Thread by @ggreenwald

Julian Assange Loses Appeal: British High Court Accepts U.S. Request to Extradite Him for Trial -- The Full Story:

greenwald.substack.com/p/julian-assan…

Press freedom and civil liberties groups throughout the West have repeatedly warned that Assange's prosecution is a grave threat to press freedom.

The Biden DOJ ignored them, and today won a major victory toward permanently silencing the pioneering transparency activist.

Press freedom groups reacted with fury to the Biden DOJ's "victory" in its attempt to imprison Assange under *espionage laws* for doing journalism.

Reporters Without Borders said "Assange has been targeted for his contributions to journalism."

rsf.org/en/news/rsf-co…

The @FreedomofPress described the ruling "an alarming setback" and a "black mark" for press freedom in the U.S. and around the world,” and noted what craven hypocrites Biden officials are: spending the Trump years pretending to care about press freedoms.

freedom.press/news/assange-e…

In a 2019 @washingtonpost op-ed I wrote once the Assange indictment was unveiled, I warned: "it criminalizes the defining attributes of investigative journalism." Eight months later, Brazilian prosecutors copied that theory to unsuccessfully try to prosecute me for my reporting.

The Obama DOJ tried for years to prosecute Assange, but concluded it was impossible without destroying press freedom. The Biden DOJ has no such qualms, and the NYT said why: the only thing that changed was his 2016 reporting that exposed DNC corruption.

nytimes.com/2021/02/08/us/…

Assange isn't being destroyed despite his pioneering work in breaking major stories around the world: far more than all his corporate media haters combined. He's imprisoned *because* of that, and is a political prisoner because the real motive is vengeance for his 2016 reporting.

The US extradition request will now be sent to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, expected to rubber-stamp it. Assange says he'll appeal. Regardless, his freedom - if it ever comes - is now years away and he remains silenced, exactly as the Biden Admin wants.

greenwald.substack.com/p/julian-assan…

As @ACLU and @pressfreedom tweet away this morning -- with the Committee to Project Journalists prattling on about press freedom attacks in Russia -- it would be nice to hear from them today about this major assault by the Biden Administration on core First Amendment freedoms.

There are, needless to say, large numbers of liberals and Democrats cheering this in my replies and elsewhere. US liberals are absolute authoritarians.

Look at the wide range of voices long condemning Assange's prosecution. First, from Brazil's Lula:

Then we have Fox's Tucker Carlson, who devoted dozens of shows to advocating for Assange's pardon and release -- interviewing Assange's lawyers, his finance, his family members, celebrities, journalists such as me, all to warn of the grave dangers:

In agreement with Lula and Carlson, here was Noam Chomsky in 2019, when the US unveiled the indictment, warning that it not only constituted a grave threat to press freedom but was intended by the US security state to intimidate people out of dissent:

The greatest whistleblower of the prior generation, @DanielEllsberg -- who risked life in prison to show the world the US Govt was lying to the American people about the Vietnam War -- has spent a decade heralding Assange as a hero and demanding he be set free.

It's hard to overstate what rogue authoritarians US politics and media liberals (and their UK counterpart-servants) are.

The rest of the world - press freedom groups, leaders across the spectrum, dissidents and whistleblowers - see Assange as a hero and this as a grave assault.

US liberals want Assange to rot in prison for one reason only: his reporting in 2016 - based on true and accurate documents - reflected poorly on Hillary Clinton and the DNC. They believe opposing Democrats is a crime and want their adversaries imprisoned. They are a true menace.

Imagine if Trump rather than Biden had just won a major victory toward permanently silencing a journalist who revealed major corruption by the Trump campaign and RNC (rather than Hillary/DNC).

Every CNN, NBC, NYT, WP employee would be in red alert mode. Instead: barely a wisp.

Employees of media corporations whined and wept and were hyperventilating with panic attacks every time Trump tweeted something mean about @Acosta or mocked @JoeNBC, but don't care that Biden is *imprisoning* Assange, because their purported press freedom concerns are a fraud.

This sickness which was created and spread by NBC, CNN, the NYT and the Democratic Party is going to be with us for years if not decades. They broke the brains of so many people with their demented conspiracy theories:

https://twitter.com/ChwangJulian/status/1469346482973143040

Democrats want Assange imprisoned for life because his 2016 reporting reflected poorly on Hillary and the DNC and, they think, helped Trump.

Democrats are complete authoritarians: craving the imprisonment of journalists who oppose them. They're everything they claimed Trump was.

One of the few left-liberal journalists who understands -- and has the courage to state -- what a grave threat Biden and the Democratic Party are to core press freedom.

Authoritarianism in the US resides in the establishment wing of the Democratic Party:

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1469292279739392000

The Committee to Protest Journalists issued a statement early this morning warning that the UK judicial ruling and Biden DOJ's attempt to extradite Assange "seriously damages journalism":

cpj.org/2021/12/uk-rul…

The next time the US or UK issues some sanctimonious statement condemning some other country for imprisoning journalists or disrespecting press freedoms, they should scoff in their face, pointing to Assange. Many already do that.

Only US/UK journalists don't see this fraud.

Here's one of the remaining great civil liberties lawyers at the @ACLU, @BenWizner, explaining today why the Biden DOJ's "victory" in its attempt to extradite and prosecution Julian Assange is one of the worst press freedom attacks in years:

Would be nice to see some mention of this severe 1st Am attack by the Biden DOJ on the Twitter and other social media accounts of the @ACLU -- where most of its liberal donors learn what it does -- but that's probably asking too much. But there's this:

aclu.org/letter/letter-…

Not sure if I mentioned this before but US liberalism is a purely authoritarian movement, rotted to its core with pieces of trash like this who genuinely believe anyone who works against the Democratic Praty -- including journalists -- belongs in prison:

https://twitter.com/Strandjunker/status/1469307941056651269

Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, is an authoritarian, but he's also right that no western journalist has any right or credibility to assume a position of moral superiority about press freedom attacks given what the US/UK are doing to Assange.

I'm going live on Rumble at 7 pm ET to discuss the Biden DOJ's "victory" today in having a court rule Assange must be extradited to the US, the consequences for press freedoms, the indifference of corporate media, and the personal and political tragedy:

rumble.com/vqjzc0-uk-cour…

Our full live report tonight on Rumble on the Biden DOJ's "victory" in having a British court approve extradition of Assange to the US can be watched here. We discussed why this poses such a grave threat to press freedom, and the real motives for it:

rumble.com/vqjzc0-uk-cour…

The most overlooked aspect of the Assange persecution: the Obama DOJ in 2013 concluded it couldn't prosecute Assange without destroying press freedom. Yet in 2021, the Biden DOJ is desperate to do it. Only one thing changed: Assange's 2016 reporting that harmed Hillary & the DNC.

After Hillary lost, she made clear she blamed two people: James Comey and Julian Assange. Democrats' bloodlust to keep Assange in a cage is pure retaliation for the reporting he did on Hillary and the DNC. It's hard to imagine anything more authoritarian - tyrannical - than that.

When the Trump DOJ unveiled charges against Assange, some liberal outlets condemned it as a grave 1st Amendment attack. Now that it's Biden aggressively pursuing his imprisonment, they've gone silent. But they forever lost credibility to denounce others for attacking journalists.

The full Rumble video report is designed to walk through the history of WikiLeaks to show why the US security state has been devoted to destroying Assange for more than a decade, and why he's a heroic pioneer.

Our news report on today's ruling is here:

greenwald.substack.com/p/julian-assan…