Re: Obama ends pursuit of Julian Assange

On 6/25/24 2:15 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

In article <v5ehpo$1inqs$1@dont-email.me>,
  "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
 

Just heard on the news that the United States government has entered
into a plea deal with Julian Assange. Assange is allowed to plead guilty
to one count of violating the Espionage Act, that vile law written on
behalf of the Wilson administration by Congress to silence critics of
WW1 and America's involvement in that horrid European war, that has been
used by subsequent administrations in all sorts of creative ways to
silence critics of America's war policies and just generally to
intimidate people into silence.

 I still don't understand how Assange was subject to the Espionage Act at
all. He was foreign national and was not within U.S. borders when he did
all the stuff the government claimed of him.
 Citizens of other nations do not owe allegiance to the United States
and, indeed, all other countries, including our closest allies, spy on
us as we do to them.
 The U.S. Congress has no legal authority or justification to bind all
six billion people on earth to obey U.S. law.

So if you steal something American and you're a foreign national you shouldn't expect to be prosecuted for it?  Are you sure that's how that works?  Is there a real lawyer you can ask for help?

Yes, by publishing everything Manning leaked, Assange had put lives in
danger, but no one believes Obama cared about that. It was strictly
about embarassment.

 And when the NY Times published the Pentagon Papers, they put lives in
danger, too, but it was constitutionally protected speech. Like the
Times, Assange didn't steal the TS info. Manning did. And like the
Times, he should have been constitutionally protected when he published
it.
 The argument was that the Pentagon Papers decision didn't apply because
he's a foreign national and not entitled to constitutional protections
when not on U.S. soil. But that same argument applies to the Espionage
Act, too. The government is basically saying "U.S. law only applies to
you (foreign nationals) when it suits us".