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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

The Biden administration doesn't have a terrible track record with a bunch of things (bringing back net neutrality for instance) they just have a really bad marketing department.

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I don’t know if Biden had anything to do with this, but he has some good old school democrat instincts. The problem is that he’s surrounded by globalists and progressives who can’t loudly promote the good things he did, like tariffs, getting out of Afghanistan, initially maintaining tight border restrictions, etc.

I mean, even if Biden has something to do with this plea deal, his staffers won’t promote it because they think Assange is a kremlin puppet who conspired to help Trump get elected.

Or: nothing really interesting happened here at all, the USAO figured they were 2-3 years out from wrapping up a trial on these charges, that the only toothy charges they had for Assange were conspiracy charges for which Assange's active participation was weak, and so the sentencing guidelines would likely have left him at "time served", which is not a good use of the prosecution's time.

But, I mean, sure, maybe Biden directed DOJ about an open case, and AG Garland just rolled with it, because he sure seems like the type.

I’m just responding to the person giving Biden credit above. I don’t know what happened. But the DOJ is under the executive, so why wouldn’t Biden be able to direct the DOJ about the case? Even if to say “I don’t want my administration prosecuting whistleblowers?”

You are not wrong. Nor are they.

Some of the Bernie people managed to sneak their way into the Biden administration in a few minor departments.

They were too virtuous to run an election but they seem to make pretty decent policy decisions

Right it's all little Bernie elves, nothing can be credited to the sitting president at all.

Biden is a potted plant. I saw him at a small campaign event in Iowa five years ago, where all the candidates delivered a speech. He made it through the speech okay (like his SOTU) but they accidentally started playing the transition music early and he completely derailed. He started saying random things like “support the troops.” He was not there anymore in the moment.

Voters backed Biden in the primary because he was a throwback to an earlier version of the party. But the Elizabeth Warren bots ended up running the administration anyway.

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