Vivek Ramaswamy Seeks Meeting With Julian Assange

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/vivek-ramaswamy-seeks-m…

Vivek Ramaswamy is seeking a meeting with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, he told the Washington Free Beacon, which could make him the first U.S. presidential candidate to meet with the controversial publisher in prison.

"I’d like to meet him. No success in getting in touch yet," Ramaswamy told the Free Beacon on Friday, adding that he has asked former representative Ron Paul for help brokering the sit-down during Ramaswamy's planned visit to London later this month.

Ramaswamy has vowed to pardon the Wikileaks founder on his first day in office, calling it "downright shameful" that Assange "still sits in a foreign prison in exile." He has also said he would pardon Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed thousands of top secret documents on American surveillance programs and sought refuge in Russia.

Assange exposed hundreds of thousands of classified documents provided by the U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. During an appearance on Paul's podcast in June, Ramaswamy said he was "trying to visit Julian Assange" and asked for "some of [Paul's] listeners' help" in getting in touch with him in prison.

"I have a planned trip to the U.K. that I committed to speak at sometime in September," said Ramaswamy. "I want to see him during that visit, face-to-face, have that conversation."