Nolan: The DOJ Charging Julian Assange Underscores the Special Treatment of Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton and Julian Assange
Jeff Swensen & Carl Court/ Getty

The Department of Justice recently revealed that it is charging WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange for the dump of classified U.S. documents in 2010 — in stark contrast with the agency’s selective enforcement against Hillary Clinton, who had classified information on her personal email server left open to the world’s hackers.

Thursday, the DOJ accidentally revealed that it is charging WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange over his decision to publish classified U.S. documents in 2010. The DOJ has yet to release full details on the exact type of charges being brought against Assange. WikiLeaks tweeted recently: “SCOOP: US Department of Justice ‘accidentally’ reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia.”

These charges were disclosed by Assistant US Attorney Kellen Dwyer who insisted they remain sealed, writing to a judge: “Due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Dwyer later noted that the charges would “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.” Although the full details of the charges have not been revealed, it is known that they pertain to WikiLeaks publishing of classified U.S. documents, which raises the question — if Assange is being charged for the leak of classified documents, why isn’t Hillary Clinton?

Breitbart News has previously explained the Hillary Clinton email scandal in an article outlining the main points of the Clinton email saga.

The main points include:

Hillary Clinton set up a private email server, and a private email network for herself and her family and [Huma] Abedin. Doing so could prevent her emails from being “accessible” to the federal government, not to mention Congress.

The private network allowed Clinton, Abedin, and aides Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan to swap emails with the Clinton Foundation, various world leaders, and Doug Band’s global consulting firm Teneo Holdings, where Abedin also worked during her time at the State Department. This would have been problematic, considering Clinton’s 2009 ethics agreement, leaked on Cryptome, in which she vowed not to coordinate with the Clinton Foundation.

The FBI investigation began with one simple premise: that Hillary Clinton violated the Espionage Act of 1913 by allowing national defense information to be “lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed” through “gross negligence.” Clinton team emails have now ended up in the hands of Julian Assange — a man who lives sequestered in an Ecuadorian embassy — and in the hands of detectives in the Anthony Weiner sexting case.

Both Clinton and Abedin face the possibility of additional charges, including perjury and obstruction of justice, for contradicting sworn statements and telling falsehoods to the FBI, not to mention Congress.

Hillary Clinton claimed that her server was kept in the basement of her Chappaqua, New York home. But really, the server was stored at a Clinton-owned office in Midtown Manhattan, where it shared physical space with the Clinton Foundation’s server. Hillary’s homebrew server was operating on the same email network as the Foundation’s server and the server for Chelsea Clinton’s office.

Hillary Clinton went to great lengths to hide the fact that she was using a private email server. She emailed with President Obama while Obama was using a pseudonym. She kept her own State Department IT Help Desk in the dark about her secret email activities, because her private email account got flagged when she tried to send emails to her own staff. “It bounced back. She called the email help desk at state (I guess assuming u had state email) and told them that. They had no idea it was YOU,” Abedin told her. Clinton even paid a firm in Jacksonville called “Perfect Privacy LLC” to plug in phony owner names for her email network on Internet databases.

The server had an open webmail portal, making it easily vulnerable to run-of-the-mills hackers. James Comey noted evidence showing hacks by “hostile actors.” Capitol Hill sources speak in hushed tones about the “Russian Files,” which are said to include information about a Russian hack. Clinton was warned of a security “vulnerability” on her BlackBerry on her first official trip to China, and the State Department told her to stop using it. But Clinton decided to keep using it. She told a private audience in a paid speech that her BlackBerry was under attack constantly by the Chinese and Russians.

This explains the sequence of events leading up to the creation of the server and the following discovery by the general public — it can simply be summarized by stating that Clinton ran a private server with classified U.S. documents that was easily open to hacks by hostile actors.

In July of 2016, then-candidate Trump predicted that foreign powers had already gained access to Clinton’s private emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

This was confirmed by FBI agent Peter Strzok who claimed to be aware of a “foreign entity” which had intercepted over 30,000 emails sent to or received by the unauthorized email server. So what classified information was Clinton storing on this server? Here are a few examples:

Hillary Clinton had a lot of classified information on that server.

Hillary’s statement to the Benghazi Committee is one of multiple statements that could open Clinton up to charges of perjury or obstruction of justice. And it is one of many areas in which Breitbart News led the media in exposing a Clinton falsehood. But Hillary Clinton did not simply expose national secrets. She put people’s lives in jeopardy.

Hillary Clinton posted and shared the names of CIA-protected intelligence sources on her private email server, including a defense attache and other covert U.S. agents working on matters including Iran and the Taliban and Pakistan.

Clinton’s server contained at least five different emails revealing the exact location or travel plans of U.S. Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens, who was murdered in the 2012 Benghazi attack. Stevens’ killers, of course, knew exactly where he was going to be when they got him.

When all was said and done, Clinton deleted thousands of emails with a software program called “BleachBit.” Bill Clinton’s former aide Justin Cooper came back into the picture to deal with at least two of Clinton’s 13 mobile devices. Cooper smashed them with a hammer or broke them in half, according to the FBI. The server itself was shipped off to an obscure company in Denver called Platte River Networks.

In 2010, following the release of the Afghan War Diary leaks by WikiLeaks, the White House condemned the whistleblowing group stating that the leak “could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security,” and insisted that the “irresponsible leaks” would not “impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.”

Yet Clinton’s email server seemed to have the very same effect that the publication of the WikiLeaks documents did, American lives were potentially placed at risk as a result of the classified documents published by WikiLeaks and stored in an insecure manner by Clinton.

It should be kept in mind as legal proceedings are brought forward against Assange that although the WikiLeaks document dump may have been wrong, Assange was far from the only individual leaking classified U.S. documents — so was the 2016 Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com.

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