Article Image

IPFS

Senate Call for Assange to Testify

Written by Subject: United States

Senate Call for Assange to Testify

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Senate Intelligence Committee members called on Julian Assange to testify about the (witch-hunt) Russiagate probe - no olive branch extended.

On August 6, WikiLeaks tweeted the following: "BREAKING: US Senate Intelligence Committee calls editor @JulianAssange to testify." 

"Letter delivered via US embassy in London. WikiLeaks' legal team say they are 'considering the offer but testimony must conform to a high ethical standard.' "

Here's the formal request by neocon hardliners Richard Burr (committee chairman) and Mark Warner (vice chairman), saying the following:

"As you are aware, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is conducting a bipartisan inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections."

"As part of the inquiry, the Committee requests that you make yourself available for a closed interview with bipartisan Committee staff at a mutually agreeable time and location."

The letter asks Assange to respond, a phone number in Washington provided.

What's going on? Russiagate is a colossal hoax. No Russian interference in America's electoral process occurred.

Virtually everyone one in Washington and the nation's major media know (or should know) what they won't admit publicly.

Aside from designated nation-states, Assange is US public enemy No. 1 - for revealing vital hard truths dark forces in Washington want suppressed.

Last year, AG Jeff Sessions called arresting and prosecuting him "a priority." The Trump regime wants him extradited to stand trial in America under the long ago outdated 1917 Espionage Act - despite guilty of no crimes.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo disgracefully accused Assange of causing "great harm to our nation's national security" - a bald-faced lie.

He turned truth on its head, calling WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," adding:

"We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us" - a flagrant constitutional violation against anyone if enforced.

Fact: WikiLeaks is involved in whistleblowing investigative journalism.

Fact: It publishes material supplied by reliable sources, unidentified for their protection. 

Fact: It's not an intelligence operation. Nor it it connected to Russia or any other country. 

Assange earlier explained that WikiLeaks has the right "to publish newsworthy content," adding: "Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true…"

If asylum granted him by Ecuador in 2012 is revoked, he'll be unjustly arrested, extradited to America, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned - for the "crime" of truth-telling.

It's up to Assange to decide if he'll testify as requested by Senate Intelligence Committee members.

Nothing he says will end the witch-hunt Russiagate probe. Nothing will change his status in the eyes of the imperial state, nothing assuring his freedom from unjust arrest and extradition to America if asylum granted him ends.

He won't be granted a public platform to testify unconstrained and unthreatened inside or outside the confines of Ecuador's London embassy.

He may wish to provide truthful information in response to Russiagate questions by testifying. His de facto house arrest won't end so he's again able to live and function freely.

Nor will he be free from arrest, extradition to America, and kangaroo court proceedings against him, followed by imprisonment longterm if he steps outside the Ecuadorian embassy.

Whatever he does or doesn't do, he's in a no-win situation.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

thelibertyadvisor.com/declare