Vivek Ramaswamy Vows to Pardon Julian Assange if Elected President

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pledges to pardon WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange if he is elected president of the United States. 

Ramaswamy unveiled his pledge on Thursday after the Daily Mail was first to report that a United Kingdom judge had denied Assange’s attempt to block his extradition to the United States earlier in the week and that his lawyers were unlikely to pursue another appeal. 

I will pardon @JulianAssange_ because his prosecution was fundamentally unjust. Chelsea Manning, the government officer who actually *leaked* the information to Assange, had “her” sentence commuted by President Obama because “she” was part of a politically favored class: she’s… pic.twitter.com/gt6p8apvKL

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) June 8, 2023

In other words, Assange will most likely be extradited to the United States, where he faces an 18-count indictment related to one of the largest comprises of classified documents in American history. According to the Daily Mail, the only entity that can block his extradition is the European Court of Human Rights, but the move appears unlikely. 

Ramaswamy, who has been critical of multiple investigations into former President Donald Trump, emphasized that he opposes “politicized prosecutions in this country. That’s why I’m going to pardon Julian Assange without apology,” adding he wants to “visit him while he’s in political exile in prison later this year.” 

It is alleged that Assange and Wikileaks received hundreds of thousands of materials relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as Guantanamo Bay detainees, from Chelsea Manning – formerly Bradley Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst. “Many of these documents were classified at the Secret level,” the Department of Justice asserts.

Ramaswamy contends that Assange “did nothing other than publish the information that was leaked to him” from a government source: 

That’s what the D.C. Press Corps does every day, yet this individual was politically disfavored, therefore, he was persecuted by prosecution. How do we know that? Chelsea Manning, the person who actually worked for the government who leaked that information, had her sentence commuted by President Obama. Why? Because Chelsea Manning is transgender, part of the politically-favored class. It’s interesting how that works.

Ramaswamy emphasized that if elected, “One of the hallmarks of his presidency and the way I lead the Department of Justice will be that we actually believe in equal protection under the law” before zoning in on President Joe Biden and Trump’s classified document cases:

If you’re one, president of a party, and you retain documents that the National Archives want to hold, you shouldn’t get prosecuted when a different president, when he was a former senator, did the same thing, especially when he didn’t have the power to declassify it. That’s why I said that I would pardon President Trump if he is convicted on what looks to be some spurious charges looming against him from the DOJ, at least politically motivated ones. 

He also reiterated he would pardon “peaceful January 6 protesters.” 

“I think that in order to restore the rule of law in this country, we have to start practicing what we preach as a Department of Justice,” Ramaswamy added. 

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Vivek Ramaswamy / Twitter