5: Trump’s Whining About the Press Is His Most Presidential Quality
Powerful politicians love complaining about the haters.
Amidst a roiling sea of scandals, Donald Trump took the stage Wednesday morning at the Coast Guard Academy’s commencement ceremony to tell the proud class of graduating cadets how great he was and how mean everyone was being to him.
“Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media,” Trump toldthem. “No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly. You can’t let them get you down. You can’t let the critics and the naysayers get in the way of your dreams.”
As many people have pointed out, Trump complaining about being uniquely mistreated is pretty hilarious given that multiple American presidents were assassinated, and he literally spread a racist lie about Barack Obama not being born in the US. Still, this is typical behavior—not just for Trump, but for many presidents before him.
Vice News
4: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
Swedish prosecutors on Friday dropped a rape investigation into Julian Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, bringing to an end a seven-year legal stand-off.
Yet, British police said he would still be arrested if he left the Ecuadorean embassy in the UK capital, London, where he has been holed up since 2012.
Assange, 45, took refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden amid fears that he would have been handed over to the US to face prosecution over the publication of classified military and diplomatic documents by WikiLeaks.
Aljazeera
3: Sweden Withdraws Arrest Warrant for Julian Assange, but He Still Faces Serious Legal Jeopardy
SWEDISH PROSECUTORS ANNOUNCED this morning that they were terminating their 7-year-old sex crimes investigation into Julian Assange and withdrawing their August 20, 2010, arrest warrant for him. The chief prosecutor, Marianne Ny, said at a news conference this morning (pictured below) that investigators had reached no conclusion about his guilt or innocence, but instead were withdrawing the warrant because “all prospects of pursuing the investigation under present circumstances are exhausted” and it is therefore “no longer proportionate to maintain the arrest of Julian Assange in his absence.”
The Intercept
2: ‘The war has just begun’: Julian Assange defiant after Swedes drop investigation
Julian Assange has declared that “the proper war is just commencing” after Swedish prosecutors unexpectedly dropped their investigation into an allegation of rape against him, ending a torturous seven-year extradition battle that nevertheless leaves significant question marks over his future.
The WikiLeaks founder appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadoran embassy in London where he had sought asylum in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, and said Friday’s decision was “an important victory”.
After raising a clenched fist in salute, however, he vowed that “threats” made by US officials that he could be arrested on espionage charges “will not be tolerated” and said his organisation was escalating its leaks of documents about the CIA.
The Guardian
Swedish prosecutors have dropped an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange has denied the allegations, which he calls a pretext for his ultimate extradition to the U.S. to face prosecution under the Espionage Act. Since 2012, Assange has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. It’s not clear whether Assange will emerge any time soon. “This is a small victory, but in this long road to free Julian Assange and all the people working for WikiLeaks,” says our guest Renata Avila, a Courage Foundation trustee and human rights lawyer. “But it will finally help us lawyers to focus on the main issue, which is the persecution, the political persecution, and imminent prosecution of Julian Assange in the United States.”
Democracy Now
