The right wing Washington Free Beacon reports:
Vivek Ramaswamy is seeking a meeting with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, he told the Washington Free Beacon, which could make him the first U.S. presidential candidate to meet with the controversial publisher in prison.
“I’d like to meet him. No success in getting in touch yet,” Ramaswamy told the Free Beacon on Friday, adding that he has asked former representative Ron Paul for help brokering the sit-down during Ramaswamy’s planned visit to London later this month.
Ramaswamy has vowed to pardon the Wikileaks founder on his first day in office, calling it “downright shameful” that Assange “still sits in a foreign prison in exile.” He has also said he would pardon Edward Snowden.
Read the full article. Assange fled to Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012 after Sweden issued a warrant on rape accusations. In 2019, Ecuador withdrew its asylum protections, saying he had interfered with Ecuadorian domestic politics. British authorities then arrested him at the embassy for skipping bail and he remains jailed while he fights extradition to the United States. He married his lawyer in prison last year after the couple had two sons during his years at Ecuadorian embassy.
I will pardon Julian Assange on Jan 20, 2025. It is downright shameful that President Obama commuted the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the fashionably transgender government employee who *leaked* to Assange, while Assange himself still sits in a foreign prison in exile. We… https://t.co/speaxa5pQz
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 31, 2023