What happens if Julian Assange is tried in the US?
aljazeera.com
aljazeera.com
Basically, there has been a long push towards a "leaks are criminal activity" mentality. If publishing leaked information gets classified as a crime, soon there will be no real reporting left.
The moneyshot of the article is about third of the way in: "Reporters regularly publish stolen, hacked and illegally-obtained material. A case that defined such behavior as criminal conspiracy would be devastating. It would have every reporter in the country ripping national security sources out of their rolodexes and tossing them in the trash."
So whatever you may think of Assange the person, his case can have far-reaching consequences.
0: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/taibbi-j...
https://www.ted.com/talks/will_potter_the_secret_us_prisons_...
You do that with a person as visible as Asange and the entire international treaty system breaks down
Actually, diplomat is a far superior protection for spying than journalism.
If Julian was smart enough to ingratiate himself to his masters earlier instead of playing his megalomaniac NGO power-info-broker game, he might not have voluntarily locked himself in an Embassy for half a decade. He might have found himself with a sweet Snowden gig, a little quid pro quo here and there and you get quite the setup in Russia.
But no American who believes in LIBERTY (not freedom. Liberty is freedom with common sense limitations. Anarchy tempered with rules for society and enforcement of rules) will have any problem with a spy being prosecuted for attacking our elections on the behest of a foreign power whose military intelligence this past month used a defense against Mueller charges in American courts of "America is the enemy, we were committing an act of war, it doesn't fall under civilian law"[1]. Great company, Julian!
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russi...