Julian Assange has an unlikely new defender: Sarah Palin, one of his most famous victims.
“I’m the first to admit I’m making a mistake,” the former Alaska governor said in a two-minute video posted to YouTube on Saturday.
Wikileaks, the website Assange ran to distribute stolen data, post family photos, private messages, and government emails hacked from Palin’s Yahoo.com account in 2008, weeks after Senator John McCain named her as his vice presidential running mate .
“I made a mistake a few years ago by not supporting Julian Assange – thinking he was a bad guy,” Palin continued in the clip. “And I’ve learned a lot since then … He deserves a pardon.”
The conservative favorite went on to praise Assange for “what he has done in the name of real journalism, which is at the heart of the issues the public really needs to hear and benefit from.”
It’s a 180-degree turnaround from the Republican position of 12 years ago, when GOP accused Assange of stalwarts for what they saw as a nasty campaign trick.
“Hacking strikes at the heart of our democracy,” said Long Island Rep. Peter King, a top McCain-Palin surrogate, at the time. “You can’t invade someone’s privacy that way.”
But since then – and especially after Wikileaks released material that embarrassed Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in 2016 – some conservatives have developed a strange new respect for Assange, who faces espionage costs for his release of classified U.S. military documents in 2010.
President Trump, who hailed Assange during his 2016 presidential campaign, is reportedly considering pardon.
Palin’s plea for mercy was first published on the Gateway Pundit website.