An American pressure campaign on Ecuador over its protection of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange paid off Thursday morning as British authorities arrested the Australian national on behalf of the United States for alleged computer hacking.
The Department of Justice announced that Assange would be extradited to the U.S. and charged with crimes in connection to Chelsea Manning’s theft in 2010 of classified information that Wikileaks published to the web.
Since early 2017, the U.S. has been prodding Ecuador to cut ties with Assange, who had been living in the nation’s embassy in London for nearly five years.
It sweetened the pot in February, when a collection of global financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, that have their headquarters in Washington awarded Ecuador $10.2 billion in rescue loans.
An American pressure campaign on Ecuador over its protection of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange paid off Thursday morning as British authorities arrested the Australian national on behalf of the United States for alleged computer hacking
Vice President Mike Pence spoke to Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno about Assange during a June 28, 2018 visit. The leaders agreed to continue talking about the subject, U.S. officials said at the time
Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, elected in February of 2017, said in a Thursday morning video that Assange, who became an Ecuadorian citizen last year, was being stripped of asylum privileges because of the hostility he showed his host nation.
‘Today, I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially, the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable,’ he said.
Moreno allowed U.K authorities to arrest Assange, terminating an agreement that his predecessor, Rafael Correa, struck with the anti-secrecy organization’s founder.
Donald Trump praised Wikileaks as a candidate for its release of a tranche of embarrassing emails it released that would damage his general election opponent, Hillary Clinton.
‘This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove,’ he said at an October 2016 rally.
A news organization revealed that the president’s son, Don Jr., communicated with Wikileaks the month prior. The organization tried to get the Trump son to leak documents such as his father’s taxes and influence foreign policy by asking that Assange be appointed Australian ambassador to the United States.
Most of the messages from Wikileaks were ignored, but the communication was enough to put the president’s son in congressional investigators’ crosshairs.
Early on in President Trump’s tenure, the administration signaled that Assange would not find refuge in the United States.
U.S. authorities accused Wikileaks of working with Russia to interfere in the election that put Trump in office.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a close ally of the president’s, signaled that the Trump administration had its sights on Assange in an April 2017 speech.
‘It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,’ Pompeo, who as the nation’s spy chief at the time and is now the top U.S. diplomat, said.
He called Assange out by name in the the Washington, D.C. address.
‘Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom,” he said.
He labeled Assange a ‘coward hiding behind a screen’
Moreno had just been elected in Ecuador, providing a new opportunity for the United States to have Assange extradited for computer hacking charges that predate Trump’s election.
American lawmakers pressured the Trump administration to take action against Assange, who is also accused of engaging in a conspiracy with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
Senate Democrats urged Vice President Pence to take up the subject with Moreno during the trip to Ecuador in June of 2018.
‘It is imperative that you raise U.S. concerns with President Moreno,’ senators, including the ranking Democrat on Foreign Affairs Robert Menendez, wrote. ‘WikiLeaks continues its efforts to undermine democratic processes globally.’
Pence spoke to Moreno about Assange at the time and the leaders agreed to continue talking about the subject, U.S. officials said at the time of the visit.
A little over five months later U.K. authorities arrested Assange in London.
DOJ said in a Thursday morning statement that he was being extradited to the U.S. for his allegedly participation in a conspiracy with Manning to break into Defense Department computers and steal classified material that Wikileaks published on its website.
Former President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence on his way out of the White House in January 2017. It was one of the more controversial exercises of clemency by a U.S. president. And even members of Obama’s party had wanted Assange to face more forceful consequences for part in hacking and leaking schemes.
Neither the White House nor Vice President Mike Pence returned requests from DailyMail.com on Tuesday morning for comment on the Assange’s arrest and the Trump administration’s involvement.
However, United States Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican but a regular critic of the Trump administration, highlighted the complex, geopolitical nature of the arrest.
He said that Assange was a ‘wicked tool’ of Russian intelligence and deserved to rot in prison in a statement.
‘This arrest is good news for freedom-loving people. Julian Assange has long been a wicked tool of Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence services. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison,’ he’d said.
A lawyer for Assange did not respond to a request for comment, either, but she accused Ecuador on Wednesday of spying for the Trump administration.
Wikileaks attorney Jennifer Robinson said that Ecuadorian government was secretly filming Assange, presumably for the U.S. government.
‘We know there is a sealed indictment in the U.S. to prosecute him as a priority. No one can credibly deny that risk – that is the reason he was granted asylum,’ she said. ‘Any assurance from the U.K. government that he would not be extradited is not believable.’