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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 4026125" data-attributes="member: 56035">GLENN GREENWALD: I think the most important fact is that the arrest warrant, according to Assange’s longtime lawyer Jennifer Robinson, is based on allegations that Assange conspired or collaborated with Chelsea Manning with regard to the 2010 leaks of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and diplomatic cables—a theory that the Obama Justice Department tried for a long time to pursue, but found no evidence for, in order to be able to justify prosecuting Assange and not face the accusation that they were endangering press freedoms by prosecuting Assange for something The New York Times and The Guardian and every other media outlet in the world routinely does, which is publish classified information.Even if it were true that Assange collaborated with Manning—and, again, the Justice Department of President Obama looked everywhere and found no evidence of that—it would still be a grave threat to press freedoms, because journalists all the time work with their sources in order to obtain classified information so that they can report on it. It’s the criminalization of journalism by the Trump Justice Department and the gravest threat to press freedom, by far, under the Trump presidency, infinitely worse than having Donald Trump tweet mean things about various reporters at CNN or NBC. And every journalist in the world should be raising their voice as loudly as possible to protest and denounce this....doing everything they could to coerce Ecuador, under President M, to do something that President Correa refused to do, which is violate international law, withdraw Julian Assange’s asylum.....NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Glenn Greenwald, I want to ask you. The American Civil Liberties Union has just issued a statement, Ben Wizner saying that the prosecution of Assange is especially troubling because “prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.” Glenn Greenwald, can you respond to that, I mean, what U.S. journalists do and regarding this foreign secrecy laws?GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I think that is one of the remarkable aspects of this, is that Julian Assange is not an American citizen. I think he visited the U.S. once for about three days. WikiLeaks is a foreign-based media organization. So, the idea that the U.S. government can just extend its reach to any news outlet anywhere in the world and criminalize publication of documents or working with sources is extremely chilling. That would mean, for example, that China or North Korea or Iran could do the same thing if a U.S. news outlet published its secrets, which sometimes they do. It would mean that Iran would have the ability, or China, to issue an international arrest warrant and demand that the reporters who work for the U.S. news outlets be extradited to those countries.<a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/11/julian_assange_of_wikileaks_arrested_in#transcript" target="_blank">Julian Assange of WikiLeaks Arrested in London; Faces U.S. Charge Related to Chelsea Manning Leaks | Democracy Now!</a></blockquote>

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