By Staff Writer James Mellen III.

There is a whole lot of controversy related to basically every aspect of Assange’s career as a criminal. It all started in 2006 when Assange founded /wikileaks/, an organization dedicated to leaking secret government information to the public.

In 2010 Assange released numerous documents such as “The Afghanistan war logs”, “The Iraq war logs”, and the infamous “collateral damage” video. All three of these documents revealed questionable U.S military actions taken during the war on terror.

In response the United States launched a criminal investigation on Assange later in 2010. The same year Sweden announced a criminal campaign on Assange for alleged sexual assault reports, which were later redacted in 2017.

In 2012 Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian government, and has been inside of the Ecuadorian embassy in London for about 7 years now.

In 2016 Assange leaked Hillary Clinton’s infamous emails, and he has since been accused of having strong Russian affiliations, which he vehemently denies, going as far as calling the DNC’s hunt for Russian collusion a “neo-McCarthy hysteria”.

Do I believe that the DNC’s obsession with Russian collusion is similar to the hysteria of the McCarthy trials? Absolutely.

All anyone on the left side of the far-right American overton window has been hearing about is Russia for the past two years, and there still hasn’t been an indictment. In the Assange case specifically, if Assange was so connected to the Russian government, why wouldn’t he have sought asylum in Moscow with Edward Snowden?

A lot of the discourse (especially on the left) is centered around Assange being a part of this Russian conspiracy with the destruction of the United States, and while Russia did probably try to interfere with the election, there isn’t hard evidence that Assange was a part of that.

To suggest that Assange has to be in bed with Russia for releasing documents that make Hillary Clinton look bad is to assume that there aren’t any valid criticisms of Hillary Clinton. Assange very well could have been acting on his own accord, just in a way that happened to help Trump win an election.

Assange said yesterday that he would advise the American progressives to form a new party and leave the DNC behind. It seems as though he takes issue with the fact that the wife of the 10th richest president in history (who was impeached for the record) was running for office. It is entirely possible to have a legitimate concern with a Hillary Clinton and a Donald Trump presidency simultaneously, while not being a Russian operative.

However, even if we were to judge Assange for what he did to the United States under the context that he did work on behalf of the Russian government, he still shouldn’t be indicted.

The warrant for Assange’s arrest was put out in 2010, not 2016. This is a warrant for releasing information to the American public about the civilian death tolls of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is absolutely information that the American public should have access to, we paid for these wars and we have the right to know how that money was spent. Especially with the increased use of drone strikes and other new types of weaponry, the United States people should be able to know how this machinery works.

Also, even if it is on behalf of a foreign government, the people of the United States should know if Hillary Clinton committed crimes; her husband certainly did. Assange should be allowed to leak government information, because the United States government should be transparent with its citizens. We do live in a democracy.