Assange's crime here is embarrassing powerful people. On the one hand, we are never going to get a law that explicitly states this is a crime. On the other hand, that seems unlikely to matter. The US is apparently happy to literally scour the world for places where Assange has done something wrong if the Iceland claim is even a half-truth.

The basic issue that this article goes to is that the judge has broad discretionary power to hurry the defence along, and is using it. That is not unreasonable - defence by stalling tactics can't a legitimate strategy, so the judge must have those powers and be free to exercise them at her discretion. It is appropriate for the judge to have powers to guillotine witness time and to make procedural decisions. Even if they are unusual decisions.

The only thing Assange's defenders can hope for here is a great case study of how the US government doesn't care about details, they will reach out and try to grab anyone who makes it clear how they are operating. And then develop a rationalisation after the fact.

Really the most interesting thing in this article is the pervasive misspelling of "Sweden" as "the United States". I seem to recall a whole bunch of people arguing that Assange wasn't going to be extradited to the United States once they extracted him from the embassy. Possibly I am not remembering correctly and nobody admits to arguing that now.