That’s just not true. Many leakers and whistle blowers aren’t prosecuted every year.
Julian Assange is a pretty transparent Russian asset and has been for a number of years. There’s a reason he never leaks anything that is negative of Putin. Meanwhile if it’s anti-American he leaks it in full without taking any standard journalist precautions.
Of course he can pull the “I’m just a journalist bro” card, but the act is over and his time is up.
If it's true, what does saying it's anti-American mean? Would you rather be in the dark about shady shit your government is doing?
It's entirely possible that he just has better access to US sources than Russian ones.
Sure, as long as it’s accompanied by safe journalist practices (which it isn’t) and also calls out the shady shit of other, opposed, countries (which (which it doesn’t).
> It’s entirely possible that he just has better access to US sources than Russian ones.
That’s fine and possible, but even if that wasn’t the case - and he had access to Russian leaks but didn’t leak them - this is still exactly what he would say.
And it’s possible both are true - that he’s simply releasing what is given to him, and the Russian state saw this and took the opportunity to feed him information as a result. At that point, after he has continually irresponsibly released covert information from a hostile state, how is he any different in practice than an intentional hostile actor?
Yes western governments are totally full of shit too, the proof of this is that Julian Assange is still being crucified for leaking information, for being a whistle blower.
We're all so trained to thinking the Government is ok now that it's really hard to know what to do about it.