A pal alerted me to an aspect of this overall story but s/he has no desire to be identified. You know who you are so thanks, chum.
Wikileaks is being sued by the Democratic National Committee for conspiracy, with both the Russian Federation and Li’l Duce as co-plaintiffs. The cloak-and-dagger org. was founded in 2006 and has released scads of embarrassing, revealing, sensitive, and occasionally criminally-swiped docs about any number of mortal and/or venial sinners. The organization published in 2016 a bunch of emails that turned the Dems’ faces beet red and played a not-insignificant role in throwing that year’s presidential election to Individual 1.
Anyway, Wikileaks, acc’d’g to sources that would know, has filed its first legal documents ever — the org. likes, of course, to keep a profile as low as that of, say, Indiana’s own J. Danforth Quayle.
On top of that, W-leaks has set up a GoFundMe page, begging for dough to help defray its lawyers’ fees in a separate but related libel case against The Guardian. That’s ironic because it means Wikileaks is trying to squelch reporting, something it says the DNC has been dying to do to it for a couple of years now. In the DNC suit, the outfit faces RICO treble-damage liability should it be found guilty, rendering it bankrupt.
The centerpiece of W-leaks’ defense is the 1st Amendment. Should the Manhattan federal district court rule against it, why, the whole sacred human endeavor we call journalism will collapse and die. At least that’s what Wikileaks’ attorneys contend.
Here’s the thing about people who paint everything either black or white. Wikileaks, for example, operates under the conceit that the United States has committed worldwide mortal sins. It won’t get any argument from me on that charge. We can start with the aboriginal holocaust and run down the list through Afghanistan. Or even the entire 45th presidency, but, y’know. Anyway, a whole gang of people out there have contemplated America’s sins and concluded that every single thing this nation has ever done, ever will do, or even contemplates doing is as evil anything Hitler, Stalin, and Vlad the Impaler had done.
Those folks are ripe for the picking for other world players eager to mess with this holy land’s business. Like V. Putin’s spooks & geeks. You know the old line, enemy of my enemy is my friend. Well, do you really want Russian hackers, oligarchs, mobsters, and Putinites as your bosom buddies?
Look, the DNC is w/o Q. a top-heavy dinosaur that needs a massive infusion of new blood but the end result of Wikileaks’ doc torrent was a destabilized America led by a fittingly unstable sociopath. Old Man Putin is giddy that we’re now the laughingstock of the world and are de facto outcasts on the global stage, at least until President Gag no longer occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But — guess what — the Dems remain a top-heavy dinosaur.
Wikileaks trafficked in purloined emails. Do they then have a legal or moral right to publish them? You might remember the stolen docs that landed the eventually-monickered Chelsea Manning in stir. Wikileaks published those as well. It avoided legal jeopardy for that but Manning found herself looking at a 35-year stint in the Army’s max security hotel in Leavenworth, Kansas. She served a total of seven years until former Pres. Obama commuted her sentence at the tail end of his term in office. Manning, though, was imprisoned because she was a soldier who took advantage of her security clearance to acquire the sensitive papers in question.
Wikileaks, in the DNC case, simply was the recipient of the swiped emails, the actual lifting being done by others.
It may have a point when it claims 1st Amendment protections and it may indeed be acting as the bulwark against forces that would love to maim a free press. I might feel compelled to support Wikileaks in this venture. But, for pity’s sake, I’d have to hold my nose to do so.
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