Julian Assange’s Lawyers Sue CIA and Mike Pompeo Over Illegal Spying and Surveillance

Suing the CIA is funny, but it’s probably not super serious.

We’re not really experiencing a situation where the court system is holding people to account.

The Guardian:

Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are suing the US Central Intelligence Agency and its former director Mike Pompeo in a suit filed in a New York district court on Monday, alleging the agency recorded their conversations and copied data from their phones and computers.

The attorneys, along with two journalists joining the suit, are Americans and allege that the CIA violated their US constitutional protections for confidential discussions with Assange, who is Australian.

The suit alleges that the CIA worked with a security firm contracted by the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange was living at the time, to spy on the WikiLeaks founder, his lawyers, journalists and others he met.

Assange is facing extradition from Britain to the US, where he is charged with violating the US Espionage Act by publishing US military and diplomatic files in 2010 related to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Robert Boyle, a New York attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the alleged spying on Assange’s attorneys means the WikiLeaks founder’s right to a fair trial has “now been tainted, if not destroyed”.

There should be sanctions, even up to dismissal of those charges, or withdrawal of an extradition request,” Boyle told reporters.

The suit was filed by attorneys Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, and journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz.

They all visited Assange while he was living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London under political asylum, since withdrawn.

The suit names the CIA, former CIA director and former US secretary of state Pompeo, and the security firm Undercover Global as defendants.

The suit alleges Undercover Global, which had a security contract with the embassy, swept information on their electronic devices, including communications with Assange, and provided it to the CIA.

In addition it placed microphones around the embassy and sent recordings, as well as footage from security cameras, to the CIA, the suit alleges.

This, the attorneys claim, violated privacy protections for US citizens.

The funny thing about planning to murder Julian Assange is that it was a revenge murder.

The funnier thing is that it was revenge in the name of Hillary Clinton, being carried out by people working under Donald Trump.

If Trump would have just been hardcore, things would have been a lot different. Remember when he said after the election that he wasn’t going to lock up Hillary Clinton?

Did you know that was Steve Bannon’s idea?

If Trump would have followed his instincts, Assange would have been pardoned and people like Mike Pompeo never would have been in appointee positions in the government in the first place.