Top U.S. officials are speaking at cross purposes when it comes to Julian Assange. What is really going on? asks Joe Lauria.
U.S. Embassy in Canberra. (U.S. Embassy Australia)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
It was a little more than perplexing. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on Australian soil, left no doubt about how his government feels about one of Australia’s most prominent citizens.
“I understand the concerns and views of Australians,” Blinken said in Brisbane on July 31 with the Australian foreign minister at his side. “I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter.” He said:
“What our Department of Justice has already said repeatedly, publicly, is this: Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country. So I say that only because just as we understand sensitivities here, it’s important that our friends understand sensitivities in the United States.”
In other words, when it comes to Julian Assange, the U.S. elite cares little for what Australians have to say. There are more impolite ways to describe Blinken’s response. Upwards of 88 percent of Australians and both parties in the Australian government have told Washington to free the man. And Blinken essentially told them to stuff it. The U.S. won’t drop the case.
A few days before Blinken spoke, Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia and daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, was also dismissive of Australians’ concerns, telling Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio:
“I met with Parliamentary supporters of Julian Assange and I’ve listened to their concerns and I understand that this has been raised at the highest levels of our government, but it is an ongoing legal case, so the Department of Justice is really in charge but I’m sure that for Julian Assange it means a lot that he has this kind of support but we’re just going to have to wait to see what happens.”
Asked why she met with the parliamentarians at all, she said: “Well, it’s an important issue, it has, as I’ve said, been raised at the highest levels and I wanted to hear directly from them about their concerns to make sure that we all understood where each other was coming from and I thought it was a very useful conversation.”
Asked whether her meeting with the MPs had shifted her thinking on the Assange case, Kennedy said bluntly: “Not really.” She added that her “personal thinking isn’t really relevant here.”
Blowback
Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Australia has too often behaved as a doormat to the United States, to the point where Australia is threatening its own security by going along with an aggressive U.S. policy towards China, which poses no threat to Australia.
But this time, Blinken got an earful. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated that he wanted the Assange case to be dropped. Certain members of Parliament brusquely gave it back to Blinken.
Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition.
“Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense,” said Wilkie said.
“Mr Blinken would be well aware of the inquiries in both the US and Australia which found that the relevant WikiLeaks disclosures did not result in harm to anyone,” the MP said. “The only deadly behaviour was by US forces … exposed by WikiLeaks, like the Apache crew who gunned down Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists” in the infamous Collateral Murder video.
As was shown conclusively by defense witnesses in his September 2020 extradition hearing in London, Assange worked assiduously to redact names of U.S. informants before WikiLeaks publications on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. U.S. Gen. Robert Carr testified at the court martial of WikiLeaks‘ source, Chelsea Manning, that no one was harmed by the material’s publication.
Instead, Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. dungeon on charges of violating the Espionage Act, not for stealing U.S. classified material, but for the First Amendment-protected publication of it.
Labor MP Julian Hill, also part of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, told The Guardian he had “a fundamentally different view of the substance of the matter than secretary Blinken expressed. But I appreciate that at least his remarks are candid and direct.”
“In the same vein, I would say back to the United States: at the very least, take Julian Assange’s health issues seriously and go into court in the United Kingdom and get him the hell out of a maximum security prison where he’s at risk of dying without medical care if he has another stroke,” Hill said.
Damage Control
Left to Right: Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on July 31 in Brisbane. (Senator Penny Wong/X)
The fierce Australian reaction to both Blinken and Kennedy’s remarks appears to have taken Washington by surprise, given how accustomed to Canberra’s supine behavior the U.S. has become. Just two weeks after Blinken’s remarks, Kennedy tried to soften the blow by muddying Blinken’s clear waters.
She told The Sydney Morning Herald in a front-page interview published on Aug. 14 that the United States was now, despite Blinken’s unequivocal words, suddenly open to a plea agreement that could free Assange, allowing him to serve a shortened sentence for a lesser crime in his home country.
The newspaper said there could be a “David Hicks-style plea bargain,” a so-called Alford Plea, in which Assange would continue to state his innocence while accepting a lesser charge that would allow him to serve additional time in Australia. The four years Assange has already served on remand at London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison could perhaps be taken into account.
Kennedy said a decision on such a plea deal was up to the U.S. Justice Department. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think that there absolutely could be a resolution,” she told the newspaper.
Kennedy acknowledged Blinken’s harsh comments. “But there is a way to resolve it,” she said. “You can read the [newspapers] just like I can.” It is not quite clear what in the newspapers she was reading.
Blinken is Kennedy’s boss. There is little chance she had spoken out of turn. Blinken allowed her to put out the story that the U.S. is interested in a plea bargain with Assange. But why?
First, the harsh reaction in Australia to Blinken’s words probably had something to do with it. If it was up to the U.S. Justice Department alone to handle the prosecution of Assange, as Kennedy says, why was the Secretary of State saying anything about it at all? Blinken appears to have spoken out of turn himself and sent Kennedy out to reel it back in.
Given the growing opposition to the AUKUS alliance in Australia, including within the ruling Labor Party, perhaps Blinken and the rest of the U.S. security establishment is not taking Australia’s support for granted anymore. Blinken stepped in it and had Kennedy try to clean up the mess.
Second, as suspected by many Assange supporters on social media, Kennedy’s words may have been intended as a kind of ploy, perhaps to lure Assange to the United States to give up his fight against extradition in exchange for leniency.
In its article based on Kennedy’s interview, The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to only one international law expert, a Don Rothwell, of Australian National University in Canberra, who said Assange would have to go to the United States to negotiate a plea. In a second interview on Australian television, Rothwell said Assange would also have to drop his extradition fight.
Of course, neither is true. “Usually American courts don’t act unless a defendant is inside that district and shows up to the court,” U.S. constitutional lawyer Bruce Afran told Consortium News. “However, there’s nothing strictly prohibiting it either. And in a given instance, a plea could be taken internationally. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.” But would the U.S. consent to it?
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Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington: 1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and 2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.
“The U.S. sometimes finds ways to get around these agreements,” Afran said. “The better approach would be that he pleads while in the U.K., we resolve the sentence by either an additional sentence of seven months, such as David Hicks had or a year to be served in the U.K. or in Australia or time served.”
Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told the Herald his brother going to the U.S. was a “non-starter.” He said: “Julian cannot go to the US under any circumstances.” Assange’s father, John Shipton, told the same to Glenn Greenwald last week.
So the U.S. won’t be getting Assange on its soil voluntarily, and perhaps not very soon either. And maybe it wants it that way. Gabriel Shipton added: “Caroline Kennedy wouldn’t be saying these things if they didn’t want a way out. The Americans want this off their plate.”
Albert V Bryan Federal District Courthouse, Alexandria, Virginia, 2012. (Tim Evanson, Flickr)
Third, the U.S. may be trying to prolong Assange’s ordeal for at least another 14 months past the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. As Greenwald told John Shipton, the last thing President Joe Biden would want in the thick of his reelection campaign next year would be a high-profile criminal trial in which he was seen trying to put a publisher away for life for printing embarrassing U.S. state secrets.
But rather than a way out, as Gabriel Shipton called it, the U.S. may have in mind something more like a Great Postponement.
The postponement could come with the High Court of England and Wales continuing to take its time to give Assange his last hearing — for all of 30 minutes — before it rendered its final judgement, months after that, on his extradition. This could be stretched over 14 months. As Assange is a U.S. campaign issue, the High Court could justify its inaction by saying it wanted to avoid interference in the election.
According to Craig Murray, a former British diplomat and close Assange associate, the United States has not, despite Kennedy’s words last month, so far offered any sort of plea deal to Assange’s legal team. Murray told WBAI radio in New York:
“There have been noises made by the U.S. ambassador to Australia saying that a plea deal is possible. And that’s what the Australian Government have been pushing for as a way to solve it. What I can tell you is that there have been no official approaches from the American government indicating any willingness to soften or ameliorate their position. The position of the Biden administration still seems to be that they wish to persecute and destroy Julian and lock him up for life for publishing the truth about war crimes …
So there’s no evidence of any sincerity on behalf of the U.S. government in these noises we’ve been hearing. It seems to be to placate public opinion in Australia, which is over 80% in favor of dropping the charges and allowing Julian to go home to his native country…
The American ambassador has made comments about, oh well, a plea deal might be possible, but this is just rubbish. This is just talk in the air. There’s been no kind of approach or indication from the Justice Department or anything like that at all. It’s just not true. It’s a false statement, in order to placate public opinion in Australia.”
Afran said a plea deal can be initiated by the Assange side as well. Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson said in May for the first time on behalf of his legal team that they were open to discussion of a plea deal, though she said she knew of no crime Assange had committed to plead guilty to.
The U.S. would have many ways to keep prolonging talks on an Assange initiative, if one came, beyond the U.S. election. After the vote, the Justice Department could then receive Assange in Virginia courtesy of the British courts, if this the strategy the U.S. is pursuing.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
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Agreements with the US aren’t worth the paper they are written on. The US breaks any agreement whenever it wants.
The Great White Satan just doing what it does best, punishing, and often torturing innocent foreigners for a over century.
The US government is a tumour on this planet
I think the US wants Assange to die in Belmarsh. The vile Blinken said what he said becaue to him Australia is a vassal state. He was schooling them. Kennedy was brought in to smooth the waters. They know Julian will not accept any plea bargain, and for them his ultimate death will solve a problem. After Julian’s death, two weeks (if that) or so of coverage in the US echo chamber, where all the old lies will resurface with a vengeance,and that will be it. The US is at this point beyond hypocrisy, well beyond obeying any law of God or man.
“As Greenwald told John Shipton, the last thing President Joe Biden would want in the thick of his reelection campaign next year would be a high-profile criminal trial in which he was seen trying to put a publisher away for life for printing embarrassing U.S. state secrets.”
I can’t believe that Greenwald could be so tone deaf. The last thing that Biden or any aspiring national candidate would want would be to look “weak” concerning “America’s sinister enemies” giving their opponents a full tranche of ammunition to use against them. In that effort MSM would fully support such attacks since they refuse to stand up and defend Assange, and in fact are invested in destroying him because his very actions expose their malfeasance.
So very sad to see Caroline bow to the criminals in charge. Maybe they threatened her family. Maybe not. Wouldn’t put it past them. Whatever her reason, or excuse, it sure is sad to see the last of the immediate family of JFK go along with the murderous war criminals and not speak out for the hero who named them.
I was glad to hear her cousin, RFKjr, say he would stop Assange’s prosecution as soon as he got into office. Aside from his horrible stance on Israel, he has plans to make a bunch of positive changes. He’s one of the best and brightest candidates I’ve seen in decades, (save Dennis Kucinnich in 2004). If he was elected, I think he’d keep his word on Julian.
How about “AUKUS is OFF, until Assange is released, and back on Australian soil”? End of story. Time Australians grew a pair.
A very good point – may it be done.
The key point is this “So there’s no evidence of any sincerity on behalf of the U.S. government…..”. Is there ever?
The US seems determine to prolong this persecution as long as possible – obviously to deter others. But perhaps, like so much the US is doing, or trying to do at the moment, it will backfire and affect the Biden re-election campaign. I certainly hope so.
Postponement of Julian Assange’s fate till after the 2024 presidential election is utterly repulsive. There are too many issues the Biden administration will continue censor; Ukraine, Covid mandates, Burisma, sloppy military exist from Afghanistan, enrichment of his family using the Biden name….the list is too long. The heinous excuse of a presidential campaign circus is a farce.
Could someone finally demand Biden do one decent act since he took office and demand the release Julian Assange. No excuse, no deals, no explanations needed, just free this man! Have the American people become so gullible-have they become so obedient—they lost all sense of decency as they are led by the dishonorable neocons who’ve locked up a non-US citizen for practicing journalism. This, too, includes the Brits and the Australians. Disgraceful.
The Preamble begins with, “WE the People,” and in the next line ,” IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION—” and then goes on to state, ” ESTABLISH JUSTICE…”
Maybe Biden, Blinken and Nuland need to take a closer look at the INJUSTICE that they are creating upon Julian Assange. Of course, then too much of the major media in this nation currently act as if they stand up for We the People—-but sadly it appears that while those words mean so little to those in government— those words mean so much to We the People. When it becomes impossible to trust those who are paid to continue that ideal of the that ,”more perfect union, ” —how quickly any nation can fade away. : (
When any government sees truth telling as a crime—-then I truly believe that such a nation could fall apart faster than any war. Sadly America—you once used to seem to be an honest nation in the world —guess not.
The crack in the identity of this nation has begun. I wonder if any on government are going to bother to save this nation from itself?
The many real criminals here include at least four (4) US Presidents.
Free Assange!
Liberals are in a weird position regarding Assange. They bought into the Dem party trope that he helped Trump by publishing the leaked DNC emails. The thing is, their Trump Derangement Syndrome seems to stop at the fact Trump’s SOS, Pompeo is the one that had the Brits drag Assange out of the Equadorian embassy and sent to Belmarsh for the phony charge of violating the Espionage Act. I guess they approve of Trump’s persecution of a journalist if it suits their agenda. They are against something or someone until they are for it/them. Mental confusion reigns.
Joe Lauria, “you” got wheels turning inside of you; AND, “we” got wheels turning inside “us,” too.”
@ she said. “You can read the [newspapers] just like I can.” The PSA, BLARING! SCREAMING!… “DON’T Drink the Water! There’s Blood In the Water!!!”
Imo, the Ambassador oughta, 1st, Apologize; 2nd, Hang HER head in shame! $hill’n for the Villains. Fleecing the public w/a “superficial, dangerous optimism,” pimp’n a lie! Tempting Julian Assange, his Family, Lawyers, Counsel, Advisors to “Cop a Plea, by way of an Alford Plea; &, Assange, “Lives, FREE!” NOT a Guarantee; even, IF, Assange “voluntarily” takes “ownership” of the trumped up charges, against him; remaining caged, is likely. It’s inhumane! Julian’s life of perpetual persecution @ the lethal hands of the USG, the UK. It’s f.u.b.a.r. Everybody, knows, a parasite cannot live alone; BUT, Persecution is a crime! Book ‘Em!!! NOT Julian Assange, “Them! The criminals. The Evil Doers. “You know the thing.”
Does Australia accept the Divided $tates of Corporate America’s “universal jurisdiction?” Absophknlutely, NOT!!!” (Succinctly, articulated, above & below) Thank you, Joe Lauria, Craig Murray, Cathy Vogan, Emmy Butlin, the Readership, et al. The bottom line, Press Freedom, Julian Assange, WkikLeaks must be protected and freed of the bloody, grubby, dirty tentacles that got a, lethal, grip, on them. “Hands-Off!!”
“We” have heard from The Assange Family, their Lawyers, Counsel, Advisors being “Open to a Plea Deal.”
“We are considering all options. We hold that NO CRIME(S) were committed. WHAT would Julian Assange be pleading to? The primary mission [The RESOLUTION] is he, [JULIAN ASSANGE], should be released and come home to Australia!!!” (Jennifer Robinson)
“One Hundred Percent (100%)!!! “Emotions & Motion, Seconded & Heard, Around the World!!!” Keep It Lit. TY.
In Randy Credico’s WBAI interview with Craig Murray and Roger Waters on September 1st, which is also posted on YouTube, Murray makes clear that that there has been no discernible DOJ effort to offer a plea deal, but that the rumors about it are more designed to placate the public. (Start at 11:00 on the YouTube podcast.)
The very US American “plea deal” process is a disgraceful pretence that someone agrees that he or she has committed a lesser crime ie he or she lies, to avoid a condemnation for a crime NOT committed. US justice !!!
SHAME ON YOU, America!!!
Here Here, Yes!
This is basically what Assange’s father said recently in an interview with Glenn Greenwald. I also think that the U.S. and Brits are treating Assange like this as a warning to any other media that dare to question their actions. War crimes bedamned! And thus we have seen the media not just go along with their crimes against humanity (mandates) during this so-called “Covid” crisis, but to promote them ad nauseam.
So, Caroline Kennedy can’t connect the dots? Ray McGovern has repeatedly highlighted this BIG 1; Ted Sorenson wrote JFK’s ‘peace speech’ at American U,. the ‘last straw’ to Cubano CIA ‘Pigs’ veterans out for revenge. And ‘they’ got it.
Look who [and why!] blackballed Ted for ‘neutral’ CIA steerage. IMHO Caroline’s boss is not Blinken but this guy.
hxxps://theintercept.com/2023/01/13/biden-classified-documents-cia/
Certainly the devil speaks with a forked tongue, as
the U.S. Justice Department has “serious charges”
against Julian Assange?
And Blinken didn’t even blink when spewing such
swill.
Agree.
I’m not aware of RFKJr having made any statement on Assange. He should be asked bluntly if he would release Assange if he were president. Given his priors on Ukraine, it seems likely. Unfortunately, there seem to be none in the GOP race likely to support his release.
He has clearly stated that on his first day in office he would pardon Assange. hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX2ICBB6Lf0
Tnx CN, Joe for continuing Julian Assange coverage. The dangers inherent to this trashing of First Amendment free speech are staggering, likely the most critical issue of our times.
Allow this commenter a bit of speculation?
Is it possible that previously released Wikinfo is related to other embarrassing (or even prosecutable) facts which threaten certain power brokers?
Clearly one aspect of Julian’s imprisonment is “out of touch”.
Just sayin’…..
Most Americans who have followed the Assange case know more facts than commonly presented here. While the heinous Collateral Murder case (under Bush) is always presented, the even more reprehensible Granai massacre (under Obama) is always ignored. Both are just tips of the iceberg, war crimes and atrocities are universal in war and occupations (but Bush bad, Obama good).
Assange’s REAL crime was exposing Hillary’s corruption, and thus the Establishment’s corruption in picking the very worst Presidential candidates for America every four years. Just dig into the morasses of the Seth Rich case, the Hunter Biden “Russian Disinformation” coverup, and the January 6th “set-up”– depending on which “facts” you believe. I remember Ron Brown and the loss of the Commerce Department, who had failed the Clintons, in a Croatian plane crash. Assange took delight in exposing the corrupt machinations of the Powerful, and we cannot have that– then no one would believe in “American Democracy”!
The CIA has finally trapped their prey, and would not react well to any politician who would release Assange (mostly for votes, not out of decency). After seven years imprisoned in asylum in the Ecuador embassy, relentless US pressure (and no doubt bribes) on a new President of Ecuador, flushed Assange out and into four years of maximum security Belmarsh Prison (a publisher!) for vindictive treatment to make an example to anyone foolish enough to follow his approach. Murderers in the US serve average prison times of 15 to 17 years. Obviously what Assange did is much more serious; he has disrespected (and exposed) our betters!
“Australia has too often behaved as a doormat to the United States.”
As an Australian who opposed Australia’s involvement alongside the US military from Vietnam to Iraq and beyond, this is a damning and accurate assessment of Successive Australian governments happy to brown-nose whoever’s in the White House.
Labor MP Julian Hill, of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, said of Blinken “that at least his remarks are candid and direct.”
Two of the subtexts in Blinken’s comments:
1) We are the American government and hypocrisy for us knows no limits; and
2) To Australians he simply told us – all of us – to get back in our box and know thy place. (As an Australian, Blinken can get stuffed for all I care).
Regarding the Alford Plea; Julian has been incarcerated, pursued, persecuted, and his life put under unimaginable duress; so whatever (within reason) that it takes to get him out of prison, to keep him out of the USA, and unite him with his extended family, so be it.
Who can honestly criticise him should he go down the Alford path.
Jennifer Robinson said she … knew of no crime Assange had committed to plead guilty to.
No, and true, but it is the Oval Office persecuting and prosecuting the matter, and therein lies the crux of the matter: Julian exposed the Oval Office to condoning and protecting war crimes. With the president being the commander-in- chief the buck and ultimate responsibilities lie in his lap. And that’s unacceptable if you’re the POTUS.
Julian’s ‘crimes’ were publishing the truth about war crimes that Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden want hidden from public scrutiny.
If a plea deal can be initiated by Julian’s Lawyers and they haven’t got the ball rolling, does Julian need a new legal team?
The US government does face a problem if it ever achieves an extradition of Assange. While the US Constitution should protect Assange for simply publishing information, that constitution does not apply to persons who are not US citizens. However the “law” under which Assange would be prosecuted, the Espionage Act, also does not apply to persons who are not US citizens.
Assange’s current position, imprisonment in the UK for no proven crime, provides the USA with everything it wants. It has no reason to change anything. The UK government is proving just how debased its justice system has become.
Assange team should get into the US presidential campaign to accuse Biden to destroy the 1st Amendment if Julian stay in jail. That should bring the Assange case in news in the US.
You can be sure that the mainstream media would largely ignore that story. They’re quite accustomed to filtering out inconvenient facts and narratives.
Unfortunately the US judiciary are utterly corrupt, controlled entirely by political operatives seeking money from the war industry and others. They actively deny that US citizens have any constitutional rights against organized criminal acts of the federal government, in full awareness that their fake arguments are utterly subversive to the point of treason.
Certainly the people of the US must abandon the major political parties and the commercial mass media. There is hope in the CongressOfDebate dotcom, which will conduct balanced text debates and provide summaries commented by all sides. Its administration may be a model for an incorruptible democracy of the future.
The Kennedy family is completely useless to everyday people. They are lapdogs of establishment power.
True, but having your father and uncle murdered under suspicious circumstances may “concentrate the mind” in ways that no outsider can imagine. RFK has raised the issue often, while Caroline has remained silent.
A sad comment on human conscience
I find it very sad that Caroline Kennedy is not able to be a “profile in courage” that her father’s book was about.
I think I can understand her fear considering what happened to her father, her uncle, and her brother.
Even so I think an act of real courage for her would be for her to, at the very least, unequivocally condemn the US persecution of Julian Assange. And she could go further by condemning the virtual ownership of Australia by the US, and especially the US trying to get Australia involved in a possible war with China.
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” One thing that Caroline Kennedy can do and that she is in a position to do is to call out her country’s evil in its treatment of Julian Assange and its trying to get Australia involved in a possible war with China. It is a patriotic and courageous thing to call out when one’s country is doing something very wrong.
Caroline Kennedy is not just an average typical government functionary. She is the daughter of someone who inspired us with high ideals.
At the very least I think she should be willing to give up or be ousted from her position as Ambassador, or from any similar position in the future, in order to do what is right. I think she has plenty of money from her family, and her children are all grown. By holding on to her high position and not having the courage to speak out against evil, she is an example of being in it for “what her country can do for her”.
Thankyou for this supportive clarification.
doj and potus46 have authority to drop the absurd charges immediately.
IF the coming presidential election is a reason for delay, the presidential election is a commercial teevee farce intended to sell the lie of democracy to americans and the world.