As much as I think Ross's sentence is too severe, I wish he would pardon Snowden or Assange instead. You know, people that actually did good for the world and are being punished for it.
Edited due to poor wording
President can do thousands of these at a time, there is no limit.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Why should they be opposed?
The obvious reason is they get to choose what information, when, and how its disclosed. For example, hack both sides, release one at a damaging time and blackmail the other into compliance.
Indiscriminate releasing of information can put people in immediate danger (like embedded spies).
You can also drop misinformation into a dump of legitimate information. Or a similar technique where you exaggerate true information because admitting to the truth is embarrassing; like claiming 1,000 civilians were killed when the actual number is closer to 600.
I cannot resist. So the aforementioned shadowy Russians might be leaking information to themselves via the American press?
What dastardly yet disorganised fiends.
They could literally just publish the info on the web. If it is largely true, people will believe it. The Russians aren't behind Wikileaks.
The Swedish investigation had no intention of uncovering the truth about this this woman's possible assault. They endlessly refused any kind of telephonic interview with Assange, even though it is normal practice in Sweden. They were not passionately pursuing justice for a wronged woman - they were idly forcing a man into confinement to help their American allies. This is exactly the finding of the UN special investigator for torture.
Do you have anything concrete to back that up? Wikileaks has been foolhardedly devoted to exposing uncomfortable truths about institutions across the political spectrum. Some people are maybe upset that this probably lead to Trump's election.
> who convinced people to ignore a woman’s story of sexual assault
The preliminary investigation into that case has been dropped. As far as I'm aware, he made no effort to convince people to ignore the story, but he did strongly deny the allegations. This says nothing either way of his innocence or criminality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
Edit:
RE: Anyone questioning Assange's ties to Russia, there's the following article. Assange was purportedly contacted about a pardon in 2017 in exchange for denying Russian involvement into leaking Clinton's emails (which Julian declined)
> Lawyers representing the United States at Julian Assange’s extradition trial in Britain have accepted the claim that the WikiLeaks founder was offered a presidential pardon by a congressman on the condition that he would help cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Coverage about that here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-admits-that-putins-favorite...
No evidence is needed, as it's not a concrete claim. In modern US political parlance, the term "Russian asset" is a spooky-sounding but otherwise meaningless term. It's a cheap-but-effective rhetorical trick for discrediting someone.
I agree though with the implication that he isn't an American patriot. Clearly he's Australian/Swedish
I guess it expired in 2015, and a version that somewhat hamstrung the NSA replaced it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act#:~:text=After%20re....
And then section 215 expired this year, but it looks like it was more the House of Reps, than Trump.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/yes-section-215-expire...
There's just been so much going on this year that stuff gets buried.
I'm not willing to give Trump too much credit on this front, since he also normalized use of the military against peaceful domestic protestors for the purpose of cheap PR stunts.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-protests-apol...
Edit: clarifications in parenthesis.
What do you mean by transaction?
Edit because downvotes usually mean people didn't understand what I meant it in this case probably thought I was getting at something.
What link / transaction do you think happened between trump and Assange?
That depends on who you ask. For some reason his supporters feel that way, and his detractors would beg to differ.
Being that we are now in an era of "fake news", its up to the willingness of the individual to entertain the evidence that's been presented.
Bullshit. I've detracted Trump since I learned of his existence in the mid-80s. I would never vote for him for any office. I would not change the channel to hear him say something. He is a worse human than he is a President, and that's a very low bar indeed.
Still, the idea that he and any Russians worked together on his election has been extensively investigated, and no evidence to that effect has ever been made public. Confused people will cite the "Mueller" report, but those documents also contain no evidence to that effect. If there were something there, we would have seen it by now.
In general, presidents usually pardon someone who's already serving a sentence under a federal law. Snowden and Assange are not. Reality Winner is, and so was Chelsea Manning (pardoned by Obama).
Of course, it's Trump we're talking about, so I don't think any sort of prior legal precedents really matters.
Now though, it would be a big fuck-you to the establishment figures who fought him internally from day 1, which would suit his image. It could also go some way towards improving his figure in the history books, something most presidents tend to care about once they stop being concerned with everyday political streetfights. It has to be seen if he’s really at that stage though - were he younger, I wouldn’t put past him to challenge again in 4 years.