Julian Assange is Finally Freed

What will his supporters focus on next?

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

This week WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is finally free for the first time in 12 years. He has had a variety of people who were advocating for his release. Filmmaker Michael Moore reposted this 2010 article on his Substack where he explained why he posted $20,000 to bail Assange out of jail. This compilation of tweets celebrating Assange’s freedom reflect the views of people on the far left and far right, which proves the validation of the Horseshoe Theory.

As Dave Troy notes: “Watch who lionizes Assange and know they are enemies of the United States, allied with our adversaries. Everyone of these people is a legit counterintelligence target.”

There's a reason why Dave Troy is skeptical of who supports Julian Assange. I was initially an Assange supporter myself until I became disillusioned with him. I first heard of Julian Assange when he made a guest appearance on The Colbert Report back in 2010. (UPDATE: Just days after I posted a link to the episode in question, Paramount had decided to take down all of its online archived content, including The Colbert Report, as part of some kind of an insane cost-cutting measure. Now all links redirect to a promo page for its Paramount+ streaming service. I tried looking on YouTube to see if they had a copy of that interview and it looks like they don't. Sorry for the inconvenience.)

He initially made a splash on the international scene with the leak of the infamous video “Collateral Murder,” which showed a deadly 2007 US military helicopter attack in Iraq. It was incendiary at a time when the main reasons why then-President George W. Bush pushed for an invasion of Iraq (Saddam Hussein was behind the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and Iraq was building an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction) turned out to be totally bogus. (I still find it outrageous that George W. Bush isn’t sitting in prison in the Hague for ordering an invasion of a country that wasn’t even harming the US. What he did to Iraq is little better than Vladimir Putin ordering an invasion of Ukraine.)

As a former journalism student, I really admired Julian Assange for the fact that he founded WikiLeaks because I strongly believe in government transparency because it keeps our elected officials honest. Can you imagine what the US would be like today if The Washington Post had prohibited two of its reporters—Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—from investigating that break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC when Woodward and Bernstein’s findings ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon? Exposing corruption and shady practices is healthy for keeping democracy intact.

As time went on my admiration for Assange started to fade. Initially it was when he was charged with rape in Sweden in 2010 while he was in the United Kingdom. Assange denied the charges and many of his followers said that it was part of a politically-motivated smear campaign of Assange. I initially thought that there’s the chance that he was being framed as a form of political revenge for him leaking that “Collateral Murder” video. (The Swedish rape charge was eventually dropped in 2019.)

He initially turned himself in to the British authorities regarding the Swedish rape charge. He was released on bail and he appealed his extradition to Sweden. But then in 2012 he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London to request asylum. He would spend the next seven years in that embassy while he was in a special kind of limbo where he would be arrested if he ever went beyond the embassy grounds. He claimed that the Swedish rape investigation was really a cover where if he was sent to Sweden to face charges, he would ultimately be deported to the US to face further charges regarding the release of sensitive documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While Assange was in the Ecuadorian embassy, he kept up with his exposes. Here is where I became really disillusioned with Assange. In 2016 he received sensitive documents regarding both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. He decided to release only some of them just prior to the 2016 elections. If he was really interested in transparency like he said he was, he would’ve released the documents from both committees. But, no, he decided to release only the Democratic National Committee documents and not the Republican National Committee ones. He even had WikiLeaks turn down publicizing Russian government leaks regarding the US election. This showed that Assange was completely biased in favor of Donald Trump getting elected and he seemed to be sympathetic to Russia.

But why would an Australian like Assange care about Trump’s election? It soon turned out that Assange is pretty tight with the Kremlin to the point where he never publishes any leaks regarding the Russian government.

During his days in the Ecuadorian embassy he actually had his own show that was shown on RT (which is the Kremlin-owned broadcast channel) known alternatively as World Tomorrow and The Julian Assange Show, which further showed how tight he is with the Putin regime. Perhaps he takes after his father when it comes to being on Russia’s side since his father has spoken at one pro-Russian protest in Australia (at least).

Vladimir Putin isn't the only authoritarian whom Assange seems to admire. In fact, like so many other pro-Russian people I've featured in this Substack, there seems to never be an authoritarian dictator whom Assange has never liked, such as Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. If Assange likes an authoritarian leader enough, that leader will never have to worry about any of his government's secrets being posted on WikiLeaks.

In any case after seven years the relations between Assange and the Ecuadoran embassy began to break down. The Ecuadoran government began to accuse Assange of obnoxious behavior like riding scooters around the embassy’s cramped hallways and smearing feces on the walls. They grew so tired of their houseguest by 2019 that they stripped Assange of his asylum and gave him to the British government, who then sent Assange to Belmarsh prison, where he would spend the next five years while the US government requested extradition on charges that Assange broke into US military databases.

Over the years there were people calling for his release, such as former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, who frequently made references to Assange in his concerts.

But most people just weren't very likely to defend Assange. I think that between the rape allegation and enabling the election of Donald Trump by withholding certain information that would've resulted in a different outcome to the 2016 election has alienated people who would have otherwise taken up his plight. I know that I was done with him after 2016 and I think many other people felt the same way.

Then there were the controversial leaks on WikiLeaks where the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web. In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, which is bad in Saudi Arabia because homosexuality can lead to social ostracism, a prison sentence or even death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.

Assange had condemned the American military-industrial complex so much that, in his zeal to show how bad it really is, he announced that opponents of dictatorial regimes and movements were fair game for his leaks, which included those who opposed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This one headline in The Atlantic says it all about those years when Assange was imprisoned: Julian Assange Got What He Deserved.

By 2024 the case went down to a plea bargain with the US Justice Department prosecutors in a federal court in Saipan in the US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. Assange pleaded guilty to a single felony charge for obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets. In exchange he was immediately released so he could return to his native Australia without spending any time in a US prison. So after seven years being holed up in an embassy and five years in prison, Assange is finally free for the first time in 12 years.

I think the US government did the right thing in freeing Assange because he had already spent so many years not being allowed to go out whenever he wanted and being very limited in his movements. I think what he went through is punishment enough. And it has the added bonus of putting an abrupt end to that Free Julian Assange movement (which never became a huge movement, due in large part to Assange's own shenanigans, but it attracted a variety of oddballs, including Roger Waters and Tucker Carlson).

I hope that he just steps out of the spotlight and live a quiet life with no more controversy. But I have a strange feeling that he'll somehow be back in the public eye in one way or another. He seems like the kind of guy who doesn't know when to quit being a public figure—just like Donald Trump. (I would be thrilled if Assange proves me wrong and just lives the rest of his life out of the public spotlight.)

As for those who openly advocated for Assange’s release, they are probably happy with what happened. Many of these people also tend to be Kremlin sympathizers (such as Tucker Carlson) so they can easily pivot to some other cause that the Kremlin wants them to focus on, such as urging Ukraine to stop fighting the Russian invaders and just let the Russians conquer Ukraine. They won't be bored as long as the Kremlin gives them something to focus on.

I'll just end this post with a congratulatory tweet aimed at Assange for finally being freed while noting that he is now a convicted felon just like Donald Trump so he won't be able to enter the US anymore.

My blog is free to subscribe but if you want to make a comment, you’ll need to take out a paid subscription. Click on the button below for more details.