AOC and Marjorie Greene do not often team up on anything for obvious reasons, but this week they actually have. They've joined with 14 other representatives and senators to pressure the Biden administration to drop their extradition attempts against the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange. [00:00:16] If you're not familiar with this story, Assange was arrested back in 2019, in the UK on a US warrant and has been fighting for years now in British court to try and avoid being extradited to the US to face charges currently being held in Belmarsh prison in London. Facing a number of charges, including under the Espionage Act, charges [00:00:34] that were he to be convicted of all of them would face 175 years in prison. Those charges are originally in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables back in 2010 and 2011. [00:00:53] It has been many, many years since that happened, but the attempts to bring him back to the United States continue to this day. But we do have that bipartisan group of representatives and senators trying to change that. And want to give you just a little bit of excerpts of the letter that they sent to [00:01:08] Joe Biden saying, as members of Congress, deeply committed to the principles of free speech and freedom of the press, we write to strongly encourage your administration to withdraw the US extradition request currently pending against Australian publisher Julian Assange, and halt all prosecutorial proceedings against him as soon as possible. [00:01:24] Want to put up a list of the names? Many of them seem to naturally go together. Members of the squad and everything. But you do have Marjorie Greene and Senator Rand Paul, Paul Gosar as well. So I don't expect to ever see this list of people working together in the future. [00:01:42] I don't really want to, but at least in this, it's good to try to try to get Biden or Trump or any other president because they all agree on this, to back off of this and just let the guy live out the rest of his life, which particularly thanks to the mental and physical strain from this whole [00:01:58] ordeal, probably isn't going to be that much longer, but they're at least trying. What do you guys think? I'm so flabbergasted by the Julian Assange situation. All of it. You know, I feel like we have whistleblower rules for a reason, and I feel like the idea that we're chasing him for those reasons [00:02:15] kind of downplays something that's extremely important to me. And those are the the other charges that that, that were brought against him, of people not giving their consent as a person who was raped as a child. I definitely feel extremely irritated by the fact that we don't talk about that [00:02:35] as part of his legacy at all. And, and I, as it pertains to his the extradition Americans government is going to American government. I mean, when you embarrass them, when you throw egg on their face, whistleblower or not, they're going to come for you. So I'm I was going to sit this one out, John. [00:02:51] Yeah. Well really fast I'm glad that you added that context. So the reason I didn't mention that is that I don't believe that that has anything to do with why Biden or other former US presidents are trying to bring him back. But yes, that is certainly not to discount any of the claims, either legal or behavioral, against him. [00:03:08] The position I have in terms of trying to stop him from locking him up over the publishing the documents, has nothing to do with me liking him as a human or anything like that. It's just a principle. But you're 100% right that there is a lot of other contexts that certainly could cause people to have an issue with him. Right? Raven? What were you thinking? [00:03:24] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's that's important context. Right. But just to talk about the prosecution under the Espionage Act, which was never intended to stretch as far as to, you know, cover journalists as well, although I have a lot of issues with what it was created to cover in the first place. [00:03:41] That aside, I'll say, whenever I hear about bipartisan support for something in Congress, often it is the most heinous piece of of pro-corporate legislation that you could possibly imagine. So when I saw this headline, it it really, you know, made me happy to see what they [00:04:02] were actually coming together to support, because anyone who cares about protecting the First Amendment should want to end this extradition of Julian Assange. They are, you know, prosecuting him for doing journalism. [00:04:18] That's it's as simple as that. That's what this is about. And if you want to protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press in this country, then you need to support ending this extradition of Julian Assange. - Period. - And these are valid points. I mean, the United States government didn't give Julian Assange [00:04:35] a top secret security clearance, right? His his, his his order and also his commitment was to journalism and and in and in that space. I understand the ridiculous behind this. I think you're right. Politics makes strange bedfellows. [00:04:52] And this is the probably the only time I'm ever going to say this. I agree that Marjorie Taylor Greene got this right, and I almost said something. Shouldn't say it on this TV, but yes, yes and yes. But like I said, I think Julian Assange is a complicated individual for sure. [00:05:08] Yeah, yeah, it is interesting. Occasionally, Marjorie, Representative Greene will seem to be on the right side of something like she has spoken out against solitary confinement, for instance, but then nothing. Actually, she doesn't do anything to actually stop it. And it's so clear how politically motivated it is. [00:05:25] Sometimes she'll say that, but it's clear that she only cares about it. For people who are locked up over crimes committed on January 6th. Whereas this this actually opens up a window where you could get something done. You could work with every one of the other people that signed that letter, at least all the members of the squad, to do something about solitary confinement. [00:05:42] But don't, at least in this case, to the extent that they can do anything and that extent is limited. She signed the letter, so that's good. I guess it is is living by her principles. We'll see. I don't have a lot of I don't have a lot of hope that Joe Biden or, you know, [00:05:58] whoever is president next, whether it's Joe Biden or Trump, is going to change their position. But guess they're doing what they can as representatives. Thanks for watching. If you become a member, you get to watch all this ad free. Except for, of course, this ad still. Hit the join button below.