Thread by @BenjaminNorton

Even the NY Times—which has been lying about political prisoner Julian Assange, smearing him as a supposed Russian tool—is warning that the US government's draconian charges against him and WikiLeaks are a blatant assault on the freedoms of speech & press
nytimes.com/2019/05/23/us/…

The director of the First Amendment Institute at Columbia University said the US government's charges against Assange "rely almost entirely on conduct that investigative journalists engage in every day."

"The indictment should be understood as a frontal attack on press freedom."

After spending years attacking and smearing political prisoner Assange, the NY Times is finally admitting that he is a journalist — albeit in the most roundabout way possible

Typical NYT: Eventually it admits the truth, but only when it is much too late (

https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1071530947684786177

)

The Trump administration charging political prisoner Julian Assange (a non-US citizen!) with the Espionage Act — which was written during WWI to imprison leftists who spoke out against the war — is the biggest threat to press freedoms in modern US history
cnn.com/2019/05/23/pol…

However, the sad reality is a President Hillary Clinton likely would have launched this same full-fledged attack on press freedoms

This assault began under George Bush, and Obama greatly expanded it by charging more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all others COMBINED

Journalist James Risen, 2016: "If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter ... he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama"

Bipartisan authoritarianism
nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opi…