' rivals.
Were intended selection of business related leaks done ? By who ? Now
that Julian Assange is neutralized, what will WikiLeaks become ? Other
question is to know how far Julian Assange was aware of the context, and
whether he could resist possible maneuvers. In an article dated Aug. 14, publisher and journalist Aymeric Monville reports that "Joseph
Farell, qualified as an ambassador for Wikileaks, [...] has received
support from the Open Society as well as the Ford Foundation," and that "Renata Ávila , spokesperson of the defense of Julian Assange
"[we discover every day], is director of a foundation funded by the
Open Society Georges Soros. He cites in addition our edition, and
specifies that he was "able to cross-check the informations" contained in our paper about WikiLeaks ; no need to say we thank him, given the "support" we received so far from the French newspapers.
Following
Soros, an old acquaintance appears once again, the Swedish complainant
Anna Ardin. She recently raised young climate activist Greta Thunberg to
the rank of "prophet of our era" carrying a message that "comes from God".
Greta Thunberg is coached by Luisa-Marie Neubauer, a member of the One
Foundation, which is funded by the Gates and George Soros' Open Society.
But again: how did Assange's lawyers not attack and discredit such a
woman, capable of such ridiculous remarks, not consistent in her police
depositions, involved in a plethora of activities that cast huge doubt
about her impartiality towards the claimed assailant Julian Assange
activities ?
Anna Ardin showing her weird shoes. © Web Hide these conflicts of interest that people would never see
« The world is divided in two categories » cynicly said Clint Eastwood in The good, the bad and the ugly ; there are people who exercise their free will
the best they can, at the price it costs. And those who make confetti
out of free will, cash convertible ones. Falling into the second
category, some judges and prosecutors. Which obliges us to salute those
who, like the Swedish prosecutor Éva Finné, opted for the first one.
As
the world is not Manichean, we modestly attribute to the prosecutor
Marianne Ny and the Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot the quality of
friendship’s spirit.
Marianne Ny operated as part of an ideological family that we
will call feminist or ultra-feminist, formed with the Swedish Democratic
Party member Claës Bogström, along with the committee working to
strengthen the laws on sexual offenses. At the moment when Claes
Bogström asks him (as a lawyer, thus illegally it seems) to restart the
preliminary investigation against Julian Assange, she pushes for the
legalization of the preventive arrest of the male protagonists, whatever
the nature of the complaint. That's good. As a member of the Christian
branch of the Democratic Party, the complainant Anna Ardin knows Claes
Bogstrom. Is Anna Ardin asking Bogström to ask the prosecutor to
reactivate the investigation, or is it the idea of Bogström or
another, we do not know. On the other hand, we know that Anna Ardin and
Irmeli Krans know each other, Krans being the police officer who takes
the early testimony of Sophia Wilen and Anna Ardin, both of whom are
members of the Democratic Party. Anna Ardin and Irmeli Krans might even
have had sexual relationships. These are few elements among the
multitude, but this is far enough. The interest convergences within this
cemented microcosm of self-persuasion constitute more than a
counter-attacking defense argumentation, which never really happened.
The irregularities and the inconsistencies of the file are numerous,
each element resumes its place inside the story-telling of the
aggression. Pressure from the political authorities might complete the
drawing.
With her tory husband, the judge Emma
Arbuthnot seem to form an ideologicly mature family, in the most cordial
agreement. Her husband was given his Baron title in 2015 by James
Cameron, having the honor to be now called Baron James Norwich Arbuthnot
of Edrom. Lawyer at the end of his studies, the Thatcherian period
opens the way for a great career : Parliamentary, Secretary of State for
Trade and Industry, Minister of Defense, he sits from 2005 to 2014 on
the Restricted Committee of Defense, as well as on the advisory board of
the armament industry Thales UK, and headed the private company SC
Security, of which he remains a consultant according to The Canary on line.
Note 1 : In June 2016, the Coroner Mary Hasell was reproached her refusal (in 2015) to authorize specific autopsy and inhumation conditions related to some ethnico-religious origins. What she is blamed for is thus an exacerbated sense for equality.
Note 2 : Gareth Peirce defended irish people accused of bomb attacks in the 1970s (supposed to be triggered by IRA independantists), none of them being members of the IRA. They have often been intimidated by the British police to make them confess. The attacks have not been officially claimed by the IRA. These are politically motivated trials in the sense of defending the rule of law, but the defendants (who have spent many years in prison) were not held for their political convictions.
YOU ENTER THE ANNEX PART
Warning : against common perception, annex side is not less
central than the body. Contact hydrogen atom and its electron for a more
scientific approach on this matter.
Annex 1 : The New West Guinea « Occupation » Jennifer Robinson's view
Screen copy of Jennifer Robinson twitt. © Web screen copy August 14th 2019. In the here-above tweet, Mrs Robinson mentions the « illegal occupation » of West New Guinea by the Indonesian state, in a context of arising civil war in which the WPA army of the papua separatist, Benny Wenda, has a major role. OK, let’s google that. Academicsforpapua site tells us that until 1962, West New Guinea was a Dutch colony. 12 years before, brand new state of Indonesia claimed that this region was historically a part of its territory ; the Dutch state contested. Cold-war issues pushed USA to force Dutch to accept the United Nations to exert authority to the region, temporarily. A referendum was then held under UN control, resulting in favor of Indonesian position. However, « The 1969 referendum, named the ‘Act of Free Choice’, is widely regarded to have been rigged. 1,022 hand-picked Papuans were bribed, cajoled and coerced into voting in favour Indonesian rule ». Against USA position, the British Ambassador at the time described the result as a ‘foregone conclusion’. So, the legitimity of Indonesia to rule West Papua is strongly questionable, but due to British pressure, the region is legally under control of Indonesia, through the officially United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2504 (XXIV) 1969.
Now, half a century later, the main question is the actual situation and the willingness of the people living in West Papua, of course mixed with the way Indonesia handles the question.
Conclusion : No, West New Guinea is not illegally occupied. Yes, the « right of Peoples to Self-Determination » inscribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts in balance the legal UN 2504 resolution. But the fact that Jennifer Robinson writes false statement, makes its tweet appear as an act of propaganda, in a context where it is very difficult to see from the outside what is happening precisely in the region, and what is the desire of the local populations. In addition, large amounts of money are spread from the outside towards some separatist units, through obscure means. This is not far from what is called interferences (“ingérence“ in French), among which some have created devastating internal conflicts. And when it is facilitated by the proponents of the "Human Rights", this is not less harmful than situations where foreign armies are sent, either in Libya, in Iraq or elsewhere ; this is more insidious.
Annex 2. Julian mother’s Christine Assange twitter account, @AssangeMrs.
Intensified along the two last months, the anxiety about the health of Julian Assange is in everybody’s Assange concerned minds. @AssangeMrs expresses this anxiety, echoing messages including John Pilger or Niels Melzer testimonies. after other twitter accounts did wonder if he is really still alive (as a reaction can we guess, to the absence of details and official communication about it through legal canals), @AssangeMrs contradicts them, exasperated: « I CONFIRM that my son Julin Assange is not dead! » .
@AssangeMrs tweet © @AssangeMrs Put yourself in the place of the mother or father of a persecuted child whom you have been sensing for months that everything will be done to silence him. The moment comes when all the clues agree to give you reason. Do you communicate on Twitter, or : would you assault the institutions to demand the reporting of the doctors supposed to follow him, go and see your son and testify of his health state by making it known in great detail, seeking to contact any independent journalist likely to make public your remarks with exactitude (we expressed our availability several times) ? See the lawyers finally, and make a solemn declaration by their side? And if you were not able to do it yourself, would you send a trustworthy family member or trustful friend, in order to act as described above, announcing publicly the mission you delegated ?
Annex 3: Details about our collective process.
The publisher and political analyst Aymeric Monville wrote in his article linked above, that ours, dated August 9, is « unfortunately left unsigned » , which we can hardly not answer. Especially since his own references are very useful to legitimize our inquiries. Our relative non-signature signifies both an affirmation and a protection. The assertion is that the work is collective, citizen, voluntary, and in this case not subject to pecuniary requirements, thus free from external pressure, our only interest residing in our need to deliver trustful information and defend our own citizen rights, while practicing what we feel is our duty. In addition, prominent newspapers such as the British weekly The Economist, do not sign their articles, same as for the editorials of Le Monde. This is problematic, however, since obscure interests are potentially defended through its owners. The editor of a local independent newspaper Le Postillon has taught us that in the 18th century, it was commonplace for newspapers to not sign their articles, for reasons close to ours. We are perpetuating this tradition.
The collective edition Free Assange Ethics & Media, giftedly hosted (and formally authorized) by Mediapart, has two explicit names and BasicBlog who compiled the information collectively gathered in this article. Regarding responsibility, the authorities will have no trouble getting his civil references, if necessary, if they have not already done so. We try to get the agreement of all on the content of our articles before publication, which is not always easy given the urgency of the situation and the lack of availability and resources available to us. Many non-visible people contribute to the writing and validate it. They are part of different collectives and individuals invested in the defense of Julian Assange. Which brings us to the « protection » aspect, which is an up-to-date question. Namely, the information and analysis written here (and much more, not published yet, some of which being stored for proof of anteriority if necessary), as well as our capacity for initiative, are shared by citizens of different European countries, and to a lesser extent, extra-European. We are solidaire and as far as possible, able to replace each other.
The biggest defence group we know from here is WikiJustice at wikijusticejulianassange@gmail.com, for sending information or signature ( their inaugural text is on facebook and several web sites).
Conclusive Annex
The wide range of domains treated here leads to synthetic writing, which may cause over-interpretation in some areas. For example concerning media versus lawyers, part our critics are focused on the lack of questions from journalists towards lawyers work. In a wider scope, there is fortunately positive things to say about independant or semi-independant media, or journalist individuals (as we did about Stefania Maurizi work with La Republicca for instance ; Consortium News papers much helped global understanding of Assange case...). There is no intention to “paint it black“, there is just a black landscape surrounding Julian Assange that let us little space for bright colors. But Bob once sung that “times they are a changing“, which may let a chance to “look from the bright side of life“, one day.
Last minute Annex
The renowned Balatazar Garzon, involved in the defense of Julian Assange, a Spanish judge and human rights specialist, was not mentioned in our article. This is not strictly an oversight, as has not been heard of during court proceedings following the arrest. However, an involved citizen submitted us a more than interesting interview dated May 6, 2019. This judge known for having prosecuted Augusto Pinochet in year 2000 brings his international law knowledge, and points precise violations of law suffered by Julian Assange ; for instance, the case concerning the break-up of the asylum granted through the Embassy of Ecuador, following the action of President Lenin Moreno. Garzon says this decision is in conflict with the Geneva Convention of 1951 as well as that of Caracas 1954. Without going into details (it reads here), few remarks follow :
- We do not know his operational role in ongoing judicial processes.
- His personal influence and his skills constitute a strong potential for defense
- He is one of the only legal advisers who has recently expressed himself, to attack head-on the media responsability in Assange situation. Here are two excerpts :
. « The objective reason for the withdrawal of asylum lies in and has come to point to, for a long time, the media and pressures from the North American administration. »
. « It is interesting that a lot of the media, looking to prosecute someone in their trade, a journalist, are reporting that Mr Assange was riding a skateboard or that he met such people [allusion to a Guardian publication somewhat qualified as Fake news]. They must focus on the serious issue in this case, the prosecution of a journalist for doing his job and revealing to the world crimes committed by the powerful. »
This last cautious formulation is polysemic. On the one hand it is difficult for a defender to attack the media, while biased media treatment occurred without contradiction in the long term. Second, Baltasar Garzon attacks globally ("a lot of the media") and individually (The Guardian is targeted, it is obvious). Few things can be deduced :
- If he allows himself such an attack, it means he does not fear the media personally ; he indicates it is necessary to address explicitely the media issue.
- The interpellation of the media by the defense is possible. The more time passes, the more difficult it is to do it without making media losing face. The Chinese know the importance of giving the adversary the chance no to lose face. Baltasar Garzon probably has the strength and subtlety to do it. He tells us we have to do it. This does not preclude the soft and complementary solution, that of properly informing the population, by all means of defense, legal and citizenwise, both.
Note 0 : This is a translation (with few add-ons) of French paper https://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/liberez-assange-ethiques-et-medias/article/220819/les-avocats-fantomes-de-julian-assange
Le Club est l'espace de libre expression des abonnés de Mediapart. Ses contenus n'engagent pas la rédaction.
The Controversial Prosecutor at the Heart of the Julian Assange Case
Gordon Kromberg has been dogged by allegations of bias and politicized prosecutions. Now he could shape the future of journalism.
The battle to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange from the United Kingdom to the United States is shaping up to be a legal case of paramount importance to the future of national security reporting. The U.S. continues to press the case even after a change of administration, with President Joe Biden keeping up efforts to bring Assange to a U.S. court on Espionage Act charges for his role in publishing classified government documents. One little-noted name in filings from extradition hearings in the U.K. keeps popping up as a key figure in the U.S. government’s case: a federal prosecutor named Gordon Kromberg.
On the central questions of what assistance Assange provided to whistleblower Chelsea Manning and the ostensible harm his actions caused to U.S. national security, a U.K. court filing earlier this year cites Kromberg’s assertions verbatim. “Mr. Kromberg’s evidence on this is clear,” the filing says. “He stated that stealing hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases was a multistep process.” The same document cites Kromberg again, claiming that “well over one hundred people were placed at risk from the disclosures and approximately fifty people sought and received assistance from the US” — references to purported U.S. intelligence assets outed by the documents WikiLeaks published.
Kromberg, an assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, may be unknown to foreign and even many American observers. In U.S. legal circles, though, he has been a highly controversial figure for over two decades, dogged by accusations of bias and politicization in his prosecutions. For years, civil rights activists and lawyers tried to draw attention to allegations of Kromberg’s abusive practices. Rather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.
In all, the January court documents from Assange’s extradition case mention Kromberg over 40 times to help make the legal argument for extraditing Assange. Many of his statements go to the heart of the Espionage Act case against the WikiLeaks publisher.
The case has raised alarms among civil liberties groups in the United States, particularly in light of the Biden administration’s decision to continue pressing for extradition. Assange has become a controversial figure in the U.S. due to his alleged role in manipulating the 2016 presidential election, but the charges he faces relate almost entirely to acts of receiving and publishing secret information — the bread and butter of most national security journalism.
“If Julian Assange is extradited to the U.S. it would be by far the most important and dangerous trial for press freedom in the 21st century.”
“If Julian Assange is extradited to the U.S. it would be by far the most important and dangerous trial for press freedom in the 21st century,” said Trevor Timm, co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. (Timm is an occasional contributor to The Intercept.) “Seventeen out of 18 changes in the indictment against Assange are Espionage Act charges. This is the same law that has been used against sources and whistleblowers for over a decade now, and which news organizations have been terrified would be used against them to prosecute national security reporters who receive classified information from their sources.”
This January, Assange’s extradition was blocked on humanitarian grounds. More recently, a report from the Icelandic investigative news site Stundin claimed that a key witness in the U.S. case against Assange recanted his testimony, potentially throwing the charges against him into further disarray. For now, the extradition fight is ongoing, and a new ruling on the U.S. government’s appeal of the January decision is expected later this year.
Unbowed by outside pressure and criticism that using the Espionage
Act against Assange would endanger press freedoms, the Biden Justice
Department continues to use one of its most incendiary prosecutors to
help bring Assange to U.S. soil.
Illustration: Chloe Cushman for The Intercept
Legal experts said that the inclusion of a notoriously politicized and aggressive prosecutor on a high-profile extradition case like Assange’s is a sign of how strongly the government is motivated to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher and bring Espionage Act charges at all costs.
“A common factor in Kromberg’s career has been a willingness to take very provocative positions on behalf of the government and stay the course with them,” said Wadie Said, a professor of law at the University of South Carolina and author of “Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions.” “He has also shown great willingness to take on highly political cases and to be a lightning rod himself for attention; he often makes himself part of the story with his own actions and statements.”
Said added, “From my perspective, some of the things that Kromberg has said in the past and the positions that he has taken are quite tendentious and even vindictive in terms of his mindset toward the person that he is targeting.”
Neither Kromberg nor the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia responded to requests for comment.
In 2008, Kromberg was the subject of a Washington Post profile covering his conduct in the prosecution of Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian academic in the U.S. who faced terrorism charges after 9/11. The government’s relentless pursuit of Al-Arian came to be viewed by many legal observers as an example of malicious prosecution, with Kromberg’s role coming in for particular scrutiny.
Years of intense pursuit by the Justice Department over Al-Arian’s alleged terrorist ties failed to produce any jury convictions on 17 charges related to terrorism. In 2006, the former University of South Florida professor accepted a plea deal on a single count of conspiracy to provide money to a designated terror group. Almost a decade later, he would be deported to Turkey to “conclude his case and bring an end to his family’s suffering,” as he previously told The Intercept.
The 2008 profile of Kromberg’s role cited one legal expert who referred to Kromberg as a “loose cannon.” Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University Law School, told the Washington Post, “If I were the Justice Department, I wouldn’t want him on the front lines of these highly visible, highly contentious prosecutions.” (Kromberg declined to comment to the Washington Post at the time.)
Despite the plea deal and planned deportation, Al-Arian’s ordeal went on for nine more years, continuing all the way until 2015, as Kromberg tried to drag him into providing more testimony in other cases and had him imprisoned again, for contempt, until he was finally deported.
Kromberg has been accused by civil rights groups of being motivated by anti-Muslim animus in many of his prosecutions, including one case in which he was accused of mocking the family of a terrorism suspect who had experienced torture in Saudi custody; he allegedly told them that their son is “no good for us here, he has no fingernails left.” (Kromberg declined to comment on the allegation at the time.)
According to affidavits filed by opposing counsel about his conduct, Kromberg allegedly criticized “the Islamization of the American justice system,” and denied appeals to accommodate Muslim defendants during Ramadan on the grounds that if “they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before a grand jury.” These sentiments appear to have deep ideological roots. In personal diaries published by Kromberg online in the past, he espoused extreme views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, referring to the Israeli-occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.”
Despite his checkered track record, Kromberg has continued to hold a high position in the Justice Department. In addition to his current role in the Assange extradition, he has also continued to prosecute high-profile terrorism cases.
In 2017, Kromberg prosecuted the case of a D.C. police officer accused of buying gift cards in support of terrorism, charges that arose from a controversial sting operation. In court, Kromberg leveled eyebrow-raising allegations that the suspect was both a supporter of the jihadist group Islamic State as well as the World War II-era German Nazi Party on the grounds that he owned historical paraphernalia. Referring to an anonymous online commenter who had called the defendant “Muslim-Nazi scum,” Kromberg argued in court, “Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know the answer to that. But the point is that the Nazi stuff in this case is very much related to the, to the ISIS stuff.”
Assange’s case has been largely ignored in the U.S. press, considering the potential implications of his prosecution under the Espionage Act. Kromberg’s key role, however, suggests that the Justice Department is not taking the implications of the case on its end lightly. Legal observers say that the incredible extent that the government is going to level these charges, spending years pursuing Assange in various forms, and placing one of its most aggressive prosecutors on the case all sends a dire message to those who would publish classified information in the future.
“This case is incredibly problematic, and we do believe it is politicized,” said Rebecca Vincent, the director of international campaigns at Reporters Without Borders. “What we’ve seen so far are very powerful interests throwing everything they’ve got at one person. Regardless of what happens next, that in and of itself will have a significant impact on national security reporting. Very few people are going to be willing to go through what he has gone through for over a decade.”
Vincent, who has been an observer on the case for Reporters Without Borders, said that the psychological and physical pressure of years of incarceration has taken a toll on Assange. His deteriorating condition and the likely further harm that he would suffer in U.S. prisons have been a key stumbling block in the effort so far to extradite him. A disclosure from the appeals case last week reported by the New York Times indicated that the U.S. government had consented to Assange being held in Australian custody, but only if the Australian government consented to the transfer and after all appeals in Assange’s case had been exhausted.
In a dark irony, Kromberg happened to be the one making the case in U.K. courts this past January that Assange might not have it so bad if he were held in U.S. custody. Prior court documents from Assange’s extradition hearing cited Kromberg to state expectations that Assange would be held in a highly restrictive supermax prison once sent to the U.S. were “purely speculative,” quoting him further to say that “the philosophy of the [Bureau of Prisons] is to house all inmates in the least restrictive environment appropriate for the inmate.”
Assange has become a polarizing figure in the U.S., with detractors and supporters divided over the nature of his work and motivations, particularly since the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, where he was believed to have acted in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy. Press freedom experts say that irrespective of people’s personal opinions on Assange, if he is successfully extradited and convicted on Espionage Act charges for publishing classified information, the consequences for the future of national security journalism in the U.S. would be grave.
“Lots of people hate Julian Assange, his opinions, and his tactics, but if you look at the Espionage Act charges that he faces, they wholly relate to speaking to sources, asking for more information, receiving or holding classified information, and then publishing a subset of that information,” said the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Timm. “Whatever anyone thinks of Assange, or whether they think he’s a journalist or not, those actions are what journalists do all the time.”
Timm added, “If the U.S. government is successful in prosecuting Assange for those actions, there would be nothing stopping it from prosecuting New York Times or Washington Post reporters on the same grounds in the future.”
Correction: July 21, 2021
This story has been updated to reflect that Gordon Kromberg was not
the lead prosecutor on the initial 2003 charges against Sami Al-Arian.
Contact the author:
Related
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/julian-assange-trial-extradition/
The Unprecedented and Illegal Campaign to Eliminate Julian Assange
Assange would never receive a fair trial in the U.S., but he’s not receiving one in Britain either.
Over the 17 days of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London, prosecutors succeeded in proving both crimes and conspiracy. The culprit, however, was not Assange. Instead, the lawbreakers and conspirators turned out to be the British and American governments. Witness after witness detailed illegal measures to violate Assange’s right to a fair trial, destroy his health, assassinate his character, and imprison him in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. Courtroom evidence exposed illegality on an unprecedented scale by America’s and Britain’s intelligence, military, police, and judicial agencies to eliminate Assange. The governments had the edge, like the white man of whom Malcolm X wrote, “He’s a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.”
The deck was clearly stacked. Assange’s antagonists were marking the cards as early as February 2008, when the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center set out, in its words, to “damage or destroy this center of gravity” that was WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks, from the time Assange and his friends created it in 2006, was attracting sources around the world to entrust them, securely and anonymously, with documents exposing state crimes. The audience for the documents was not a foreign intelligence service, but the public. In the governments’ view, the public needed protection from knowledge of what they were doing behind closed doors and in the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq. To plug the leaks, the governments had to stop Assange. The Pentagon, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the State Department soon followed the Counterintelligence Center’s lead by establishing their own anti-Assange task forces and enlisting the aid of Britain, Sweden, and Ecuador.
What a ride it’s been. The first recorded “black op” against Assange occurred on September 27, 2010, when a suitcase containing three laptops, hard drives, and clothing vanished from the aircraft carrying him from Sweden to Germany. Efforts to retrieve his belongings, which included privileged communications with his legal counsel, elicited vague excuses from the airline that it knew nothing. The fate of the purloined items became public knowledge in 2013 when information from his laptops appeared in prosecution briefs against U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. In 2011, FBI agents went to Iceland to employ an 18-year-old informant, Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, to spy on WikiLeaks. When Iceland’s authorities discovered the FBI’s illegal activities, it deported the FBI agents. Thodarson, whom the FBI had paid $5,000 and flown around the world, later confessed to stealing money from WikiLeaks and was convicted for sexually abusing underage boys.
Photo: James D. Morgan/Getty images
Surveillance, constant wherever Assange found himself, intensified when he took political asylum in Ecuador’s London Embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden. He told me on one of my visits to him there that life in the embassy, with cameras and microphones everywhere, was like “The Truman Show.” The intelligence services observed his every movement and heard his every word. They spied on private discussions with his lawyers and his physicians. If a priest had visited the Catholic Assange, they would have violated the sanctity of the confessional.
Meanwhile, the NSA and Britain’s equivalent, GCHQ, tracked people who logged onto the WikiLeaks website. U.S. financial institutions attempted to cripple WikiLeaks financially by denying donors the use of credit cards and PayPal to support the organization. Assange’s legal counsel did not escape scrutiny. His Spanish lawyer, the famed former judge, Baltasar Garzón, who had prosecuted Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet, was followed, and his computer was stolen from his office in late 2017. I had a curious experience in 2019, and I’m just a journalist. Two days after one of my meetings with Assange at the embassy, burglars broke into an office I shared with two designers in London. The only item missing was my computer, the thieves having left my office mates’ computers untouched. It’s impossible to prove who did it, but it’s not impossible to guess.
The extreme measures taken against Assange reached their all-time low when Lenín Boltaire Moreno Garcés replaced the pro-Assange Rafael Correa as president of Ecuador on May 24, 2017. Former employees of a private Spanish firm, Undercover Global SL, which was employed to provide security at the London embassy, testified on the final day of the Assange hearing that they installed more cameras and microphones, tampered with the mobile phones of visitors, stole the diapers of one of Assange’s babies to take his DNA, and discussed kidnapping and murdering him. They fed live video to the CIA of Assange’s legal consultations. Something similar happened to Daniel Ellsberg after he released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and Washington Post in 1971. The White House “plumbers,” who would later rob the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Complex, broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to steal his medical files. The FBI had bugged Ellsberg’s phone without a warrant. So outrageous was the government’s behavior that Judge William Matthew Byrne dismissed the Espionage Act case against Ellsberg “with prejudice,” meaning that the government could not appeal.
Legal experts testified that Assange would not receive a fair trial in the U.S., but at London’s Central Criminal Court it was becoming apparent that he was not receiving one in Britain either. The first magistrate assigned to his case, Emma Arbuthnot, in 2017, turned out to have a husband and a son with links to people cited for criminal activities in documents published by WikiLeaks. When her family’s additional connections to the intelligence services and defense industries became public, she withdrew from the case for what she told Private Eye magazine was a “perception of bias.” She did not formally recuse herself or declare a conflict of interest. As Westminster’s chief magistrate, she nonetheless oversees the conduct of lesser magistrates. One is Vanessa Baraitser, who presided at Assange’s hearing. Records uncovered by the Declassified website showed that of her 24 previous extradition hearings, she ordered extradition in 23. Not a bad record from the prosecution’s point of view, but appeals courts subsequently reversed her verdict in six of the 23.
When Assange’s hearing convened on September 8, the defense applied for more time to prepare their case. The government had had 10 years of preparation and access to defense lawyers’ correspondence with their client. Assange’s advocates were permitted to see him only rarely and under observation at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, a maximum-security facility in south London for prisoners who “pose the most threat to the public, the police or national security.” Vital documents were not reaching him. Baraitser rejected the request. She also forced Assange to observe the hearing from a glass cage, usually reserved for violent offenders, at the back of the courtroom where he could not confer with his lawyers. Technical problems interrupted sound transmission to Assange, causing him to miss much of the testimony. When Assange addressed his lawyers across the room, the prosecution could hear what he said. Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lead barrister and one of Britain’s best, was in the ring with his hands tied.
Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images/Getty Images
Testimony demonstrating Assange’s legal handicaps and his failing health should be enough to prevent extradition. When police removed Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and incarcerated him in Belmarsh in April 2019, they did not allow him to take with him any of his belongings. These included not only his clothes, but also his reading glasses, which he was denied for several weeks. U.S. authorities seized all his legal papers and other possessions from the embassy without a warrant or the presence of Assange’s legal representatives.
Assange’s mental health has deteriorated during his confinement in Belmarsh. Numerous psychiatrists have attested that he is on the verge of suicide. Dr. Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of psychiatry at King’s College, London, told the court, based on 19 consultations with Assange at Belmarsh, “I reiterate again that I am as certain as a psychiatrist ever can be that, in the event of imminent extradition, Mr. Assange would indeed find a way to commit suicide.” Guards at Belmarsh had already discovered a razor blade in Assange’s cell. Assange has sought Catholic absolution, asked to write his will, and called the Samaritans’ suicide prevention hotline. Lurking in the background is a family history of suicide, which makes that outcome more probable. His depression worsened during several months’ solitary confinement in the prison’s medical wing, from which he was released after other prisoners protested the abuse. Testimony by leading psychiatrists Drs. Sandra Crosby and Quinton Deeley confirmed Kopelman’s diagnosis of clinical depression. Deeley estimated that the risk of Assange killing himself if transferred to the U.S. was “high,” noting that “rates of suicide are higher in people on the autistic spectrum.” The U.N. special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, declared, “Mr. Assange has been deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to persistent and progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture.”
I sent Assange a transistor radio. The prison returned it. I then sent him a book on how to make a radio and that too came back.
Normal practice has not applied to Assange, who has received unique treatment at every stage of his incarceration. When he pleaded guilty for the relatively minor offense of bail evasion in April 2019, the court sentenced him to 50 weeks at Belmarsh. At that time, Jack Shepherd, convicted of manslaughter in the death of a young woman in a speedboat incident, received a sentence of half that time. Two-thirds of the 797 inmates then in Belmarsh were violent offenders, among them convicted terrorists and gang members. Nonviolent bail jumpers under usual practice serve their time in less restrictive Category B or C prisons, but Assange was not a normal prisoner. When he served his 50 weeks, the magistrate ordered him to stay in Belmarsh’s harsh environment for the duration of his extradition proceedings.
The petty persecution of Assange went so far as the refusal to allow him use of a radio, which is allowed under prison regulations. When veteran BBC correspondent John Simpson publicized this denial last June, I sent Assange a transistor radio. The prison returned it. I then sent him a book on how to make a radio and that too came back. I asked a friend in the prison service to intervene, but he demurred, “Belmarsh is a law unto itself.” A respected former hostage of Hezbollah in the 1980s then wrote to Belmarsh’s governor to point out that his captors had given him a radio that he called “a godsend and helped me considerably to get through the ordeal.” When the prison gave Assange a radio the next day, it was either a coincidence or the authorities’ avoiding the appearance of small-minded cruelty more obscene than that of Lebanese kidnappers.
More special treatment followed. At the hearing, the prosecution initially stated that Assange stood accused under America’s 1917 Espionage Act for publishing government secrets. When defense witnesses showed that Assange’s actions were no different from those of any other journalist cultivating sources, prosecutors reversed course to allow that any journalist publishing classified documents could be liable to prosecution. Given that Assange collaborated with the New York Times, The Guardian, El País, and Le Monde, their editors would be liable for prosecution. No one believes they will be. The prosecution failed to explain why another publisher, Crymptome.org, was not being investigated when it had published the massive Cablegate collection of State Department communications on September 1, 2011, a day before WikiLeaks had.
Not only did the U.S. choose to ignore other publishers of the American documents, but it also applied the law in a unique manner to suit their case against Assange. U.S. prosecutors had applied under the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty of March 2003 to compel Britain to hand over Assange. Article 4(1) of the treaty, inconveniently for the prosecution, states, “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense.” The prosecution and the court, however, cited British domestic legislation, the Extradition Act of 2003, which does not mention the political exclusion. This sleight of hand mirrored the contradiction between American claims to apply the Espionage Act to Assange, who is Australian, for actions undertaken in Iceland and the U.K., while denying him protection of a more fundamental American law, the Constitution’s First Amendment with its guarantee of freedom of speech and the press. Can the prosecution get away with choosing which British and American laws apply to Assange and which don’t? How much prosecutorial chicanery can a court swallow without destroying its own legitimacy?
Britain has ratified other international treaties that prevent dispatching Assange to the U.S. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment requires the prohibition and punishment of torture in law and practice. It also “forbids the forced return of any person to a country where they would risk being tortured.” The United States ratified it in 1994. Two years earlier, it had ratified the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights guaranteeing immunity from torture, as well as the rights to life and free expression.
The U.S. has abrogated both treaties, as many documents published by WikiLeaks have shown, despite the fact that they have the force of law in signatory states. Amnesty International observed in 1998, three years before the September 11 attacks provided an excuse for torture, that the U.S. consistently “diluted” the conventions with “reservations, interpretations and statements that limit the protections they require.” It added, “The cruel use of restraints, resulting in unnecessary pain, injury or even death, is widespread in U.S. prisons and jails. Mentally disturbed prisoners have been bound, spread-eagled, on boards for prolonged periods in four-point restraints without proper medical authorization or supervision. Restraints are deliberately imposed as punishment, or used as a routine control measure rather than as an emergency response.” Amnesty also criticized the near-permanent solitary confinement in America’s “supermax” prisons with no sensory stimulation that “can cause severe physical and psychological damage.”
Can the prosecution get away with choosing which British and American laws apply to Assange and which don’t?
One recent British precedent would require denial of the extradition application on health grounds. Computer hacker Lauri Love, accused of “breaching thousands of computer systems in the United States and elsewhere,” has Asperger’s syndrome. An appeal court found in 2018 that sending him to the U.S. for trial would so harm his mental health that he had to remain in Britain. Physicians have diagnosed Assange with Asperger’s, and 117 psychiatrists signed an open letter declaring that Assange would not survive trial and imprisonment in the U.S.
An American former public defender, Yancey Ellis, described for the London hearing the conditions in Virginia’s Alexandria Detention Center, which would house Assange before and during his trial. Assange, he said, would be confined “at least 22 hours in a cell” that was “about the size of a parking space” with only a mat on a concrete shelf for a bed. Joel Stickler, an American prisoner advocate, testified that if Assange were convicted, his treatment at the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” otherwise known as the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Facility in Florence, Colorado, would be worse. Assange would be housed alone amid inmates like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, FBI agent-turned-Russian spy Robert Hanssen, Mexican drug baron Joaquín “El Chapo” Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, and Oklahoma City co-bomber Terry McNichols. The prison’s regime is as ruthless as its prisoners: twenty-three-hour daily confinement in a concrete box cell with one window four inches wide, six bed checks a day with a seventh at weekends, one hour of exercise in an outdoor cage, showers spraying water in one-minute spurts, and “shakedowns” at the discretion of prison staff. There won’t be many other journalists and publishers there.
Barristers for the prosecution and defense have one month to submit closing arguments in writing to Baraitser, the magistrate, who will render her verdict on January 4. An impartial tribunal would have no option but to exonerate Assange — but fairness has not thus far featured in proceedings with the prosecution’s 10-year head start on the defense; the inability of Assange’s solicitor, Jennifer Robinson, to confer with him for six months; and the prosecution’s possession of his confidential lawyer-client documents and transcripts of his conversations with his advocates in heavy-handed violation of the law.
The maltreatment of Assange revealed at London’s Central Criminal Court will not end if he is extradited. Extradition will intensify his “cruel and unusual punishment.” The prohibition of such punishment appears in both the Eighth Amendment of the American Constitution and its predecessor, Clause Ten of England’s 1689 Bill of Rights. That fundamental protection has applied to everyone in Britain and America for centuries. Once again, though, they may make an exception for Assange.
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