Will Julian Assange Be Extradited Now That Obama Commuted Chelsea Manning’s Sentence?

A cryptic WikiLeaks tweet becomes much more relevant

President Barack Obama on Tuesday commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of disseminating 750,000 pages of documents to Wikileaks. Today President Barack Obama commuted the prison sentences of 209 people and pardoned 64 others. In all, Obama has commuted the sentences of 1,385 people (the most commutations of any president in history) and pardoned 212 others.

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

See all of our newsletters

Without a doubt, however, the highest profile commutation announced today was that of Chelsea Manning. The Army intelligence analyst (formerly Bradley Manning) was convicted in 2010 of leaking information about American military and diplomatic activities across the world. She revealed these secrets to the nonprofit open government group WikiLeaks, which was recently implicated in election hacking.

Manning, 29, was supposed to remain in prison until 2045, but she will now be freed May 17, 2017.

The pardon announcement also led many journalists to speculate that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may finally be extradited to the United States for his alleged wrongdoing.

Why did they wonder about that? Because WikiLeaks itself tweeted about it five days ago:

The tweet links to a letter sent in August from Assange’s lawyer Michael J. Pollock to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in which Pollock orders Lynch to close the investigation against Assange because of the “Clinton precedent” (the fact that the Department of Justice did not press charges against Hillary Clinton). Pollack writes that Assange, like Clinton, did not have criminal intent because WikiLeaks aims only to “inform the public” with its “newsgathering and reporting activities.”

Lynch did not respond to the August letter, which seemingly led to Wikileaks’ newly tweeted tactic.

Most of WikiLeaks’ followers urged Assange not to go through with the extradition plan when it was first posted:

https://twitter.com/afooltocry/status/819633094370140160

https://twitter.com/rckchalk/status/819630312128921602

https://twitter.com/Sideshow_Jane/status/819632427945566209

But following the Manning announcement, many reporters are (somewhat sarcastically) wondering if Assange will go through with it:

https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/821474511480561665

While WikiLeaks sent out a tweet congratulating Manning, there’s no official word from Assange on extradition yet.

Will Julian Assange Be Extradited Now That Obama Commuted Chelsea Manning’s Sentence?