Thread by @ggreenwald

By far the biggest attack on press freedom in the US -- it's not even close -- is the attempted prosecution and extradition of Julian Assange, started by Jeff Sessions and continued by the Biden DOJ. The theory used to criminalize him endangers journalists everywhere:

https://twitter.com/GabrielShipton/status/1404055993273700356

In May, 2019, I wrote a @washingtonpost op-ed on why the Assange indictment threatens all journalists. Two weeks later, my Brazilian source contacted me that led to exposés that caused the Brazilian Govt to try to prosecute me using that exact theory:

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/0…

50 years ago today, the NYT began publishing the Pentagon Papers, which my childhood hero and current friend, @DanielEllsberg, risked his liberty to provide because they showed a decade of lying by the US Govt to its own citizenry about the Vietnam War:

theguardian.com/world/2021/jun…

Journalism isn't Jim Acosta and Ken Dilanian repeating CIA scripts on the TV. Journalism is about exposing the secret crimes, deceit and corruption by the world's most powerful actors: what Ellsberg enabled & Assange does. And nothing endangers it more than Assange's prosecution.

There's only one reason Julian Assange is still wasting away in a high-security prison in the UK: because the Biden DOJ appealed the British judge's rejection of the US's extradition request. That means the greatest threat to press freedom now is the Biden Administration.