Defending Assange against sexual assault allegations

[Jim Lane]

230. Responses to your questions

Your assumption is that all powerful people are all-powerful. This is a case where the hyphen makes a great deal of difference.

The inference that there was no high-level involvement in targeting Assange, because it would have been done earlier and/or elsewhere, is very weak. Consider:

1. My prior impression, reinforced by some comments in this thread, is that laws and attitudes in Sweden about allegations of sex crimes are different from those in most other countries, in ways that are unfavorable to the accused.

2. According to at least one post in this thread, Swedish law denies a defendant in such cases some of the rights that would be considered basic in the United States and in many other countries, such as the right to trial by jury.

3. As I understand the facts, Assange did have sex in Sweden. Maybe he didn’t have sex with anyone in the UK. In that case, maybe the answer to your question is, “That’s pretty much it, they couldn’t find anyone in the UK who could make a plausible accusation that would hold up in court for five minutes.” Alternatively, the women with whom he had sex in the UK weren’t known, or the circumstances made it beyond dispute that it was consensual.

I haven’t followed the case in detail so I don’t know what Assange has been up to while in the embassy. I don’t find it at all implausible that he’s able to do more Wikileaks-related stuff there than he would in a Swedish prison. Even if Ecuador asked him to cool it, as a condition of his sanctuary, that proves only that his hypothetical persecutors achieved their goal even without having to prove his guilt in court.

Then you ring in Greenwald and conclude, “Almost like those powerful people aren't trumping up charges.....” Right, so Greenwald is at liberty and that proves that Manning is guilty of everything she was accused of (even the charges on which she was acquitted). In fact, it proves that everyone ever targeted by the U.S. Government was actually guilty, and that the U.S. Government has never used a criminal prosecution or the threat of a criminal prosecution to counter dissidents and whistleblowers. While we’re at it, not everyone on Nixon’s enemies list went to jail, so that proves that Nixon never took any action to target his political enemies.

I don’t agree with that inference. It comes down again to those malefactors being powerful but not all-powerful. I’m sure there are plenty of people in government who would love to lock up Glenn Greenwald (or impair his reporting by causing him to stay in an embassy and never leave) if they thought they could get away with it.

By the way, in a different post (#200), I wrote, “If I were the trial judge, I would permit the defense to introduce evidence tending to show that the defendant's political activities could, directly or indirectly, provide a motive for false testimony against him, just as I would permit the prosecution to introduce evidence to the contrary.” If the defense makes an argument of political persecution, it would certainly be open to the prosecution to try to counter that with evidence and arguments along the lines of your posts. All I’m saying is that “they couldn’t find anyone in the UK to lie?” is not enough of a response to dismiss the defense out of hand. Do you agree with my statement about letting both sides make their case at trial?