Is Julian Assange Being Falsly Imprissoned?

[Kulaf]

Julian Assange has consistently maintained that the source of the leaked DNC emails was not Russian hackers. In fact, he intimated that a murdered DNC staffer was the leaker:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/assang ... aks-source

Now it has broke in a declassified transcript that CrowdStrike, the company hired by the DNC to provide cybersecurity on their servers during the "hack" gave testimony that there was NO evidence to suggest that the hackers transferred any information out of CrowdStrike protected systems:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/crowdstri ... 46901.html

There has been consistent speculation in the IT community that the logs of the server and the rate that data had been accessed indicated a flash device was used to compromise the email data.

This newly declassified transcript seems to lend greater weight to that theory, and that murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was in fact Assange's source.

[Kulaf]

Tucker dropping truth bombs:

https://youtu.be/Imhbncy9RJg

[Kulaf]

https://youtu.be/0M3Z4eE6cJA

[Kulaf]

https://youtu.be/4vqS26HYzJA?t=517

[Ddrak]

Umm... Assange is being extradited for assisting Chelsea Manning in exfiltrating embassy cables (ie providing technical assistance, not just being a recipient of the information). The charges have nothing to do with the DNC hack.

Right now he's in prison for breaking bail.

Dd

[Kulaf]

Sure he is. The US opens a criminal investigation on him and the same month Sweden issues an international arrest warrant over a an investigation where he was never formally charged:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/ ... nge-sweden

It's all a BS attempt to get Assange into US custody and you can be damn sure he will face charges that are entirely false. It's an assault on the freedom of the Press.

[Ddrak]

Strongly disagree.

Assange did some dodgy dealing with a couple of women in Sweden. May have been criminal (in Sweden), may not. They issued an arrest warrant, but never charged him because they never got him in custody - he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy rather than face prosecution.

Sweden has significantly less ties to the US than the UK does, so his story about not wanting to go to Sweden to avoid US extradition makes no sense at all. He didn't want to go to Sweden to face the charges is the only logical summary.

After Ecuador got sick of him smelling up their embassy, the UK threw him in prison for breaking bail, which he definitely earned.

The US finally got around to deciding what to do, and say that he actively assisted Manning in exfiltrating information, which is illegal no matter whether you're reporting for Wikileaks, the NYT or Pravda. Valid reason for extradition, so he gets to face court in the US. US courts are relatively non-corrupt so I'd bank on a fair trial. If he didn't assist Manning and just acted as a recipient then he should walk away, maybe. I'm not sure of the legalities of a non-American receiving US classified information outside the US and distributing it.

Of course, my opinion is Assange is a raving sociopathic asshole who probably deserves misery and definitely doesn't deserve his self-serving showboating. But that's just an opinion.

Dd

[Kulaf]

Well the trial has begun so let's watch.

Oh and regarding the US justice system being non-corrupt, it is mostly on the Local and State level. The Federal justice system is COMPLETELY corrupt. Which explains why only 2% of federal defendants ever go to trial, because the conviction rate is 99.8%.

[Ddrak]

Well the trial has begun so let's watch.

Oh and regarding the US justice system being non-corrupt, it is mostly on the Local and State level. The Federal justice system is COMPLETELY corrupt. Which explains why only 2% of federal defendants ever go to trial, because the conviction rate is 99.8%.

2% is higher than most state courts, and federal conviction rate is around 86%. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 ... nd-guilty/

Most cases that go to court result in guilty verdicts. Prosecutors don't take them to court if they aren't pretty sure. That's not an indication of corruption, that's an indication that the prosecutors are pretty good at picking which cases to prosecute.

Dd

[Kulaf]

Ok. Listen to Robert Barnes and Sidney Powell who have represented people in front of Federal Courts if you don't believe me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU-fpzJ_B6w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHeCSjcTC64

[Kulaf]

2% is higher than most state courts, and federal conviction rate is around 86%.

From your citation: "Put another way, only 320 of 79,704 total federal defendants – fewer than 1% – went to trial and won their cases"

[Ddrak]

I'm not at all convinced by two #MAGA defence lawyers crying and hand-wringing over Federal Court convictions, especially when they are making bank publishing books on how horrible it is that their clients go to jail. A much better explanation is that they are pushing conspiracies because they don't like losing cases for their guilty-as-hell clients. Again, a high conviction rate is *good* because it means federal prosecutors are doing their job and only bringing cases to court that actually make sense. A low conviction rate means they are pissing around chasing marginal cases, which is a waste of money and manpower.

You're also using statistics horribly, which is fair given the Pew article did as well. What your numbers are saying is of the 2% that went to trial (1559 of them), over 20% were acquitted (320). The "less than 1%" number is of the total cases, including those dismissed and plead guilty, which is a completely silly statistic when we're just talking about the numbers that go to trial.

And, once again, the State system has a higher conviction rate than the Federal one!

It's a bit like saying "Less than 0.001% of the population survives a lightning strike!" when most people aren't even struck.

Dd

[Kulaf]

So you don't want to listen to the guy who defended Wesley Snipes in Federal court. Just dismiss him as "MAGA". Sydney Powell was a Federal prosecutor, but again let's just dismiss her opinion as "MAGA" even though she has 10 years of federal prosecution experience and is telling you things are wrong.

This has got to be one of the silliest things you have ever said on this board.

Did you ever consider that only 2% of people go to trial because the system is so rigged that people would rather plead out to lesser charges than take a chance defending themselves? Because that was EXACTLY what is playing out against General Flynn.

[Ddrak]

Ok, sorry. I was pretty frustrated by those videos and just threw the whole thing under a MAGA bus because frankly that's where it belongs. You want a longer summary, sure:

#1 - Lawyer crying that he can't manipulate juries as much as he wants to, because trawling the entire jury's social media history is somehow a good thing? Sorry - that's screwed up.
#2 - Defence lawyer running off and blaming everyone else for pretty much whatever she can dredge up, led on by an Epoch TImes reporter. Same Epoch Times Group that backs QAnon bullshit, honest-to-God Nazis and anti-vaxxers that literally kill people with their crap. Yes, I will attack the messenger when the messenger has a long history of lies, deceit and dangerous propaganda.

This is all Deep State Conspiracy trash, and really not worth anyone's time or effort.

Again, every single stat on State Courts is worse by your measures and yet you're claiming they are somehow less biased. They have LESS people going to trial than Federal Court and they have MORE people found guilty at trial. Your argument doesn't add up.

Dd

[Ddrak]

I should also clarify in case it wasn't obvious - these are lawyers doing their thing: attracting clients. You don't attract clients by selling out your current ones, you pitch to the same barrel that they came from by loudly proclaiming their innocence in any way you possibly can. You can't possibly tell what the trial was like by listening to any lawyer in the court! MAGA lawyers because that's who their clientele is, and who they are trying to attract.

Dd

[Kulaf]

I don't know where you are getting the stats that state convictions are near the level of federal. Everything I see shows states around 45 - 65% and federal over 90%

Regarding Barnes, perhaps I have a different perspective because instead of just thinking about what he is, I have watched hours of his podcasts with Viva Frei a Montreal lawyer discussing many different cases and perhaps I have a better understanding of the man.

[Ddrak]

I don't know where you are getting the stats that state convictions are near the level of federal. Everything I see shows states around 45 - 65% and federal over 90%

Regarding Barnes, perhaps I have a different perspective because instead of just thinking about what he is, I have watched hours of his podcasts with Viva Frei a Montreal lawyer discussing many different cases and perhaps I have a better understanding of the man.

I misread the Pew report. Less State cases actually make it to court than Federal ones. There's nothing in there about the rate of convictions once they go to court. My bad.

The Pew report does clearly say that about 80% of cases that go to trial in Federal court end up in conviction, with 20% acquitted.

Screenshot 2020-09-24 201745.png

Interesting note I read on Wikipedia without sourcing was that stats may be influenced by charges being dropped not actually counting in the stats, which would heavily skew to the convictions side. It's also unsourced Wikipedia text, so... yeah...

Doing some more research on state convictions, the best I can see is the State Prosecutor Survey which only has data up to 2007: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1749

Screenshot 2020-09-24 203928.png

Interesting spread, with the smaller offices having much higher conviction rates than the bigger ones, which is exactly what I'd predict for a resource constrained prosecution - you go after the cases you are sure of.

Rasmusen et. al. in https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/RePEc/iu ... mseyer.pdf have the following to say:

American state prosecutors win 85 percent of their felony cases and 90 percent of their misdemeanors. Federal prosecutors win
90 percent.

Seems a wash there. I really can't see any positive evidence that there is corruption on the Federal level, or that there's significant differences between Federal and State courts. The whole thing smells a bit conspiracy theory-ish to me.

As for watching a guy more making you a better judge of their behaviour? Uh, it makes you a fan, which may not correlate to good judgement. I know a guy that watches the NE Patriots a bunch too and keeps telling me they are wonderful...

Dd

[Kulaf]

The thing you are missing DD is the convictions before going to trial. Every time a defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge to avoid going to trial is a conviction. That is what massively inflates Federal numbers. They know the trial results are skewed so most people don't risk a harsher sentence and just lie and say they did the lesser crime.

Have you read up on the Flynn case? The government had nothing on him or his partner at the firm. The partner fought the charges and was acquitted ( due to hidden exculpatory evidence by the government) while Flynn was charged with the same things with the additional charge of "lying" to the FBI. The reason that charge was finally dropped was AG Barr coming in and forcing the government to drop the charge because there was no actual underlying crime because the FBI has wiretapped Flynn and had a word for word transcript of the call he has supposedly lied about therefore there was no material crime. Flynn just didn't remember ever detail of the call and the FBI went in to trick him. It was, and is a complete sham.

Regarding Barnes, I think having a better understanding of the way someone thinks about cases they are not involved in gives you insights into their views on the legal system. I have that. Right now what you have is a cursory opinion based on not much else. Like for instance I know Barnes was a registered Democrat for over 25 years. But MAGA am I right?

[Ddrak]

Look at the first graphic in my previous post. I'm not missing anything about pre-trial settlements.

What we know from statistics then:

i) Federal and State courts have approximately the same number of cases go to trial. State a little less. [Pew link, SPS, Rasmusen].
ii) Federal courts have around 80% conviction rates at trial [Pew], States between 65% and 85%. [SPS, Rasmusen].

This means outcomes from both courts are extremely similar, so statistically you cannot say either is "fairer" than any other. Any argument on stats that the Federal Courts are "more corrupt" than States, or "more anything" for that matter is false, because there no significant statistical difference in outcomes between the courts at any meaningful P-value.

When you compare the US State & Federal systems to other adversarial systems around the world, the numbers are fairly consistent with democratic and open societies. Japan is a little bit off, but hey... Japan.

So, to the claim that people cop to a lesser charge. Yes - that is fairly typical in any court system. This is not because of "corruption" or the like, nor is it a punishment of the innocent, but because of the plain simple fact that prosecutors operate in a resource constrained model and (this is important) get to select the cases they want to pursue. This means they will naturally pursue those with the highest likelihood of success, among other factors. At the extreme and statistically irrelevant level, you will find cases that may or may not be driven by a prosecutor's political leanings, but that's anecdotal and not statistical.

The other thing - it's a fantasy that high numbers mean a large number of innocents are going to prison because they are "lying" and "saying they did the lesser crime". By far the most common reason someone pleads guilty to a lesser charge is because they actually did the more serious one and are moving for the lenient result. A fallacy to assume that for every case - everyone deserves presumption of innocence - but a fact none the less.

Flynn case is anecdotal and proves nothing about the Federal System. If you want to talk facts of the case though, all you have is Flynn made a statement to the FBI and that statement was false. Everything else is conjecture at this point with highly partisan charged conspiracies being pushed around.

I have no idea why you think Barnes being a registered anything for 25 years means he's not representing MAGA defendants, when he clearly is. He's also clearly courting more of them. Probably a good business model given the number of criminal cases coming out of this administration is staggeringly high.

Dd

[Kulaf]

https://youtu.be/q8SPEM5IiqQ

Sydney Powell brief on more exculpatory evidence hidden by the state and FBI against General Flynn.