As a lawyer, you do not walk into a courtroom and start making up facts, not in this country nor in the U.K.. You can “make-up” your version of how the law must be construed, but not facts. Thus, when Julian Assange’s lawyers start telling the court in the U.K. that when the Trump administration couldn’t “control” Assange through promises of a pardon, it turned to extortion, as they did today, it is time to take it very seriously.

Perhaps it will take Assange, the guy who played such a big role in bringing Trump to the world, to take Trump down.

Defense: “Whole pardon business shows that just as prosecution was initiated in December 2017 so after this meeting for political purposes. So too did Trump administration use the threat of prosecution as a means of extortion to obtain personal political advantage from Assange.”

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) February 24, 2020

For those here who are having a difficult time following, Assange is fighting extradition to the United States, where he will be prosecuted by the Trump administration for the theft of the DNC emails. Assange is telling the court in the U.K. that this is all a “political prosecution,” taken-on by Trump, because Trump couldn’t control Assange, who had been offered a pardon.

If the court in the U.K. determines that it is likely true, that Assange is likely being prosecuted for purely political purposes, then the court can deny extradition to the United States, and simply prosecute Assange on far less serious charges in the U.K.

For our purposes the point is this: It would be explosive if the United Kingdom – heretofore our closest ally, and the country upon which we have based all our common-law – determined that the United States under Donald Trump, now engages in purely political prosecutions. In other words, the U.K. would be treating the United States like we were Iraq, Nicaragua, or some other rogue state, that prosecutes people for crossing the dictator.

THAT is something that is worth watching, because it would be one of the biggest red-flags that the United States under Trump has crossed the dictator rubicon. If courts across the globe refuse to extradite some prisoners to the United States because they believe it is just Trump’s administration trying to get “at” people, we’ve become the pariah that we used to always police against.

It is also certain that Assange knows the entire truth about what happened with the emails, Wiki-leaks, and Russia  – which is probably why Trump is freaked about getting control of Assange in the first place – Assange may start telling the whole story, to demonstrate why he could never get a fair trial in the United States.

This is a story very much worth watching, though a little below the radar.

****

Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom