Analysis: Assange Arrested – Why Now?

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested in London. That much the world seems to know. But the question that immediately comes to mind is: Why now? The Australian-born figure has been a lightening rod, providing classified information to the public for most of his adult life. As such, a number of countries – including the U.S. – have been waiting not so patiently for a chance at him.

And now the jig is up for Mr. Assange.

According to the Metropolitan Police, the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder pertains to his flight following an accusation of rape in Sweden.  The charges in that case were dropped last year.  The 47-year-old has long held that the supposed rape in Sweden was a “set-up” to silence him. But the accusations in the U.S. are more serious and could be extremely difficult to avoid should he be extradited to America.

There are a lot of people in the U.S. who can’t wait to have a chat with Mr. Assange to begin the devil’s bargain: information for freedom. As Liberty Nation reported back in November of 2018, it was The Guardian that floated the story of an Assange-Paul Manafort meeting that supposedly took place in March of 2016 that began the dump of DNC emails, which were stolen by – wait for it – the Russians. Manafort has long held that this report was “100% false.” But the cat was out of the bag, and so myriad American media sources picked up the story and ran a veritable marathon with this “blitzkrieg of anonymous information.”

And There’s So Much More

Remember the Chelsea Manning case? The Pentagon, not to mention some pretty tough guys hanging out in Langley, Virginia, are chomping at the bit to get their hands on Assange. In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions publicly stated that the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder was a “priority” for the Justice Department.

When you leak classified documents – papers and information that the public may find fascinating – you become public enemy number one to the authorities. This appears to be the situation for Assange, and is the reason he has been under a self-imposed house arrest inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 – much to the consternation of Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno. Of late, Moreno had enough of providing diplomatic asylum to Assange and wanted him out of their London embassy.

All this brings us to this month. Rumors – credible ones – began to fly last week about Assange’s expulsion from the embassy. The police were spotted hanging out at the London-based embassy, but nothing happened. Now, Assange is in custody. Think ahead and do a bit of math – what do we have happening in the U.S. “within the week,” according to Attorney General William Barr?

Why, that would be the redacted but full Mueller report.

A mere coincidence that the nitty-gritty of the report will be flying around while Assange may be on a jet plane to the United States? It doesn’t take a genius, nor a conspiratorial tin-foil hat theorist, to put the puzzle pieces together on this one. Any which way you turn this Rubik’s Cube, Assange is likely going down and the lid is about to be blown off a whole lot of political mysteries – right about now.