If a journalist recieves, unsolicited, materials that were obtained illegally by a third party, the 1st Amendment and case law makes it perfectly clear that it is legal to publish them. The ground is a little bit less solid if said journalist cultivates a reputation for publishing leaked materials and actively encourages the public to leak to him, but despite the lack of case law, most scholars agree that said journalist would still be in good shape, legally speaking.
The problem comes up when that journalist works with a specific person and the two of them conspire together to break other laws. This is what the initial indictment of Assange in the US was about. Practicing journalism gets you some leeway, but it isn't blanket permission to disregard other laws that might inconvenience you.
Think what you will about him and his practices, and the motivations of the people going after him, but there isn't much question that the law he allegedly broke is not bullshit - it is a law that we really do want to keep and enforce. And the evidence presented in the indictment, if genuine, makes a pretty clear case.
In the bigger picture, we (as a country) have rivals, and those rivals are staffed up with ruthless stonefaced killers. We are projecting a lot of geopolitical weakness these days, and a strong case could easily be made that allowing a foreigner to play spymaster by turning one of our trusted intelligence officers into a spy against us, without so much as a slap on the wrist, would be yet another weakness that we don't need to project out into the world right now.
Sadly, his physical location in the UK plays against him here. A pardon would look much less weak if he were in US custody on US soil awaiting US justice than it would to pardon him now, while he is still technically a fugitive from justice. The former looks like mercy; the latter looks like defeat.
With all of that said, if I had been elected President in 2016, I'd have signed his pardon before 1:00 PM January 20th, 2017 and invited him in for a meeting in the oval office where we could have a chat about reforming his wayward ways, and also about rooting out and exposing corruption. (Can you imagine if President Trump had installed MAGA management in all agencies and instructed them (on the sly) to sift through the classified files looking to leak damning information about Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama hires to Wikileaks?)
posts like this are why i love this site. last paragraph. doing the autopsy of what went wrong starts right there.
2 things would work in trump favor:
pardoning assange right off the bat puts assange in a moral quandry of knowing he owes trump.
assange knew trump was innocent on the collusion; it would have resulted in the two having a basis for trusting one another. the fact assange wouldnt give up his source should have inspired trump to try to leverage that honesty into damning leaks destroying mueller, comey, brennan, clapper, obama, biden.
Trumps biggest mistake was the inner circle choice, not fighting to fire more people and not primarying republicans right off the bat.
When a Democrat gets elected, there are Democrats ready and waiting to be appointed to important offices, and there is Democrat legislation ready and waiting for Congress to act on.
When a Republican gets elected, there are Republicans ready and waiting to be appointed to important offices, and there is Republican legislation ready and waiting for Congress to act on.
When President Trump was elected, there were no MAGA people ready and waiting to be appointed to important offices, and there was no MAGA legislation ready and waiting for Congress to act on.
When the next MAGA President is elected, assuming there is ever another election, we have to be ready.
This whole chain rings very true. Trump didn't make a mistake by hiring swampthings. DC is a dark dank underground network of tunnels full of deadly traps and beasts. You need a flashlight to navigate nimbly. But the only flashlights available are given by the creatures themselves and they are programmed to go out at the worst possible moment.
If a journalist recieves, unsolicited, materials that were obtained illegally by a third party, the 1st Amendment and case law makes it perfectly clear that it is legal to publish them. The ground is a little bit less solid if said journalist cultivates a reputation for publishing leaked materials and actively encourages the public to leak to him, but despite the lack of case law, most scholars agree that said journalist would still be in good shape, legally speaking.
The problem comes up when that journalist works with a specific person and the two of them conspire together to break other laws. This is what the initial indictment of Assange in the US was about. Practicing journalism gets you some leeway, but it isn't blanket permission to disregard other laws that might inconvenience you.
Think what you will about him and his practices, and the motivations of the people going after him, but there isn't much question that the law he allegedly broke is not bullshit - it is a law that we really do want to keep and enforce. And the evidence presented in the indictment, if genuine, makes a pretty clear case.
In the bigger picture, we (as a country) have rivals, and those rivals are staffed up with ruthless stonefaced killers. We are projecting a lot of geopolitical weakness these days, and a strong case could easily be made that allowing a foreigner to play spymaster by turning one of our trusted intelligence officers into a spy against us, without so much as a slap on the wrist, would be yet another weakness that we don't need to project out into the world right now.
Sadly, his physical location in the UK plays against him here. A pardon would look much less weak if he were in US custody on US soil awaiting US justice than it would to pardon him now, while he is still technically a fugitive from justice. The former looks like mercy; the latter looks like defeat.
With all of that said, if I had been elected President in 2016, I'd have signed his pardon before 1:00 PM January 20th, 2017 and invited him in for a meeting in the oval office where we could have a chat about reforming his wayward ways, and also about rooting out and exposing corruption. (Can you imagine if President Trump had installed MAGA management in all agencies and instructed them (on the sly) to sift through the classified files looking to leak damning information about Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama hires to Wikileaks?)
posts like this are why i love this site. last paragraph. doing the autopsy of what went wrong starts right there.
2 things would work in trump favor:
Trumps biggest mistake was the inner circle choice, not fighting to fire more people and not primarying republicans right off the bat.
When a Democrat gets elected, there are Democrats ready and waiting to be appointed to important offices, and there is Democrat legislation ready and waiting for Congress to act on.
When a Republican gets elected, there are Republicans ready and waiting to be appointed to important offices, and there is Republican legislation ready and waiting for Congress to act on.
When President Trump was elected, there were no MAGA people ready and waiting to be appointed to important offices, and there was no MAGA legislation ready and waiting for Congress to act on.
When the next MAGA President is elected, assuming there is ever another election, we have to be ready.
This whole chain rings very true. Trump didn't make a mistake by hiring swampthings. DC is a dark dank underground network of tunnels full of deadly traps and beasts. You need a flashlight to navigate nimbly. But the only flashlights available are given by the creatures themselves and they are programmed to go out at the worst possible moment.