Caitlin is absolutely right. I love this POTUS but not to the extent of abandoning principle. The handling of the Assange case by this administration is the ultimate litmus test for this POTUS. This whole article is excellent. I particularly appreciate the 10 commandments of logic, and this:

“I’ve been told to calm down and “wait and see” many times since Assange’s arrest. What “wait and see” really means is “do nothing.” Don’t do anything. Trust that this same Trump administration which issued an arrest warrant for Assange in December 2017, whose CIA director labeled WikiLeaks a “hostile non-state intelligence service” and pledged to destroy it, trust them to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing. Do absolutely nothing in the meantime, and especially don’t help put political pressure on Trump to end Assange’s persecution.

This strategy benefits someone, and that someone ain’t Assange.

Please stop doing this. If you support Assange, stop doing this. Even if you’re still chugging the Q-laid and still believe the reality TV star who hired John Bolton as his National Security Advisor is actually a brilliant strategist making incomprehensibly complex 8-D chess moves to thwart the Deep State, even if you believe all that, surely you’ll concede that there’s no harm in people pressuring Trump to do the right thing and end the persecution of Assange? If he really is a beneficent wizard, there’d surely be no harm in making a lot of noise telling him he’d better pardon Assange, right? Then why spend your energy running around telling everyone to relax and stop protesting?

One argument I keep encountering is that Trump is bringing Assange to America for trial because he can only pardon him after he’s been convicted. This is false. A US president can pardon anyone at any time of any crime against the United States, without their having been convicted and without their even having been charged. After leaving office Richard Nixon was issued a full presidential pardon by Gerald Ford for “all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.” Nixon had never been charged with anything. If Trump were going to pardon Assange he could have done it at any time since taking office, instead of issuing a warrant for his arrest in December 2017 and executing it on Thursday after a series of international legal manipulations. A pardon is not in the plans.

Another common belief I keep encountering is that Trump is bringing Assange to America to get him to testify about his source for the 2016 Democratic Party emails in exchange for a pardon, thereby revealing the truth about Russiagate’s origins and bringing down Clinton and Obama. This is false. Everyone who knows anything about Assange (including the Trump administration) knows that he will never, ever reveal a source under any circumstances whatsoever. It would be a cardinal journalistic sin, a violation of every promise WikiLeaks has ever made, and a betrayal of his entire life’s work. More importantly, imprisoning a journalist and threatening him with a heavy sentence to coerce him into giving up information against his will is evil.”

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/debunking-all-the-assange-smears-a549fd677cac