Chelsea Manning said on Sunday that the prosecution of Julian Assange shows the Trump administration “clearly wants to go after journalists.”
On Sunday, the former soldier-turned-whistleblower made her first TV appearance since her release from jail on Thursday. She was arrested in March and held in contempt for refusing to testify to a grand jury in the government’s hacking case against Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
“Do you view the prosecution of Assange as a threat to press freedom?” CNN’s Brian Stelter asked.
Manning said the eastern Virginia district, the court heading the Assange prosecution, is becoming a “rubber stamp” to start going after reporters.
“This administration clearly wants to go after journalists,” she said, predicting that if the Trump administration gets its way, national security reporters and any other journalists who are “disruptive” to Trump’s agenda will face charges that aren’t directly related to their coverage.
“Whenever a journalist makes a misstep, I think that they’re going to be put on notice now that the FBI and the Department of Justice are going to go after them on administration’s behalf,” Manning said.
Watch below:
Chelsea Manning says the prosecution of Julian Assange indicates that the Trump administration "clearly wants to go after journalists." pic.twitter.com/kDfXXlvH6f
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 12, 2019
When did Assange have anything to do with journalism?
While it’s obvious, even to those in a permanent vegetative state, that Trump "wants to go after journalists”…
Julian Assange is a journalist like Jeffrey Dahmer was a nutritionist.
I don’t believe for a moment that the tRump maladministration wants to go after Julian Assange. I believe there was an order for extradition as part of chargeable offenses towards Assange long before tRump came into office, and those still have some teeth or have to be honored due to the work involved in the case. If you ask me, that’s a good thing. I think if tRump has his druthers (which is highly mercurial), and Barr has anything to do with any of the Assange extradition matter, it will be to figure out a way to let go of the matter altogether and pretend he never happened. They may even declare him a national hero somehow. They benefitted from Assange’s subversiveness and that will be his reward.
The Jacobinite “left” takes time out on its war against the Democratic Party to finally send some of its fire Trump’s way … and it’s to defend the rabidly anti-American Assange. As always, I just can’t understand why so many voters reject these people. They only have America’s best interests at heart, after all. They attack the Democratic Party to make it better. Really, they do. Just ask them.
Oh, that’s bad!!!