If You Want to help Free Assange You Need to Recognize the Importance of the Durham Report

Cynthia Chung

It is interesting that in light of the recent release of the Durham report, there has been little evident commotion coming from the activists who wish to “Free Assange” and I think that speaks volumes about a bigger problem than even the illegal imprisonment of Julian Assange. This problem is tied to the inability to address a system that has entirely broken down and is no longer in the service of protecting the security of the American people, let alone the western world more broadly.

In fact, it is rather a bizarre phenomenon that there has been a complete disconnect between the witch-hunt against Julian Assange which is clearly connected to the 2016 US election outcome and the witch-hunt against Donald Trump who was that outcome.

Hillary Clinton ran with this narrative repeatedly during the actual 2016 presidential campaign, calling Julian Assange an agent of the Kremlin who was working to get Trump elected, while ignoring the fact that the embarrassing revelations leaked from her private emails and DNC hard drives were the product of a DNC insider (likely the murdered Seth Rich), and not a foreign hack as both Hillary and the FBI claimed.

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In another presidential debate (see 0:48 in video clip) Clinton remarked to the moderator “You are very clearly quoting from WikiLeaks and what is really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts, of private people, of institutions, then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet. This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly from Putin himself, in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election. So I actually think that the most important question of this evening Chris, is finally will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in this election, that he rejects Russian espionage against Americans, which he actually encouraged in the past. Those are the questions we need answered.”

Just to be clear, none of this to this day has ever been substantiated including by the Mueller report which had to acknowledge that they had no evidence, despite going through Trump’s tax returns, that the Trump presidential campaign had any funding or that it colluded with the Russian government.

Despite this lack of any evidence, the FBI refused to exonerate him and have instead blatantly continued an investigation for the same allegations after over six years of finding nothing (Mar-a-Lago is the most recent dubious FBI raid on Trump in August 2022 which is continuing to justify itself under the Espionage Act despite absolutely no basis).

The Mueller report also failed to provide evidence that WikiLeaks had any direct connection or funding from the Russian government, though this was another goal of their investigation. The Mueller report stated that the Special Counsel’s office considered charging WikiLeaks or Assange “as conspirators in the computer-intrusion conspiracy and that there were “factual uncertainties” about the role that Assange may have played in the hacks or their distribution that were “the subject of ongoing investigations” by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Thus, the over $25 million dollar Mueller investigation also failed to implicate WikiLeaks in the Russia Gate conspiracy and yet also refused to exonerate Julian Assange.

The Mueller report also failed to provide evidence that the Russian government, or as Hillary made the point repeatedly, Putin, shaped the outcome of the 2016 US elections. Yet, this continues to be alleged.

Thus, we have three entities being accused of election interference: Trump, Assange, and the Russian government (Putin more specifically) and none of these have been substantiated (Mueller’s report on fake Russian social media accounts and fake hashtags does not cut it, for the details of the Mueller report refer here.).

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We are left with the very agencies and individuals that have been launching these accusations as the real source of election interference and threats to national security.

Why were the constant FBI investigations into Trump during his presidential campaign and actual presidency not considered an unlawful interference with the 2016 US elections and presidency? Why are the never-ending court cases against Trump, the newest announced to take place just three weeks after Super Tuesday, one of the most important days on the Republican presidential primary calendar leading up to the 2024 elections not considered unlawful interference with the 2024 US elections?

It is thus an internal problem, not a foreign infiltration problem.

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Assange has clearly been a destabilizing force to the structural integrity of the Five Eyes apparatus by simply exposing it for what it was, as did NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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Yes, Assange did influence the outcome of the 2016 US elections LEGALLY by informing Americans about the skeletons in Hillary’s closet (or more accurately described as catacomb). This would never have come to light without Assange since Hillary had actually destroyed or removed federal records while under investigation on numerous occasions and was receiving a certain degree of state protection as well which is seen by the mere fact that she was never held accountable for destroying these files, which is a federal crime, even though it is acknowledged that she was in fact guilty of this.

The reason why WikiLeaks had leaked so much damning material on Hillary and not on Trump is very simple, and has nothing to do with Assange working for Trump or Russia or any other bias. It was because Trump did not have anything criminal to expose to the American public to begin with.

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In 2012, Julian Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador who feared his human rights might be violated if he were extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape and molestation which were made in August 2010.

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In May 2017, Sweden dropped the rape investigation. At this point there does not appear to be any reason why Assange could not walk away as a free man, however, the UK government continued to push for his detainment.

A new President of Ecuador is elected on May 24, 2017, Lenin Moreno.

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In December 2018, Moreno demands that Assange leave the Ecuadorean embassy.

In April 2019, UK police enter the embassy and detain Assange for “failing to surrender to the court” over a warrant issued in 2012. This warrant should no longer have been valid since it applied to Sweden’s investigation at the time that was dropped by 2017.

Clearly to accommodate this enforcing of an expired warrant, Sweden decides to reopen the sexual assault case against Assange, one month later, in May 2019.

That same month, Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in the Belmarsh prison in London for breaching his bail conditions.

In November 2019, Sweden again drops the investigation into Assange for sexual assault, yet, Assange was to remain in prison for something that he would ultimately never even face trial for, and has remained incarcerated in the Belmarsh prison four years later.

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On 13 September 2019, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that Assange would not be released on 22 September when his prison term ended because he was a flight risk amidst an extradition request. She said when his sentence came to an end, his status would change from a serving prisoner to a person facing extradition. It should be noted that under normal circumstances, a charged individual may be imprisoned for up to 30 DAYS AWAITING EXTRADITION if they are considered a flight risk, it has been THREE YEARS+ in the case of Assange.

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On 4 January 2021, Judge Baraitser ruled that Assange could not be extradited to the United States, citing concerns about his mental health and the risk of suicide in a US prison. However, she also sided with the US on every other point, including whether the charges constituted political offences and whether Assange was entitled to freedom of speech protections.

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In August 2021, Lord Justice Holroyde in High Court granted permission for the contested risk of suicide to be raised on the appeal. In December 2021, the Hight Court ruled in favour of the United States.

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The case was remitted to Westminster Magistrates’ Court with the direction that it be sent to the Home Secretary Priti Patel for the final decision on whether to extradite Assange. On 24 January 2022 Assange was granted permission to petition the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom for an appeal hearing, but in March the court refused to allow the appeal, saying that Assange had not raised an arguable point of law.

On 20 April 2022, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring of the Westminster Magistrates Court formally approved the extradition of Assange to the US and referred the decision to the Home Secretary Priti Patel. On 17 June 2022, Patel approved the extradition.

On 1 July 2022, Assange lodged an appeal against the extradition in the High Court. On 22 August 2022, Assange’s legal team lodged a Perfected Grounds of Appeal before the High Court challenging District Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s decision of 4 January 2021 with new evidence. Assange also made a further appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but on 13 December 2022, this appeal was declared inadmissible. (Source on details of Assange’s court proceedings from Wikipedia.)

Assange faces 18 charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents, largely the result of a leak by the former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

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Thus, Assange, whom the Mueller investigation failed to implicate in Russia Gate, was instead to be charged under the Espionage Act due to publishing material Manning sent to WikiLeaks on classified or sensitive military information concerning…the merits of the War on Terror.

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The Relevance of the Durham Report

The Durham report is a special counsel investigation that began in 2019 when the US Justice Department designated federal prosecutor John Durham to review the origins of the FBI investigations into the validity of 2016 US elections and more specifically the Trump campaign.

Durham was given authority to examine the government’s collection of intelligence, government documents and to request voluntary witness statements.

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Durham also noted that the Steele dossier, the provoking act for the investigation, was deeply flawed and that the FBI was unable to corroborate “a single substantive allegation.” He added that the agency went through with the investigation despite “a complete lack of information from the Intelligence Community that corroborated the hypothesis upon which the… investigation was predicated.”

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Via https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/if-you-want-to-help-free-assange