“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being aggressively pursued by the Trump administration, despite Donald Trump’s enthusiastic embrace during the 2016 election campaign.
Mr Trump famously declared “I love WikiLeaks” during the campaign as WikiLeaks began rolling out a series of leaks damaging to Hillary Clinton.
Mr Assange — an Australian citizen — is now charged with 17 counts of espionage and one count of hacking and faces a possible 175 years in jail if he is eventually extradited to the United States and found guilty.
The Obama administration also looked at the possibility of charging Mr Assange with espionage but eventually decided that a prosecution under the espionage act would be too problematic.
They concluded that if the US courts could charge WikiLeaks with publishing the classified information, they could also charge The New York Times.
The Trump administration obviously doesn’t feel The New York Times problem is so acute. . . . ”
AuntyUta 