WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen in a police van, after he was arrested by British police, in London on April 11, 2019. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)

Will Assange Be Offered Plea Deal for Revealing Source of DNC Emails?

Commentary

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, until his asylum was revoked on April 11 and he was arrested by UK police.

Concurrently, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against him and requested his immediate extradition to the United States.

That indictment makes for some illuminating reading. It seems that, instead of just being a passive recipient of classified information from concerned whistleblowers, Assange was actively working to aid a source in trying to break into the Department of Defense’s Secret Internet Protocol Network.

That source was none other than the infamous Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning), the former U.S. military intelligence analyst who stole almost four complete databases of documents and transmitted them to WikiLeaks in 2010. WikiLeaks then subsequently published most of that classified information.

Just last month, Manning refused to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigating the assistance that Assange provided to him in attempting to hack into the Secret Internet Protocol Network and was subsequently jailed. Before leaving office, one of President Barack Obama’s final acts was to commute Manning’s 35-year prison sentence for the theft of classified documents. Manning had served just seven years of that sentence.

Attempting to aid a source in hacking into a government intelligence network means this isn’t a case of a government employee bringing Assange specific documents that highlight abuse or corruption within a federal agency so he could publish it. This was Assange allegedly trying to help someone break into a classified network.

It is—despite what you may be hearing from some people—against the law for a publisher to engage in criminal activity to help a source steal classified information, which is exactly what Assange is alleged to have done here.

There are strict laws about what happens to government employees who expose classified documents to people who don’t have security clearances or display the documents outside of controlled environments.

For example, you only have to look at the case of how then-CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus was tried and convicted several years ago for showing classified documents to a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair—she had a security clearance, mind you—at his home and not inside of a secure facility. I previously wrote about that case and compared it with what former FBI Director James Comey did in taking classified documents with him after he was fired in May 2017.

So, with that in mind, you can more easily imagine how much more serious a crime it is if you happen to get caught attempting to aid someone in hacking into a classified military intelligence network, so you can steal documents from that network and publish them.

Trump Unleashed

The timing of this sudden movement in the Assange case after seven years of almost complete stasis isn’t a coincidence. As I wrote in a recent column, “Now You Will See Trump Fully Unleashed,” I expect President Donald Trump will begin making moves that he’s been delaying, while waiting for the right time.

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) indictment of Assange was filed and sealed more than a year ago, on March 6, 2018. Interestingly enough, the Trump DOJ made this decision to likely make a deal with Ecuador and unseal Assange’s indictment:

Shortly after the Mueller special counsel’s office released its final report; Immediately after Attorney General William Barr testified to U.S. Congress that he believes the Trump presidential campaign was spied on by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies during the 2016 election.

All the federal law enforcement and intelligence agency officials who spied on Trump’s campaign knew there was never any evidence of collusion between the Russian government and Trump’s campaign—whether it was collusion on stolen Democratic National Committee emails or anything else.

Mueller has confirmed this by ending his probe without charging a single person with any such activity. The publicly known evidence at this stage points to the fact that the people who launched the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” counterintelligence investigation knew all along they were engaged in a massive fraud.

Now, I believe all of this is going to be demonstrated to the public as evidence is rolled out in a way that the Democrats and DNC Media can’t stop, deny, or spin.

What’s the biggest foundational belief of the entire Trump-Russia election collusion hoax? What idea do those who are still pushing that hoax see as foundational to their position?

It’s that Russian hackers stole DNC emails and that the Russian government made overtures to the Trump presidential campaign about the emails before they were published by WikiLeaks.

Those who still buy into this hoax firmly believe that Putin’s government and Trump’s campaign coordinated in the theft and the publication of the DNC emails.

Stop and think about what it would do to the strongly held delusion that Trump and Putin worked together on this email theft, if it was suddenly proven—through documentary evidence and testimony by the person who published the stolen emails—that no Russians whatsoever were involved in getting the emails to WikiLeaks? That instead of Russian hackers, Russian agents, or Trump associates, the emails were obtained in a different way, such as through a leak from within the DNC itself?

If that were proven, the entire “Collusion Delusion” hoax that gripped the country for more than two years would collapse at last like the rickety house of cards it has always been.

Assange Is the Key

Even the most desperate, hand-waving narrative magicians in our Congress and in our news media would be hard-pressed to maintain the illusion for their increasingly skeptical audience if that were to happen.

Well, gird your loins, because I believe that’s what is about to happen. Assange is the key. As the publisher of the DNC emails, nobody knows the true source of those emails better than he.

I’m already seeing fun media commentary that it’s going to take “years” to extradite Assange to the United States. As if this wasn’t already set up among the various parties involved before the events of April 11. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have massive leverage over the UK government, for reasons that are going to continue to become clear over the next several months.

Once he has been remanded to the custody of Barr’s Justice Department, I believe Assange will be offered a plea deal of a most lenient sentence, in exchange for his testimony and documentary evidence regarding the actual source of the DNC emails.

If Assange is smart, he’ll take the deal.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter at @drawandstrike.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.