Julian Assange Case: Key Witness Admits He Lied, US Media Ignores Exculpatory Revelations

Zeedox

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Dec 1, 2020
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The United States’ Department of Justice’s case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange took a serious hit last week after a key witness admitted that he fabricated accusations in order to get immunity. Though these revelations were made public by an Icelandic newspaper on June 26, the mainstream media in the US has largely chosen to ignore them.

According to the bi-weekly Stundin, the witness, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, “has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial fraud”. He was recruited by US authorities in order to build a case against Assange, and misled them into believing he was a close associate of the Wikileaks founder. In reality, however, he had only “volunteered on a limited basis to raise money for Wikileaks in 2010 but was found to have used that opportunity to embezzle more than $50,000 from the organisation”, the Icelandic newspaper reports.
 
It's not going to matter. Julian Assange wasn't charged with hacking. He was wanted for receiving and publishing stolen classified documents.

That this fellow lied about Assange telling him to hack is irrelevant.

It would be like you knowingly receiving a stolen car. It's not going to matter if I lied to the police by saying you told me to steal it.

All that matters is that you knew it was stolen and you took it anyway.
 
It's not going to matter. Julian Assange wasn't charged with hacking. He was wanted for receiving and publishing stolen classified documents.

That this fellow lied about Assange telling him to hack is irrelevant.

It would be like you knowingly receiving a stolen car. It's not going to matter if I lied to the police by saying you told me to steal it.

All that matters is that you knew it was stolen and you took it anyway.

You mean like Neil Shaheen, publishing the Pentagon Papers he received from Daniel Ellsburg?
 
Assange is charged with like 18 fucking felonies. Dropping one or two isn't going to do him any favors.
 
You mean like Neil Shaheen, publishing the Pentagon Papers he received from Daniel Ellsburg?
Full disclosure: I had to look that up.

It's not really the same thing. Shaheen was told flat out to not copy the papers. He did anyway illegally. Daniel Ellsberg, the guy that supplied the papers, was guilty of espionage in pretty much the same way that Reality Winner was - he took classified documents out and showed them to someone who then copied them and published a story about them.

In Winner's case though, she just flat out gave the documents over. Both are just as bad though.

In Assange's case, he let it be widely known that he would reward anybody that brought him classified or restricted/private documents. It was a widely known and widely publicized policy of his.

Whether or not he told one specific guy to do it is moot.

It's clear that this Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson person lied to try to get a deal. But that doesn't change the fact that Assange had a standing policy of receiving and publishing and paying for any stolen documents he could get his hands on.

It goes back to my stolen car example: just because one guy lied about you telling him to steal a car doesn't mean you're not guilty of running a chop shop by accepting any stolen car you can get your hands on and paying the thieves that steal them.
 
Ellsburg "handed over" the documents to Shaheen in the end also...


Mr. Sheehan had been a reporter in Vietnam when he first met Mr. Ellsberg and was back in the United States when they began discussing the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Ellsberg promised him access to the documents, but when Mr. Sheehan arrived to pick them up, Mr. Ellsberg said he could only take notes from them, not copy them. Mr. Sheehan, however, ignored him and smuggled the papers out of Mr. Ellsberg’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., secretly copied them and took his copies to Times editors in New York. Later, as The Times was preparing to publish the papers, Mr. Sheehan asked Mr. Ellsberg if he could have the actual documents, and Mr. Ellsberg consented. But Mr. Ellsberg was still surprised when they appeared in print.