Julian Assange has an unlikely new advocate: Sarah Palin, one of his best-known victims.
“I’m the first to admit when I make a mistake,” the former Alaska governor said in a two-minute video posted to YouTube on Saturday.
Wikileaks, the Assange website, ran to spread published data, posted family photos, private messages and government emails hacked from Palin’s Yahoo.com account in 2008, weeks after Senator John McCain appointed her as a partner in vice presidency.
“I made a mistake a few years ago, without supporting Julian Assange, thinking he was a bad guy,” Palin continued in the clip. “And I’ve learned a lot since then … He deserves forgiveness.”
The Conservative favorite went on to praise Assange for “what he has done in the name of real journalism, and this is getting to the bottom of issues that the public really needs to hear and benefit from.”
This is a 180-degree turn from the Republican stance of twelve years ago, when GOP giants denigrated Assange for what they saw as a dirty campaign trick.
“Piracy was attacking the heart of our democracy,” Long Island representative Peter King, a McCain-Palin deputy, said at the time. “You can’t go like that to invade someone’s privacy.”
But since then, and particularly after Wikileaks released material that embarrassed Hillary Clinton and Democrats in 2016, some conservatives have developed a strange new respect for Assange, who faces espionage charges for his release of secret U.S. military documents. in 2010.
According to reports, President Trump, who applauded Assange during his 2016 presidential campaign, is ruminating on a pardon.
Palin’s request for mercy was first posted on the Gateway Pundit website.