This morning, the news of Chelsea Manning, and it was probably something Julian Assange did not expect at all, or he had not been properly prepared for Obama's surprise move.
No surprise and many excuses. But let's see, will the online community forgive him in the end?
Mr. Julian Assange promised last week that, if Barack Obama grants a pardon to Chelsea Manning, he will surrender and go to the US to face trial.
If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case https://t.co/MZU30SlfGK
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 12, 2017
As we reported this morning, the outgoing US president, in his last hours in the White House, decided to release the former soldier, who was imprisoned for handing over classified documents to Wikileaks.
Julian Assange via Wikileaks had reported last week: “If Obama grants Manning clemency, Assange will agree to be extradited to the US despite the clear unconstitutionality of the Justice Department.”
In less than 24 hours, however, the Wikileaks chief appears to be backing away from a deal that no one asked him to make.
According to The Hill, Assange wanted to use Manning's release as a loophole. But one of Assange's many lawyers, Barry Pollack, told The Hill that Assange should not be extradited to a country that doesn't really want him.
After this publication, of course, Assange's lawyer stated that the release granted to Chelsea Manning is not satisfactory and that they will not accept the extradition.
But in the years since Manning's leaks, Julian Assange has been caught lying many times. He called himself a journalist, while making no edits to the irrelevant personal information in the leaks he released.
He pretended that his source for the Podesta messages was not Russian government collusion, even though that was actually the case. And now, publicly, he is once again contradicting himself.
Maybe it's time to stop seeing Assange as a genius and freedom fighter. What we've actually seen in recent years is that he's a very manipulative egomaniac who has chosen to stay in an embassy for years.
