{"id":385334,"date":"2018-11-16T20:30:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T19:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=385334"},"modified":"2018-11-16T20:30:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T19:30:16","slug":"trump-quietly-orders-elimination-of-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/trump-quietly-orders-elimination-of-assange\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Quietly Orders Elimination of Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On June 28th, the Washington Examiner<\/i> headlined “Pence pressed Ecuadorian president on country’s protection of Julian Assange\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported that \u201cVice President Mike Pence discussed the asylum status of Julian Assange during a meeting with Ecuador’s leader on Thursday, following pressure from Senate Democrats who have voiced concerns over the country’s protection of the WikiLeaks founder.\u201d Pence had been given this assignment by U.S. President Donald Trump. The following day, the Examiner<\/i> bannered “Mike Pence raises Julian Assange case with Ecuadorean president, White House confirms\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported that the White House had told the newspaper, \u201cThey agreed to remain in close coordination on potential next steps going forward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On August 24th, a court-filing by Kellen S. Dwyer, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Alexandria Division of the Eastern District of Virginia<\/span><\/a>, stated: \u201cDue to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure [than sealing the case, hiding it from the public] is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged. \u2026 This motion and the proposed order would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.\u201d That filing was discovered by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. On November 15th, he posted an excerpt of it on Twitter<\/span><\/a>, just hours after the Wall Street Journal<\/i> had reported on the same day that the Justice Department was preparing to prosecute Assange. However, now that we know \u201cthe fact that Assange has been charged\u201d and that the U.S. Government is simply waiting \u201cuntil Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter,\u201d it is clear and public that the arrangements which were secretly made between Trump\u2019s agent Pence and the current President of Ecuador are expected to deliver Assange into U.S. custody for criminal prosecution, if Assange doesn\u2019t die at the Ecuadorean Embassy first.<\/span><\/p>\n

On November 3rd (which, of course, preceded the disclosures on November 15th), Julian Assange\u2019s mother, Christine Ann Hawkins, described in detail<\/span><\/a> what has happened to her son since the time of Pence\u2019s meeting with Ecuador\u2019s President. She said: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe is, right now, alone, sick, in pain, silenced in solitary confinement, cut off from all contact, and being tortured in the heart of London. \u2026 He has been detained nearly eight years, without trial, without charge. For the past six years, the UK Government has refused his requests to exit for basic health needs, \u2026 <\/i>[even for] vitamin D. \u2026 As a result, his health has seriously deteriorated. \u2026 A slow and cruel assassination is taking place before our very eyes. \u2026 They will stop at nothing. \u2026 When U.S. Vice President Mike Pence recently visited Ecuador, a deal was done to hand Julian over to the U.S. He said that because the political cost of expelling Julian from the Embassy was too high, the plan was to break him down mentally\u2026 \u00a0 <\/span>to such a point that he will break and be forced to leave. \u2026 The extradition warrant is held in secret, four prosecutors but no defense, and no judge, \u2026 without a prima-facie case. <\/i>[Under the U.S. system, the result nonetheless can be] indefinite detention without trial. Julian could be held in Guantanamo Bay and tortured, sentenced to 45 years in a maximum security prison, or face the death penalty,<\/i>\u201d for \u201cespionage<\/i>,\u201d in such secret proceedings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her phrase, \u201cbecause the political cost of expelling Julian from the Embassy was too high\u201d refers to the worry that this new President of Ecuador has, of his cooperating with the U.S. regime\u2019s demands and thereby basically ceding sovereignty to those foreigners (the rulers of the U.S.), regarding the Ecuadorian citizen, Assange. <\/span><\/p>\n

This conservative new President of Ecuador, who has replaced the progressive President who had granted Assange protection, is obviously doing all that he can to comply with U.S. President Trump and the U.S. Congress\u2019s demand for Assange either to die soon inside the Embassy or else be transferred to the U.S. and basically just disappear, at Guantanamo or elsewhere. Ecuador\u2019s President wants to do this in such a way that Ecuador\u2019s voters won\u2019t blame him for it, and that he\u2019ll thus be able to be re-elected. This is the type of deal he apparently has reached with Trump\u2019s agent, Pence. It\u2019s all secret, but the evidence on this much of what was secretly agreed-to seems clear. There are likely other details of the agreement that cannot, as yet, be conclusively inferred from the subsequent events, but this much can.<\/span><\/p>\n

Basically, Trump has arranged for Assange to be eliminated either by illness that\u2019s imposed by his Ecuadorean agent, or else by Assange\u2019s own suicide resulting from that \u201ctorture,\u201d or else by America\u2019s own criminal-justice system. If this elimination happens inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, then that would be optimal for America\u2019s President and Congress; but, if it instead happens on U.S. soil, then that would be optimal for Ecuador\u2019s President. Apparently, America\u2019s President thinks that his subjects, the American people, will become sufficiently hostile toward Assange so that even if Assange disappears or is executed inside the United States, this President will be able to retain his supporters. Trump, of course, needs his supporters, but this is a gamble that he has now clearly taken. This much is clear, even though the rest of the secret agreement that was reached between Pence and Ecuador\u2019s President is not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scooter Libby, who had arranged for the smearing of Valerie Plame who had tried to prevent the illegal and deceit-based 2003 invasion of Iraq, was sentenced to 30 months but never spent even a day in prison, and U.S. President Trump finally went so far as to grant him a complete pardon, on 13 April 2018<\/span><\/a>. (The carefully researched docudrama \u201cFair Game\u201d<\/span><\/a> covered well the Plame-incident.) Libby had overseen the career-destruction of a courageous CIA agent, Plame, who had done the right thing and gotten fired for it; and Trump pardoned Libby, thus retroactively endorsing the lie-based<\/span><\/a> invasion of Iraq in 2003. By contrast, Trump is determined to get Julian Assange killed or otherwise eliminated, and even Democrats in Congress are pushing for him to get that done. The new President of Ecuador is doing their bidding. Without pressure from the U.S. Government, Assange would already be a free man. Thus, either Assange will die (be murdered) soon inside the Embassy, or else he will disappear and be smeared in the press under U.S. control. And, of course, this is being done in such a way that no one will be prosecuted for the murder or false-imprisonment. Trump had promised to \u201cclean the swamp,\u201d but as soon as he was elected, he abandoned that pretense; and, as President, he has been bipartisan on that matter, to hide the crimes of the bipartisan U.S. Government, and he is remarkably similar in policy to his immediate predecessors, whom he had severely criticized while he was running for the Presidency. <\/span><\/p>\n

In any event, the destruction of Assange has clearly been arranged for, at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, just as the destruction of Jamal Khashoggi was by Saudi Arabia\u2019s Government; and, just like in Khashoggi\u2019s case, the nation\u2019s ruler controls the prosecutors and can therefore do whatever he chooses to do that the rest of the nation\u2019s aristocracy consider to be acceptable.<\/span><\/p>\n

The assault against truth isn\u2019t only against Assange, but it is instead also closing down many of the best, most courageous, independent news sites, such as washingtonsblog<\/span><\/a>. However, in Assange\u2019s case, the penalty for having a firm commitment to truth has been especially excruciating and will almost certainly end in his premature death. This is simply the reality. Because of the system under which we live, a 100% commitment to truth is now a clear pathway to oblivion. Assange is experiencing this reality to the fullest. That\u2019s what\u2019s happening here.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On June 28th, the Washington Examiner headlined “Pence pressed Ecuadorian president on country’s protection of Julian Assange\u201d and reported that \u201cVice President Mike Pence discussed the asylum status of Julian Assange during a meeting with Ecuador’s leader on Thursday, following pressure from Senate Democrats who have voiced concerns over the country’s protection of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":369578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[2842,3604,535,1034,541,524,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-385334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-assange","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-independent-media","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-warfare","16":"tag-white-house","17":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385335,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385334\/revisions\/385335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}