No doubt. A done deal. And all on the legal up-and-up. Theresa won't even have to stress her sensible shoes. Though I'm sure, along with the NYT and WaPo editorial boards, she'll say something like "We didn't foresee that. But it is within the law."
But there is not a chance, not a scintilla of a shred of a possibility, that the editors of the NYT and WaPo, and of the major television networks, do not know what James Goodale, and now you and I, know about the inevitability of the USG bringing more charges against Assange. They are deliberately deceiving you when they pretend that they don't.
In fact, an ABC report suggests that other, "death-penalty" charges were already made, or were at least "on the table" against Assange.
The Ecuadorian government has been working with the UK government for over a year, and with the US government for six months--through the two countries' ambassadors in Germany--to craft a deal that would enable them to eject Assange without looking too villainous. And the single sticking point of that was the death penalty. U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, "one of President Donald Trump's closest envoys in Europe," eventually got Rod Rosenstein to agree to take the death penalty "off the table," and Grenell then made a verbal pledge to Ecuador.
The negotiation process and timing presented in this account indicate that a death-penalty charge was definitely on the table, and only taken off recently and reluctantly.
Furthermore, the telephone game of passing on an indirect, second-hand, "verbal pledge" through Trump's pal, combined with the fact that the DOJ will "not confirm that the U.S. agreed to take any sentence off the table," does not inspire confidence in the durability of this "pledge." Lenin Moreno may be the one stamping his feet in disapproval, after depositing the $4 billion the US arranged for him to get from the IMF.
At any rate, everyone who is not a child knows that, if Julian Assange is extradited to the United States, different charges with stiffer penalties will be added, and he will spend at least twenty, and probably all the remaining, years of his life in prison. As John Kiriakou says, from experience: "No matter what happens, no matter what the charges, Julian cannot and will not get a fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia."
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