That's simply not true, Mueller investigated Assange, but declined to prosecute due to lack of evidence that he was complicit or culpable in any crimes. He also didn't totally clear wikileaks or Assange, but noted there were 'factual uncertainties'.
I find it nauseating that Assange is being valorized as some champion of free speech/journalism, but with respect to Mueller, Assange was far from being a 'villian'.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/new-muelle...
That is not at all a conclusion you can safely take from the Mueller report. Which makes me question whether you actually read it or you consumed it entirely via 2nd hand media reports like Buzzfeed and WaPo.
There is no evidence he was colluding with them, he had encrypted conversations with a GRU agent who had concealed his identity as a hacker, contents of the messages which were never revealed.
Even if he eventually did learn the source why should Wikileaks care where a goldmine of documents comes from? As long as they are authentic.
There’s more than enough motivation for Wikileaks to leak docs by a figurehead of the post 9/11 nation security state, regardless of RU or Trump or petty politics.
I’m sure if the NSA sent him documents about some geopolitical matter they’d leak them too.
> and then tried to blame Seth Rich
He never once directly implicated Seth Rich, the worst thing he did was during a TV interview made a reference to Seths murder and then merely declined to talk about it more:
>> Unbidden, Assange brought up the case of Seth Rich. When asked directly whether Rich was a source, Assange said "we don't comment on who our sources are". Subsequent statements by WikiLeaks emphasized that the organization was not naming Rich as a source.
He also claimed he had physical proof of an inside job, which is entirely possible he was completely taken by the GRU agent who manufactured plausible sounding proof and Assange bought it. These agents are extremely clever and capable, and Assange was in a very poor mental state at the time.
His only true ‘crime’ is not talking about Seth after to appease crazies on the left who see RU conspiracy around every corner nor tamed the right looking to fan the flames on US gov conspiracy theories.
but let’s be honest, that wouldn’t have stopped the hyper partisans on either side. They don’t care either way.
All they want is black/white villains.
I do agree that it's not constructive to say "he's a villain" but it seems the prevailing trend is "he's a hero" and he is most definitely not a hero.
