Former President Donald Trump said he’s giving “very serious consideration” to pardoning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and prosecuting Dr. Anthony Fauci if elected for a second term in November.
“We’re going to give it very serious consideration,” Trump said of an Assange pardon in an interview with Tim Pool over the weekend preceding his speech at the Libertarian National Convention.
BREAKING: Donald Trump tells @Timcast he is giving “very serious consideration” to pardoning Julian Assange pic.twitter.com/w1tUBGI6BB
— ALX ?? (@alx) May 28, 2024
Assange is facing 18 charges related to espionage and classified documents through WikiLeaks in 2010 and is set to be extradited to the U.S. from Belmarsh prison in London.
If he’s extradited he’ll likely spend life in prison at the infamous ADX Florence supermax prison in Colorado.
Alex Jones last month claimed that Trump pardoning Assange would secure political victory over Biden because the embattled WikiLeaks founder’s 14-year-long legal drama represents a major assault on the First Amendment and journalism.
Pool also asked Trump if Fauci will be held accountable “for the lying to Congress” and if he intends to appoint an Attorney General who will prosecute Fauci.
“Yeah, and we’ll take a look at statute of limitations, because you know, the statute of limitations are quite long,” Trump said in the interview. “We’ll be taking a look at that very seriously.”
Donald Trump on whether he’ll hold Dr. Fauci accountable for lying to Congress:
“We’re gonna be looking at that quite seriously, yeah.” pic.twitter.com/Dn5kDfNq1N
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 28, 2024
Trump went on to downplay Fauci’s role in his White House Covid response and claimed Joe Biden has empowered him much more since taking office.
“Fauci wasn’t a big player in my administration like he was after I left,” Trump said in the interview. “I mean, Biden made him the king of everything.”
Fauci testified to Congress that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was never involved in gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
?The National Institutes of Health admits to funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China?@RepDLesko: “Did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth?”
Dr. Tabak: “If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did” pic.twitter.com/CnbFx2TUzQ
— Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic (@COVIDSelect) May 16, 2024
But NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak testified earlier this month that US taxpayers did fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab in the months and years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Watch the full interview:
