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We've achieved a lot in 25 years and we couldn't do it without you, our readers and our viewers. So please support us as we enter the second quarter century of Consortium News. Welcome to CN Live episode 23 of season two, A Pardon for Assange. I'm Joe Laurier, Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Voss. As Donald Trump is about to leave office and Julian Assange languishes in a Belmarsh prison in London, voices are rising for Trump to pardon the WikiLeaks publisher. One of these voices is George Christensen, a member of the Australian Federal Parliament. He has made an appeal directly to the American President. And joining us today to discuss that is Mr. George Christensen from Queensland, his constituency. Thank you very much for joining us today. Well, thank you, Joe and Elizabeth and all the team here. I want to ask you why you think Julian Assange deserves a pardon and what led you to take these steps to call directly on Trump to give him one? You know, well, actually, once upon a time, I was sucked up into all of the propaganda that was around Julian Assange. And I thought that he'd done something terrible that he'd leaked a whole heap of top secret information that was going to harm us somehow and that actually harmed people that were fighting for us. And then I actually found out that that's actually not at all what had gone on and that the charges against Assange, it comes from my part of the world. I'm from North Queensland and Julian Assange was raised in North Queensland. But I mean, what they're alleging against Assange for reporting on the truth is that he somehow committed conspiracy to hack and to espionage. And what that amounts to is that he told someone how to get information to him, which I'm sure journalists do all the time. And he told someone WikiLeaks actually put out a general call to the broader community saying that if you've got any secret information that you want to whistle blow, we'll take that information. Now that is hardly a conspiracy. But for all of this is going to languish in the jail cell potentially for 175 years. There's going to be something deeper to this, really deeper to this than what meets the eye. And I think that this is where I probably get very, very incensed about this. I think it's combination of things, combination of things of Julian Assange exposing the tactics of the deep state against their own citizens in the United States, which is wrong. And I'm a conservative that called me ultra conservative in Australia. You know, big government overreach is something that conservatives don't like. And I don't like it. So when you've got the deep state, you know, the military industrial complex, basically, in their spying on its own citizens, something's wrong. And Assange exposed that, but he also exposed Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have never, ever forgotten that. And I think that this is one of the other reasons that there's been this vendetta against Assange. I don't think it's related to Trump at all. I think that actually Trump's probably got sympathies with Julian Assange. We know several times during the 2016 campaign, how much he loved WikiLeaks. I suspect he does still have a soft spot for him. That's why you decided to make this appeal to him? Well, you know, lots of people hate him, lots of people love him. I'm in the latter camp. I think that Donald Trump's been a shake up to the system in America. And it's probably what was needed. He has been a president who has stood up for free speech against the tech tyrants, our social media overlords, who tell us what we can put up online and what we can't. He stood up on free speech in regards to what can be said on campuses, which are university campuses, which are becoming pretty much zero free speech zones. And he's also stood up on free speech when it comes to religious liberty. So there's been three executive orders around those issues that he's released. Donald Trump is a defender of free speech. And I think that in this instance, he should be a defender of free speech as well. I'm hoping that he will be and I think that he will be because this is First Amendment rights that are going to go out the window if the powers that be in the US that want to bring Julian Assange to heel actually have their way. So I'm hoping that as a Republican, as a conservative, as someone who supports free speech that Donald Trump will stand up for the First Amendment rights. Do you have any contacts at the White House or anybody you know who knows him? Yeah, I do. So I've got several people working on this and there's people who know people. Certainly got some inroads into Mark Meadows who, as you know, is his chief of staff there and others that are associated with the Trump administration. So I've been contacting some Republican congressmen and senators that I know of that I've got some affiliations to and I know other people that know them. So we're getting this message in there and my understanding is that the White House already knows about this and they've already heard about it. And they're hearing it from more than just me, right? You've got people like Paul Joseph Watson who's also an internet commentator or conservative internet commentator that Donald Trump has retweeted a couple of times who are now out there posting things on Twitter or tweeting out, share this or retweet if you want to pardon for a science. Obviously, you've had Pamela Anderson do a thing too. So that might have had a bit more cut through than than myself. Judging by what we know of Trump and the kind of women that he hires, yes. I want to ask you one more before I go to Elizabeth. You say you switched. It's very interesting because Nils Meltzer, you probably know, has told the same story that he believed all the hype and the smears against the Sange and then he suddenly started looking into and realized that there were lies and that there was more to this case. When you heard Julia Gillard, the former prime minister, say that the Sange had broken the law and then later she was reprimanded by the federal police, I think, who said that he hadn't broken any law. When she said that, did you agree with her? And what made you change? Was there one thing or what got you interested to come to you? You see Julia Gillard's on the other side of politics and I'm trying to remember when all of that happened. I think that I was sort of uncertain at that point in time. I guess that part of my background is that unfortunately I was one person who at the time thought that it was the right thing for us to do to go into the Iraq war. Since then, I think that that was the worst thing that we could have done and I very much regret politically even supporting it. I wasn't a member of parliament at that stage. I was an absolute nobody back then so my opinion really didn't matter. But now that I know what's happened out of these endless forever wars, there's no way that we should be part of never again. So my views evolved on a few issues like that and it also has evolved on people like Julian Assange who want to expose war crimes and expose the truth of things. So yes, all I heard was the mainstream media just bleeding at me day after day that he'd given up top secret information that was going to let our enemies harm us and potentially has gotten people killed and then subsequently found out actually that there's no US or Australian personnel that have been killed as a result of what Julian Assange or WikiLeaks have done. But what have they done? They have published the truth. The truth that certain people don't like to see in print. The truth that certain people in the upper echelons of governments, the deepest echelons of government, don't want their own citizens to know. Truth such as, yep, there were war crimes that were committed in Afghanistan. Truth like the US intelligence regime is spying on its own citizens without their knowledge, probably without cause. And all this has made Julian Assange the target. So look, the answer to your question, my views have just evolved and I've read Bill a bit because I just no longer believe what the mainstream media just throw up to us. I mean, there was stuff about Julian Assange being a Russian asset. It's just complete and utter nonsense. So you're going to continue to get that. Elizabeth. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, George, about what you make of some of the testimony we heard during the extradition hearing of Assange in the UK where we heard Jennifer Robinson, Julian Assange's lawyer testified about the allegations that the Trump administration essentially was behind this offer to pardon Assange if he would reveal sources of the 2016 documents and other issues that were brought up in the testimony of that hearing where it seems that the Trump administration is behind this effort to prosecute Assange. So my question, though, is if that's true, why do you think that would be? And if it's true, how likely do you think that it is that Trump would change his mind? Well, look, the charges against Julian Assange and the witch hunt started under the Obama administration. And yes, the charges were laid, and the extradition was sought under the Trump administration. But do I think that Donald Trump actually made that decision personally to do that? No, I don't. And I think that anyone who would think that is probably a bit crazy. I don't think that Donald Trump made that decision whatsoever. I think up until that point, he was very, very supportive of WikiLeaks for what they exposed about Hillary Clinton. And I think that the questions that, you know, the media, the mainstream media once again, they tried to hound Donald Trump at that point in time. Ah, you were supportive of Julian Assange. You were supportive of WikiLeaks. Look at all these statements that you made in the past. And yes, he was. It was true. And because there'd been an arrest or charges issued, an extradition being sought, I guess that made things pretty uncomfortable at that time for Trump. But in relation to the question about the offer of a pardon, look, again, I can only speculate here. I don't know what went on. There was that allegation that I think it was representative Rawbacker from memory went to Assange and basically said, if you testify as to who gave you the information that the Democrats are claiming come from Russia, we could arrange a pardon for you. Now, whether he said that with or without the imprimatur of Donald Trump, I don't actually think it matters. I think what matters is the substance. If that did indeed occur, and I don't doubt that it did occur actually, I think it probably did. What was being said there, what was being said is that the Trump campaign knew that that information definitely did not come from Russia. They knew that that's exactly what Julian Assange would testify. But Assange, being the ethical journalist that he is, didn't want to give up his sources, his sources, which may or may not be, will probably never know, be someone by the name of Seth Rich. And perhaps that is exactly what Donald Trump and his team wanted to come out during the entire Russia collusion story that was going on that turned out to be false pretty much. So why didn't the offer him a pardon? Well, I guess he didn't at that point do what was being asked. Should he get a pardon regardless? Absolutely. And I think Donald Trump's in the mood for handing him out at the moment with his view that people within the administration have helped to bring him down. And that's probably true. And the moment is in the mindset of declassify everything. That'd be great. Absolutely. And I think that that's a really fascinating take. But it does beg the question. And a lot of people have asked this question kind of on both sides of the political aisle. And that is, do you think that maybe Trump could have been threatened by the deep state that you referenced earlier? Is there a possibility that that's why he's allowed this prosecution to be pushed? And he has not pardoned him? And if so, to what extent do you think he's motivated by that type of thing? Yeah, I'd be only speculating about anything like that. Look, I've no doubt, actually, even just being in a lower level, like I'm the equivalent of a congressman in America. I head up a committee. It's not a huge committee. It's not like intelligence or anything like that. I just know, even at my level, the Machiavellian Skull Duggery that goes on in Australian politics. And I'm not at a high level. So I'm sure it gets even worse and it gets deeper. And it's not just politicians out to get each other, it also involves, in some cases, security services. It probably is even much worse than that in Washington, D.C., is all I could say. I can't speculate as to what someone may or may not have said to Donald Trump to do or to not to do. All I can hope is that he's his own man. And I think he is. And, you know, right now, he definitely is because there's nothing to lose. George, yeah, you remind me of that TV series Secret City, if you've seen it about Skull Duggery of Tambor. But that struck me as extremely realistic, by the way. I haven't actually seen it, but I've heard about it. It's extraordinary. I've just, as a journalist, it ran completely true. And as a politician, I think you probably see it that way too. You just mentioned the two words that will drive any hardcore centrist Democrat up a wall. But which we have been lambasted because we did two articles and two CNI programs over the last four years of the hundreds, even thousands of articles that we've done. And that was the word Seth and the word Rich. Rich, yeah, yeah. Now, I'm only following this up now at great risk because you may have seen that just the other day, a lawyer for Yeah, I did. Okay, so the FBI is made of the average laptop all this time? Yeah. Why would they have this laptop? Why do they have the laptop of some guy that got mugged in Washington DC? Was it like? It's a local crime, not a federal crime. I mean, but why would the FBI have his laptop? I mean, that's very peculiar, don't you think? Why is not on the front page of the New York Times? That I can answer, but I can't answer why I have the laptop for four years now. It was a local crime. So the federal government should not be involved. That's right. They lied and said they didn't have it. They also have admitted they have 20,000 pages in which Seth Rich's name is mentioned. That's right. And the lawyer, Ty Clevengers, did the foyer, claims he's going to get these over time. So anybody, any journalist of any stripe of who should be non-partisan, but you're not a journalist, I might say, should be interested in what this has to say without taking any position. We just want to see what this is. The fact is that Julian did strongly imply that it was Seth Rich on his TV program. Seymour Hirsch said on this surreptitiously recorded interview with Red Batowski that in fact he had a source in the FBI. They had his computer and they'd looked at it and they showed that he communicated with WikiLeaks and he wanted money for it, et cetera. But Seymour Hirsch, I know, got pissed off at Batowski because he didn't know that he was being recorded and by publishing that recording, he burnt his source at the FBI. So I tried to tell Batowski this that he actually heard the thing, but he didn't accept that. But the point is here, what do you make of these latest revelations and the fierce objection to even talking about this? It's tied up in what us conservatives call Trump Derangement Syndrome. The certain no-go areas, if you say anything that people are going to start screaming and putting their fingers in their ears and the two words, Seth Rich, are definitely those trigger words. So it is bewildering to think that the FBI would hold on to that laptop for all of those years. Why do they even get the laptop? As you said, for a local crime, it just doesn't make sense. Why the FBI have reams and reams and reams of documents relating to Seth Rich when he was apparently the victim of a mugging? Why did Julian Assange, why did WikiLeaks put out a cash reward for information about the death of Seth Rich? All of this points in a certain direction. I mean, there's no conclusive proof here, but it certainly begs a lot of questions, a lot of questions, that it seems not only mainstream journalists just, I wouldn't say too frightened to ask. They just don't want to ask them. They don't want to ask them whatsoever. And in fact, if anyone else asks them, they get screamed at as if they're a conspiracy theorist or a nutter. I think these are very valid questions that should have been asked, but just haven't been by the people who should be doing their job, which is the mainstream media. And let me just bring it back to Assange for a second. This is why I love Assange, right? I'm sick of the fake news journalism. I really am sick of it. And it's fake from the get go because the media sit there, the mainstream media sit there, these big corporations, and they plot out in their editorial meetings, what is actually going to be the news of the day and what is not. That is in no way a democratic news system. We should be privy to all sorts of information in this day and age, and we should be able to pick and choose what we want to look at, what we don't want to look at in terms of all the information that's out there. But the mainstream media filter it, and then they put their own bias on it. There's nothing you can read in any newspaper in Australia that isn't tainted with opinion and bias. And it's the same for the television news and even some of the radio news. So what's this to do with Assange? Well, when you're doing just a dump of information, some of it being redacted, yes, but when you've got just the facts out there for people to see, that is the purest, the most unbiased form of news media that you can get. And that's also why I particularly like WikiLeaks and Assange. Right. I've made the argument many times that the source really doesn't matter. It mattered politically to Trump, obviously, but to us who consume news, it doesn't really matter who gave those documents because they were true. And of course WikiLeaks has set up anonymous dropboxes that 72 major media organizations have copied. They also have dropboxes so they could be getting stuff from Russia and they wouldn't even know it. If it's true and newsworthy, it should be published. And that's what the mainstream media also follows, but not in Assange case. They have to make an issue of this by two core elements that have now been debunked of Russia. Get one by Robert Mulder and one by Sean Henry, president of Crowdstrike. One, there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. That's what Mulder concluded. And Sean Henry testified behind closed doors to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee that Sean Henry, the head of Crowdstrike, who the DNC brought in rather than the FBI to examine their service, said that there was no exfiltration. So there was no hack and there was no collision. Or conspiracy. Kathy Wogan, our executive producer, is going to jump in now. Hi, George. I'd just like to ask you about an immediate issue with Julian Assange. A few days ago, we had his partner Stella Morris come on Sky News and I think the main feature of the interview was his children who really needed their father. But at one point, Stella said that he was terribly unwell and also that he was very cold. Now, just yesterday, the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizzi tweeted out after having verified that this information was true with Belmarsh Prison. She wrote, and I'll just read that directly, four days ago, the WikiLeaks staff informed me that Julian Assange is freezing in Belmarsh. He's currently in a cell whose temperature at night is zero degrees. As a journalist, my duty is to verify information and establish what is factually correct. Hence, I contacted the UK Ministry of Justice. Second tweet, the UK Ministry of Justice did not deny that Julian Assange is freezing. They literally replied to me, quote, our priority is to limit the spread of the virus and protect lives. All prisoners at Belmarsh are able to exercise and request extra blankets. She just asks if this kind of treatment of a journalist is compatible with freedom of the press and human rights. Now, my question to you is, is there anything that can be done to get Scott Morrison and perhaps George Brandis, the Australian High Commissioner to pick up the telephone and get that man out of there? He doesn't have COVID yet. But in his block, there's about 160 people. 65 have coronavirus. And in fact, the cases of coronavirus were actually moved into his block by the prison. So now I can only speculate that they turned off the heating so as to limit the spread of contaminated air. But, you know, this is not good enough. And he could die of cold. Is there anything that you can think of? Can this be brought up in Parliament? Yeah. Well, look, I have only been aware of this in the last probably 24 hours. And I've got to say that I haven't been able to do anything on this matter as yet. But following this, I probably will have a conversation with our ambassador over there, George Brandis, about that. It probably already has come to his attention just about the issue of him being jailed. We have repeatedly, as in we, the Australian Parliament's Bring Julien Assange Home group has repeatedly raised this issue with the UK authorities. And we've continually just got back the same sort of thanks for your correspondence type of answer. I do know that back channels, diplomatic back channels, have been well and truly open on the topic of Julien Assange between Australian authorities and UK authorities. Now, I'm not privy to what those discussions have been. I would not be. I'm a politician, not a diplomat. I don't have the clearance for those sort of discussions. But the discussions have taken place. And I would hate to think that discussions haven't taken place around Julien Assange being put into home detention. So I would speculate that the UK is just simply not budging on that. And we've heard pretty much the rationale for that from the UK authorities who say they consider him a flight risk because of what he did in regards to the Ecuadorian Embassy. So I can only speculate that Australia has asked for home detention. I can tell you the Parliamentary Bring Julien Assange group has asked for that, rather than him being jailed in Belmarsh. But I can speculate that Australian diplomats have also probably asked that. Can't verify that. I'll just speculate. But that it's been knocked back because Britain considers him a flight risk. Well, one can imagine, I think it's quite likely that if he hadn't gone to the Ecuadorian Embassy, he would have been in that metal shoebox for maybe 10 years already. Yeah. Quite frankly, I mean, without, you might want to edit this out. It's up to you. But quite frankly, I can understand why he would be considered a flight risk if I was cooped up in that place for so long. If I was potentially facing extradition of 175 years for publishing the truth, I would do whatever was in my power to get out of that bloody mess and get somewhere where that was not going to happen. It's just a shame that actually the UK where we got our freedoms from, you know, Magna Carta, where we got all of our freedoms in terms of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, you know, the parent, the mother of democracy, as we know it. And yet in that country, he is going to, well, he could potentially be extradited for reporting on the truth. It's just such a shame, such a shame. I can jump in here for a second, George. Wu from Australia has made representations to the United Kingdom. We're talking about Maurice Payne, the Foreign Minister, and Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister. Do they have? Without a doubt. I don't have the detail. I know for a fact that the Foreign Minister has had these discussions. Now, what she's discussed, I don't know. I couldn't speculate on or couldn't comment on. I wouldn't like to start doing that because I just simply don't know. But they have been discussed. Are you concerned about, let's call it an unbalanced relationship between the United States and a country like Australia, which too often does things to against its own interests in order to please what the United States wants? Do you think that they have the ability to stand up to the US and the UK? Yeah, I do think so. I mean, look, you know, we like to be palli with our allies. But I think that we have, as a nation, shown that we can stand up to other powers, including the United States. I think it's more of an issue of practicalities here. And this is just, this is probably where I deviate with some of my other colleagues that are in the parliamentary group that want to throw a lot of rocks at the government. The Australian government holds no levers here. The Australian government only has the ability to request stuff of others. The Australian government is not the one that's charging him with any crime. The Australian government is not the one that's seeking to extradite him. The Australian government is not the one that's holding him in a prison. The Australian government didn't give him up to UK authorities for that. Could they have done more? Should they have done more? In the lead up to all of this, you betcha. But I don't know that we can be held responsible for what the UK has done or what the US is doing. What Australia does hold chips in its relationship with the US. I'm not sure that they'd want to spend any in order to get this on job. Maybe it's not that important. Yeah, look, that may be a fair observation that, you know, in politics, is such a thing as political capital and you burn it. And perhaps there is a view that, you know, there's not that much political capital to burn in regards to this particular person. I would hope not. But look, what I think, though, you will see a switch. You will see a switch if the UK rules that he should be extradited. I can tell you we've seen the story before in Australia. There was a guy by the name of David Hicks, the point in which, you know, it was quite obvious he could languish for the rest of his life in a jail cell in Gitmo. The Australian public got incensed. And I think that this will happen in this instance, too. When it becomes apparent that he's going, he's going away 175 years, no return, there will probably be an outcry. And that outcry will lead to the same result. David Hicks is back in Australia. David Hicks is a free man. They may see a scientist more dangerous than they thought Hicks was. What Assange did was report the truth. And if you're going to start arresting people for that, there's a lot of us that are going to be in jail. Well, he's exposed them. He exposed powerful people who want to stop. Now, in fact, that Australia now with the Brereton report, with the expose of war crimes by special forces, SAS forces in Afghanistan. I'm glad you said alleged, because there's a lot of angst about that here. Well, I'm just trying to be legally correct here. And I'm doing a reporter. But, you know, it's pretty clear if you read the report, these are pretty ugly things. And the ones who put together the report seem to be convinced they happened. But they're not in a courtroom yet. So that's why it's a lie. But the fact is that it may have changed the sensibilities in this country about things like war crimes. And that there is a good, we should know about these, so that they won't happen again. Would that change an attitude? How does that once Assange's case in any way? I don't know. There's too much cross-pollination between the issues. If I can just touch on that, there's a reason I said that because, yeah, while the authors of the report have gone on to say that there's credible information, they also have said in that report that there's credible information actually doesn't hold any standard of proof. And they go on to even suggest themselves that it probably won't. It may be unlikely that it actually succeeds in any criminal case. And I don't know that we should be saying that people are guilty of war crimes, unless that's absolutely and utterly proven. But I guess that the fact that we have now as a government gone and produced a report made that report public. Well, why can a government go and do that? But a private citizen can't do the same thing. Why can a government produce a report which alleges all sorts of things about its own soldiers? And we can all stand up there and beat our chests and say, look at us. We're putting all of our dirty laundry out because we believe in transparency and accountability and all the rest of it because we sent all of these soldiers off to never-ending wars. And now we've got to make them accountable for whatever they may or may not have done. But then someone goes and says, well, actually there's bad stuff that the military or the spy networks is doing in a certain country against its own citizens. And suddenly that person's facing 175 years in jail. What is the difference between these two pictures? One difference is that, as you said earlier, these were documents that are accurate, that were written by governments, by ambassadors, by diplomats. And whereas that's accurate. Whereas you're saying we're not sure whether what's in the report, the baritone report is going to be able to be actionable in the courtroom. Or is documents as accurate as the baritone report in that they are someone in government, their opinion, are put down on the piece of paper that they're purporting maybe to be the facts. So, you know, it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. If I may jump in, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions also stated that it was not in the public interest to prosecute a journalist for reporting on war crimes. That in the case of Dan Oakes, an ABC journalist, that adds to your case. How can it be all right for the government? And then it's finally okay for Dan Oakes. Who did the first report? And then that was followed some time later with the total defiance of the ABC with another report called Killingfield, which was a documentary. There we'd see an execution actually on camera. What looks like an execution, I should say an alleged execution. But it seems to me that if the Australian Federal Police did drop the charges against the ABC journalist and he was doing something very similar to Julian Assange, he was reporting on war crimes in Afghanistan and using classified information. So how can we still be so indifferent to Julian and just let it happen to him? You've just outlined a clear argument that if Julian Assange ever comes back to Australia and there is an extradition case in Australia, which is possible, the exact reason legally why he should not be extradited. So, you know, Director of Public Prosecutions, Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, no less, that is a serious sort of a role where you make these deliberations based on facts of law and what's in the public interest. And that Director of Public Prosecution speaks for the Commonwealth of Australia. And so that view would mean that if Britain was following the same sort of legal philosophy that the Australian Commonwealth follows, that you would not be extraditing that person. You would not be extraditing Julian Assange. Yeah. If I could just pick up on another thing you said earlier, you've mentioned the deep state and that Trump wasn't particularly fond of, President Trump, I should say. So at one point he had taken on the CIA and he had Chuck Schumer told him that that was not a wise thing to do because they have six ways till Sunday to give back at you. Now, Joe Laurier and I were present in the extradition hearing the whole month of it. What we learned there, two things, very important things about the CIA intelligence agencies, the American friends as they were called, is that UC Global were spying on Julian Assange in the embassy on his lawyers, doctors and all visitors on behalf of the American friends. And we also learned from an expert witness, Maureen Baird, she was somebody who had been responsible for administering SAMs, special administrative measures. And what was revealed was that the intelligence agencies and specifically the CIA also weighed in on whether a particular prisoner should get SAMs. So, you know, this is a stitch up, if ever, when they are gathering the evidence and spying on the defense, but also responsible in a large way for dealing out the punishment of being silenced in a very small metal shoebox, as I said, for the rest of his life. Don't you think that that's another reason why President Trump would want to, for want of a better word, I might have to edit this, stick it to them? Well, I say that he could, by doing this, it would be giving a poke in the eye to the deep state. So, yeah, we can say it would be sticking it to him. But look, it's just the things that you've outlined there, just absolutely outrageous. I mean, I don't know how any court could extradite someone knowing that all of their personal legal communications had been spied upon by the side that wants to extradite him. That is a clear signal that there would not be a fair trial, because all of the legal conversations that have gone on basically have been known about by the other side. And there is this rule of law in the UK, a rule of law supposedly in the US, supposedly in the UK, that those conversations are privileged not to be spied on, yet they were. So, how on earth could anyone have a fair trial? The second point, I mean, I don't know the intricate details of that. What I do know from the reports that I read that the lawyers sitting there in the docks at the court near Belmarsh were getting whispered to by their American friends. Now, that's bizarre. What on earth are British lawyers acting on behalf of the government doing, getting whispered instructions from Americans? I don't get it. But anyway, that's what was going on. It sort of all seems very, very bizarre to me. But getting back to Donald Trump. Yeah, look, again, I just repeat what I said at the start. I really don't think that this is Donald Trump's vendetta. And there have been some on the left. I gotta say some sadly inside the assigned legal team that have sought to draw that conclusion. I don't think it's accurate. I don't think it's accurate at all. I think that this is something that was set in train by people sconst within the US government, deep within the government, within agencies like the CIA and the State Department that went on the witch hunt under the Obama administration. And it just happened to be there was a change of administration when they decided that they've lined all their docks up. And now we can go and get in. And they did go and get in. Do I think that at any time in that whole line of things, did they go to President Trump and say, we want your permission? Not at all. That's not how it works. I think he was probably as surprised as most that it happened. And certainly we can see the surprise when media are asking him, well, why was he so supportive of Julian Assange during the 2016 election? And why was he so supportive of WikiLeaks? Well, I think that he was supportive. And I think he will be supportive again. I just think we need to encourage that by that website that I've set up, pardonjulianassange.com and getting everyone possible to go to that and to send that message to Donald Trump. Now, I'm not sure whether your viewers and the people that go to CN are people from the political left or political right, whether they're Trump deplorables or the Bernie Brothers, you know, but the pardonjulianassange.com website is decidedly conservative because I am because Donald Trump is. And so that's the kind of message that we're sending to the President. Defend the conservative values. Defend the First Amendment. Defend the Constitution. Defend free speech and stick it to the deep state. Thank you so much George I'll pass you back to Joe. We've got viewers from both all sides, all sides of the political spectrum. Elizabeth, you had a question. Yeah, I just have one last question for you, George. And it relates to what you just said. And that is, do you think that there's a possibility that Trump could be waiting until the very last second to stick it to the deep state by pardoning Assange? Or do you think that there's a possibility because many people are speculating that he's going to run again in 2024? So do you think that he's kind of thinking, well, if I do put a stick in the hornet's nest, it's going to be too much heat against me trying to run again? Do you think that could be part of the equation too? What are your thoughts on those? Look, I mean, for someone who may be worried about what people think about him and what people say about him and potential reputational issues, it's not looking like that at the moment. I mean, Donald Trump is right now going all out to try and expose what he sees and what I frankly see as a myriad of issues with the presidential election that's just been add and gone. And all that's being met with is along with radio silence, just calls of abuse and claims of madness from the mainstream media. So I don't think he quite frankly cares what the mainstream media thinks because his support base, what is it, 75 million people that voted for him don't care what the mainstream media thinks either. So a lot of those 75 million people would be of the mindset that yep, declassify everything. Pardon as many people as possible that are just simply political, political prisoners or potential political prisoners. Let's end this nonsense because you know what? It's our government. I'm not a US citizen, but the deplorables would be saying it's our government. It's not their government. It's our government. And we want things to be as free and known as possible. And I reckon Donald Trump is going to live up to those expectations actually. It'll be very surprising. There'll be a fair few people on the left walking around scratching their head going, I don't know what to make of that now. Thank you. How did you appeal to him, George? I read your website. You said the kinds of things that he would like to hear obviously. Peppermint were a lot of Fox News videos. But did you bring up, for example, what we talked about, the spying on him and the embassy on the defense privilege conversation? Did you get into that detail? Do you think he needs to know that? Look, the open letter that you've seen written there was actually an actual letter that I've already sent to the White House through contacts. So that's there in the White House already that was sent last week. And no, I didn't go into all of those details because quite frankly, at the moment, I don't know that going into all of the details in the background is going to assist in the cause. All of that's known. What we just need now is someone to make a clear decision for free speech to someone to cut through all the nonsense and just say, what? I've got the ability to offer this clemency. I've got the ability to offer this pardon. I'm just going to do it because it aligns with my values and with my presidency. And I think that this does. That's the message I've sought. I haven't tried to flour it with words and terms that I think are going to endear my cause to Donald Trump. Actually, I'm a true believer. If I can just move my head this way, what you'll see, I can't get myself out of the picture there. What you'll see up here is a picture of Donald Trump, actually, that I have in my own house. And if I took you into my bedroom, you would see mega caps and stuff like that. So actually, I believe in his cause. It's just that I think that the cause also fits in people like Julian Assange who deserve to have their free speech actually validated and their free speech protected and their free speech defended, not attacked by the deep state, as Donald Trump calls it, with the threat of 175 years behind bars. It's wrong. Of course, if he did pardon him, you know what the reaction would be of the He pardoned a Russian asset. Exactly. At that point, it wouldn't matter. Yeah. What would it matter? I mean, it would just be another lie that's just rolled out and could be rolled out on top of all of the other lies. And that's all it would be, is just a lie. There's no truth in that whatsoever. But I'm sure that's what they will say. Will Donald Trump care? No. I've said everything else about him. I mean, how long did they go on with the Russia collusion story? Yeah. So if Assange were pardoned and he comes back to health and goes back to work, and then the moment he publishes his first leak document from the Trump administration, embarrassing the former president, he might have some regrets at that point. George, I mean, one final question. Hopefully there's nothing to say. Well, I should publish it if you got it. What are the chances you think of him getting a pardon? This is the final question. Pretty good, actually. You think so? I think that one of two things is going to happen. Maybe we'll find out that early January, that the extradition request has failed in the UK. If it hasn't, I suspect that we're going to get a pardon. I'll come after January 4th. What about people on the political left from the United States like Tulsi Gabbard? She's also calling. She's great. I love Tulsi. She is fantastic. More power to her because that's going to be pretty brave in the Democrats to actually be out there calling for that given the visceral hatred that the Clinton wing has around Assange. And her. And for her. Clinton is called her Russian asset. Yeah, I bet she is. But what I'm saying is it wouldn't hurt Trump if he doesn't have much time, I think, for Tulsi Gabbard. You might, although I don't know, of course. But if some people like that, or Daniel Ellsberg is calling for his pardon, so it's not just... Yeah, well, you've got people like Senator Rand Paul, who have been pro Assange, Ron Paul, obviously his father. You've got Tom Massie, I think, who's a Republican congressman. And I'd notice Matt Gaetz today, or it might have been yesterday, Matt Gaetz is a rising star within the Republicans. Definitely a pro Trump guy. Definitely someone that Trump listens to is called for Snowden's pardon. And these two cases are very much linked. I'm not sure why you call for Snowden's pardon rather than Assange's pardon. I'm not sure what's happening there. But I would have thought that Snowden's crimes, for one of a better term, because they're not, would probably would be considered in certain circles more un-American than what Assange's alleged crimes were. There's another person who apparently still has Trump's ear, who two years ago on New Year's Eve said on a CNN broadcast that Assange should not be charged, because he didn't steal the documents, he received them and published them just like Pentagon Papers, and that was Rudolph Giuliani. Yeah, well, there you go. Rudy has certainly said that. And also, I think you'll find people like Stephen Bannon, who are influential still within the Trump circle are probably all in favour of pardoning Assange and pardoning also Snowden. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. All Assange supporters are grateful for your effort here to get them. I apologize. Thank you, Joe, Kathy, Liz, and thank you, Consortium News. Okay, this is Joe Laureate for Kathy and Elizabeth, thanking our viewers for this episode again of CNN Live, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.