Julian Assange’s time in the barrel confirmed as new name pops up in Mueller probe
Special Counsel Robert Mueller apparently will indict Wikileaks generalissimo Julian Assange.
The Justice Department has prepared an indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, marking a drastic escalation of the government’s yearslong battle with him and his anti-secrecy group.
It was not clear if prosecutors have filed charges against Mr. Assange. The indictment came to light late Thursday through an unrelated court filing in which prosecutors inadvertently mentioned charges against him.
“The court filing was made in error,” said Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia. “That was not the intended name for this filing.”
Mr. Assange has lived for years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and would have to be arrested and extradited if he were to face charges in federal court, altogether a multistep diplomatic and legal process.
The filing also indicated – not in error – that an indictment or indictments are pending within the next ten days. Mueller’s operation has been leak-free and locked up tight, and – as Bill Palmer points out – one has to wonder if the reveal was “made in error”:
[I]t’s the kind of mistake they don’t make, [and] it could be aimed at getting Assange’s side to panic and screw up.
Here’s the kicker: unless a whole lot of cloak and dagger has taken place that we don’t know about, the United States doesn’t have Julian Assange. However, there has been significant talk over the past couple months that Ecuador is preparing to turn him over to the UK, which in turn has an extradition treaty with the United States. That would allow Ecuador to cough up Assange to Robert Mueller without having to be seen as having directly sold Assange out.
Something similar occurred to us when we learned late last night about the “error.” Ultimate legal paperwork nerd and MadDogPac.org blogger Spicy Files agrees:
I’m inclined to believe this wasn’t a Freudian Slip
Page 2, paragraph 3
Page 3, paragraph 5
Now that I have content & context, I do not think this is/was a mistake pic.twitter.com/E7X4tsLmRH— SpicyFiles (@SpicyFiles) November 16, 2018
Assange accomplice Kim DotCom was none too pleased to learn the news. You could say he panicked…
Julian Assange was right to seek asylum. He was right that fraudulent charges in Sweden were fabricated to facilitate extradition to the US.
Same prosecutors who punished me for being @Wikileaks donor, who want to put @Snowden away for life, coming with another sham indictment.
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) November 16, 2018
If you too are thinking “sorry, not sorry” applies, you would be correct.
Meanwhile, a shady name from the Bush 43 era has been revealed as a new name on Mueller’s radar:
Mueller’s team has been looking into the communications and political dealings of John Hannah, the former Cheney adviser who later worked on Trump’s State Department transition team. This includes interactions with Lebanese-American businessman and fixer George Nader, who brokered meetings between foreign dignitaries and team Trump, and Joel Zamel, a self-proclaimed social media guru with deep ties to Israeli intelligence. The Daily Beast previously reported that the three men met with a top Saudi general in the days leading up to Trump’s inauguration to discuss plans to undermine and overthrow the government of Iran.
There had been earlier moves by Mueller indicating that his team’s interest in foreign meddling with the 2016 campaign and election were not limited to Russia, and this reveal amplifies that conclusion.
Developing…