A Month after Trump Learned that Mueller Knew of the Pardon Deal, Cassandra Fairbanks Learned the Pardon Was Off

Cassandra Fairbanks gave a statement in the Julian Assange extradition hearing yesterday that WikiLeaks supporters seem to believe will help Assange.

Mostly it reveals that Don Jr’s buddy, Arthur Schwartz, knew and shared highly classified details about the WikiLeaks investigation with a known WikiLeaks associate, one who had recently worked for Russia’s Sputnik and was visibly close with Guccifer 2.0 during the election operation. (Fairbanks rather pointedly avoided disclosing that she used to work for the Russian propaganda outlet, saying only she had been “involved in similar areas of work” as the propaganda she does for Gateway Pundit). Fairbanks’ statement reveals that she repeatedly shared the information she learned with Assange, but not publicly. She didn’t do so immediately. Rather, she did so around January 7, 2019, just  weeks before Roger Stone was indicted (Fairbanks met Stone in 2016 through far right channels), and then again on March 25, after Bill Barr revealed that Trump and his failson had avoided conspiracy charges.

Fairbanks’ statement further reveals that after Fairbanks had exposed Schwartz (and his source for the information) legally for sharing the information, Schwartz reacted like a lot of right wing men do when put in danger, by espousing violence, in this case, the death penalty for WikiLeaks associates. Fairbanks also described how both Schwartz and Ric Grenell are assholes who throw around their power, which might make Fairbanks reconsider the right wing nutjobs she chooses to hang out with, but likely won’t help Assange avoid extradition.

So far, that doesn’t help Assange all that much. It says that a former propagandist for Russia shared non-public information with Julian Assange and in response, her source for that information responded furiously.

Fairbanks also repeats Grenell’s name a lot, though without corroborating that he — and not Don Jr — was Schwartz’s source. Indeed, at one point, Fairbanks suggested that Schwartz, in October 2018, implied that “lifelong friends” might be affected, which she seems to have taken to mean Jr.

Fairbanks did one more thing. DOJ charged Assange on December 21, 2017. Fairbanks, by her own description, was lobbying for WikiLeaks in her right wing chat room in that period, but Schwartz didn’t reveal the charges then. Assange was indicted on March 6, 2018. By her own description, Fairbanks was still lobbying for Assange in that right wing chatroom, but Schwartz didn’t reveal the charges.

But on October 30, 2018, when Fairbanks lobbied for Assange, Schwarz not only revealed the charges (in great detail), but he also told Fairbanks, “a pardon is not going to fucking happen.”

Just over a month earlier, on September 17, 2018, by submitting questions to be answered, Robert Mueller had revealed to Donald Trump that he knew of the pardon discussions for Assange (it’s unclear whether that was the first Trump learned Mueller had this question, but it wasn’t in the set posed earlier in 2018). Trump would eventually answer — after the election — without even denying that those pardon discussions happened, but only denying that he recalled them starting prior to the 2016 election.

Did you have any discussions prior to January 20, 2017, regarding a potential pardon or other action to benefit Julian Assange? If yes, describe who you had the discussion(s) with, when, and the content of the discussion(s).

I do not recall having had any discussion during the campaign regarding a pardon or action to benefit Julian Assange.

This is a pardon discussion that Roger Stone appears to have kicked off. But it is also one that WikiLeaks has, twice, nudged Don Jr about. The second of those times, Julian Assange implicitly threatened — with the hashtag #Vault 8 — further leaks of CIA hacking tools.

It may be the case that the US government didn’t move to provide concrete assurances to the UK that Assange wouldn’t be executed until that time, though Fairbanks doesn’t specifically tie Schwartz’ knowledge to the agreement, and the ABC news article she claims does so would actually place it a month earlier, in September.

It may in fact be the case that Trump didn’t take concrete steps to facilitate the arrest that his DOJ had already put in motion until after he realized that providing the pardon offered so long before would put him, Trump, in concrete legal danger, to say nothing of his failson, Schwartz’s buddy.

Roger Stone (and possibly Don Jr) pursued a pardon for a guy who at that very time was burning the CIA to the ground. That’s, at the very least, politically awkward. It likely exposed Jr in ways that made Schwartz furious and defensive.

But this is, by Fairbanks’ own account, still about that pardon — the one that WikiLeaks keeps pretending doesn’t exist.