Excerpt:

Six members of the Australian parliament will land in Washington D.C. on Sept. 20 armed with a bi-partisan agenda and the backing of an entire nation as they try to convince Congressmen and State and Justice Department officials that the American pursuit of Australian publisher Julian Assange is wrong and must be stopped.

“We span the hard left to the hard right; besides the weather and Julian Assange we probably don’t all agree on anything,” Joyce told The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday. “Both Labor and the Coalition think this matter has gone far enough. What is to be gained by this going any further? If the Justice Department is seeking a sense of retribution, that’s already been achieved by the amount of time Assange has been in jail.”

Ryan told the newspaper: “I’m not sure I agree with Barnaby Joyce on pretty much anything else, which suggests how important this is.” The U.S. pursuit of Assange “sets a dangerous precedent for all journalists, media organizations and for freedom of the press,” she said.

...as many as 88 percent of the population want the U.S. to drop espionage and computer intrusion charges against their native son and allow him to return home. Assange faces a virtual life sentence of up to 175 years in prison if he is extradited from Britain and convicted in the United States.

“Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense, Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition. Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible,” Wilkie said.

U.S. chatter about a plea deal was possibly designed 1). to soften the reaction to Blinken’s remarks as opposition to the U.S.-led AUKUS alliance against China, as well as support for Assange both grow in Australia; 2). to lure Assange into giving up his extradition fight and going to the U.S. to negotiate a deal (something his father and brother said he would never do), which would also evade a European Court of Human Rights injunction to block his extradition; or 3). to postpone a British decision on extradition until after the November 2024 U.S. presidential election to avoid the optics of Biden in the midst of his reelection campaign trying to send a publisher to prison for life for publishing embarrassing state secrets.