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Intelligence agencies are perfectly capable of using their influence to trump up charges that may not stand up in court, but look plausible enough that you can't prove bad faith in advance. Your standard here is a blank check to the intelligence agencies to get anyone they want.
The accusations might have been in good faith, but they also might not, and the possibility that they aren't was substantial.
Versus your standard that every court action involving a person of interest to the Americans is inherently corrupt? If I can't use plausibility as my basis to judge these things, then what basis can I use?
The theory that the Swedish charges were somehow trumped up by the CIA has one glaring problem: why bother? If the Americans wanted Assange, why bother getting him extradited from the UK to Sweden as an intermediate step? What's the advantage? Why not just request extradition from the UK directly?
If Assange goes along with the extradition to Sweden and then America tries to extradite from Sweden, then he gets to fight extradition in both Swedish and British courts, and he only has to be successful in one of them.
Say rather, inherently suspect. Appeals to process require faith in the process being appealed to. The feds observably warp process to satisfy their interests, so naked appeals to process in cases where their interests are in play should not be given the benefit of the doubt.
Suspect, fine. 'Suspect' is reasonable. But 'suspect' alone is not sufficient reason to call bullshit. It's reason to dig, to sniff around, to raise an eyebrow, to build a case. But in the end, you still need to evaluate that case on its merits, not on the feeling of suspicion.
I've gathered a lot of downvotes on this subject. People here clearly disagree with me, but nobody has even taken a crack at the most basic question here - how does it benefit the feds to have Assange extradited to Sweden? That's a real obvious question that nobody seems interested in tackling.
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