Thursday, April 11, 2019

Glenn Greenwald is an Idiot. But I repeat myself.


Greenwald's "argument" is to scream that Assange is a "journalist" and Wikileaks a "media outlet," so:  1st Amendment!  Which is what Wikileaks is also trying to say, even though that's not the legal argument that's going to prevail in court.

Yes, journalists who receive classified materials and publish same can declare a "shield" under the 1st Amendment for prosecution for trafficking in such materials.  However, journalists cannot encourage nor aid the person who obtains the classified materials, anymore than they can encourage a bank robbery so they can get the "scoop" on the story.  The distinction is admittedly a fine one:  if a client uses a lawyer's legal advice to commit a crime, the lawyer is not responsible for the crime.  Or could be, if the lawyer means to help the client commit a crime.

Greenwald's argument tries to obscure this distinction.  Manning "had access," he claims, but that could merely mean Manning was in a position to access government computers, a position others would not be in.  Having access, and having authorization, are two different things.  An IRS employee may have access to your tax records; the same employee is not authorized to publish those records (and "publish" here merely means transfer them to a third party, not make available on a website).  If a third party helps that employee figure out how to access those records so they can be stored on a device, or otherwise copied and transferred to that third party, it makes no difference if the third party is a GUR agent, or a famous journalist for a major media outlet:  it's still a crime.  And the crime is committed by the third party, as well as by the employee.

That, as I understand it, is the essence of the government's legal claim.  Greenwald knows that, so he dances around it, trying to argue what the meaning of "is", is.  His argument from the indictment is a narrow bit of evidentiary dicta included in the pleading probably included to support a conspiracy charge, but Greenwald tries to make it the sole grounds for the case against Assange, without ever addressing what the legal elements of the crime are.  He then went off (on Twitter) on a conspiratorial rant against NBC/MSNBC that would frankly make Donald Trump proud:


It's unhinged ranting.

When he's challenged on the charge against Assange, he resorts to his favorite line from the indictment (the only one he seems to know) and changes the subject, his favorite method of argument:
Since the Obama DOJ didn't charge Assange with hacking, it means the Trump DOJ can't?  And they "emphasize" encouragement, not hacking?  Isn't encouragement a central element of a conspiracy charge?

I never practiced criminal law, and I can figure out why that passage is in the papers.

Greenwald's argument may get people to fight with him on Twitter.  Assange would be wise not to add Greenwald to his legal defense team.

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1 comment:

  1. The Thought Criminal7:52 AM

    Glenn Greenwald is an idiot but he's an idiot who has a knack for hitting on lefty buzzwords and obsessions even as he uses them to service Putin or whoever it is who is backing him. I don't for a second believe he isn't someone's puppet, not a stooge because there is a level of deception involved with being a stooge. I'm beginning to suspect that of large swaths of the "get along with Putin" left and wouldn't be surprised if the Bernie bros weren't a similar phenomenon.

    I'd rather have to trust some, some, no where near all, of the CIA and FBI which, at least, have some legal responsibilities to the ruins of a democracy. Assange and his clear patron, Putin, have nothing to put any trust in. The idiot left, which is a pseudo-left, runs on knee-jerk anti-Americanism which, I have come to conclude, is, itself, an expression of contempt for democracy, why it has gotten along so well with Marxist gangsters.

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