Tulsi Gabbard Stands for Journalistic Freedom, Demands for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange to be Exonerated

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) may have come up short in her attempt to be the Democrat presidential candidate, but she continues to advocate against the national security state on behalf of heroic whistleblowers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Gabbard made a tweet on Tuesday advocating for Assange and Snowden to be immediately exonerated:

Liberty Conservative News has reported on the cruel treatment that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been forced to endure as the feds try to extradite him to the U.S. to face a trial:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s legal team is outraged that they are being denied access to key evidence as they attempt to prove their client’s innocence in the British court of law.

Assange attorney Gareth Peirce also claims that she has not been able to spend adequate time with her client, who is being detained in the Belmarsh facility in Britain. He is being held there as the U.S. attempts to extradite him to the states in order to charge him with 18 felony counts.

“We have pushed Belmarsh in every way – it is a breach of a defendant’s rights,” Pierce said.

Nils Melzer, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, has also spoken out about the treatment of Assange, who is being brutalized during his show trial. Melzer has talked of the “deliberate, concerted and sustained nature of the abuse inflicted on Mr. Assange.”

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law. The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now,” Melzer added.

Liberty Conservative News has also reported on President Trump’s consideration of a pardon for Edward Snowden, whose NSA revelations have been vindicated in lieu of the deep state’s attempted coup against the president over nonexistent Russian collusion:

Last week, President Donald Trump conferred with his aides about whether he should let anti-surveillance state whistle-blower Edward Snowden return to the U.S. from Russia without receiving criminal penalties.

“There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that,” Trump said to The New York Post in an exclusive interview in the Oval Office, before asking his staff about the matter.

Trump talked about Snowden for the first time since he assumed the presidency. This came after Trump accused former President Barack Obama of spying on his campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

.“When you look at [former FBI Director James] Comey and [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, and [former CIA Director John] Brennan — and, excuse me, the man that sat at this desk, President Obama, got caught spying on my campaign with [former Vice President Joe] Biden. Biden and Obama, and they got caught spying on the campaign,” Trump remarked.

Trump’s recent comments represent a relaxation in his tone about the man he once considered to be a “traitor”. Trump originally exclaimed that Snowden should have been put to death. Republican elected officials and the Justice Department’s inspector general recently uncovered abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the secret FISA court to spy on former Trump adviser Carter Page.

“Snowden is one of the people they talk about. They talk about numerous people, but he is certainly one of the people that they do talk about,” Trump said on August 13. “I guess the DOJ is looking to extradite him right now? … It’s certainly something I could look at. Many people are on his side, I will say that. I don’t know him, never met him. But many people are on his side.”

The president proceeded to ask his staff: “How do you feel about that, Snowden? Haven’t heard the name in a long time.”

After he was able to get an opinion of everyone in the room, Trump said: “I’ve heard it both ways. From traitor to he’s being, you know, persecuted. I’ve heard it both ways.”

Snowden’s legal team has worked tirelessly to negotiate Snowden’s return to the US without him having to receive a prison sentence, but to little avail. The former National Security Agency contractor exposed in 2013 how the FISA court was secretly approving surveillance efforts on a massive list of domestic phone calls.

Trump has a window of opportunity to stick it to the deep state before November’s election. He should listen to Gabbard on this issue or he could very well be a one-term president.