[djsumdog]

It could be to show information security in government is worth more than either party.

Also, being able to pardon Assange would also be his version of the Obama->Manning moment: viciously prosecutor a whistle blower and then symbolically free said whistle blower to make yourself look like the hero.

Even though the Russia narrative has pretty much been shown to be a pile of rubbish, a lot of Americans still don't believe it. Having Assange say it would reinforce that reality.

[shadowgovt]

I don't get the sense the "Russia narrative" was ever disproven?

https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/mar/18/wikileaks-rus...

[roenxi]

The "Russia narrative" was always extremely vague, so I doubt it can be disproven as such. There were a lot of insinuations that there was something big going on, but the facts that were substantiated were pretty minor. I haven't heard anyone alleging the emails that were leaked were anything but true, either - it is pretty grim when the most devastating tactic a foreign adversary can deploy is the truth.

[shadowgovt]

A valid point. There's a huge disconnect in the American public's understanding of how politics works and how politics actually works. That can be exploited by revealing how the sausage is made on only one side of the aisle to paint the other side in proportionately better light (because people like to assume that the sausage machines work differently on the two sides, without asking why that assumption should be true or why that assumption should imply that the sausage-maker on the other side is better, not worse).

[matthewdgreen]

There was a 1,000 page bipartisan Senate report about Russian meddling in the 2016 election just released a few weeks ago [1]. The Senate intelligence committee is controlled by the GOP, so it's unlikely that this is some sort of partisan effort, and it's pretty damning.

Here's a summary of some of the key findings [2]. Among other things, the head of the Trump campaign was sharing confidential campaign information with an individual that the new GOP report identifies as a "Russian intelligence officer". It's all around pretty shocking stuff, if we lived in a world where people could be shocked anymore.

> Kilimnik was also the “primary liaison” between Manafort and one of his clients, sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, according to the Senate report, which also alleges that Manafort “worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.”

> The GOP-led committee said it “obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU's hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” a reference to the Russian cyberattacks that targeted the DNC in the run-up to the election.

> Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, hinted that senators have additional information, including “evidence connecting Kilimnik to the GRU's hack-and-leak operations,” but those elements are redacted.

[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/rubio-statement-se... [2] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512613-five-tak...

[whamlastxmas]

There is only a single source that can determine if it was the Russians that hackced the DNC: CrowdStrike. The servers were never made available to any government body or intelligence agency. The entirety of this narrative falls under the opinion of potentially a single unnamed, unaccountable person at some security consultancy. A single person who is working for a consultancy getting paid millions of dollars to serve a customer, and to make that customer happy, and to potentially deliver results that the customer wants.

Additionally, CrowdStrike admitted in sworn testimony that it didn't have any concrete proof. That their findings were based on appearances and estimations and assumptions.

[hackinthebochs]

>The servers were never made available to any government body or intelligence agency

Yes, because the only source of intelligence on an operation is the crime scene itself. Clearly this is bogus and so is the insinuation that there is no other sources of intelligence on Russian operations than evidence from the hacked server.

[jamroom]

I wouldn't call it a "pile of rubbish" - far from it:

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...