Thread: Putin: Russia will 'never' extradite citizens accused by US

Putin: Russia will 'never' extradite citizens accused by US

Fox News
March 5, 2018

Russia will “never” extradite any of the 13 Russians indicted by the United States for election-meddling, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, even as he insisted they didn’t act on behalf of his government.

Putin’s comments in an NBC News interview airing Sunday illustrated the long odds that the Russian operatives will ever appear in U.S. court to answer charges of running a massive, secret social media trolling and targeted messaging operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

The United States has no extradition treaty with Moscow and can’t compel it to hand over citizens, and a provision in Russia’s constitution prohibits extraditing its citizens to foreign countries.

“Never. Never. Russia does not extradite its citizens to anyone,” Putin said.

For years, the Justice Department has supported indicting foreigners in absentia as a way to shame them and make it harder for them to travel abroad.

The detailed, 37-page indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller last month alleges Russian operatives working for the Internet Research Agency used fake social media accounts and on-the-ground political organizing to exacerbate divisive political issues in the U.S. Posing as American activists, the operatives tried to conceal the effort’s Russian roots by purchasing space on U.S. computer servers and using U.S. email providers.

Andrew P. Napolitano, the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel, wrote in an opinion last month "that the American intelligence community has done similar “disinformation” projects in foreign countries (though not on this scale), these defendants and these indictments will go nowhere."

Yet Putin argued his government has little to answer for until the U.S. provides “some materials, specifics and data.” He said Russia would be “prepared to look at them and talk about it,” while repeating his government’s insistence that it had no role in directing the operatives to act against the United States.

“I know that they do not represent the Russian state, the Russian authorities,” Putin said. “What they did specifically, I have no idea.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03...sed-by-us.html

For years, the Justice Department has supported indicting foreigners in absentia as a way to shame them and make it harder for them to travel abroad.

Hmmmm. Rob Rosenstein may need to hold another press conference about phony DOJ indictments to "shame" people.

Otherwise the world might think that good ole USA tradition of "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" is a sham scam and Americans might think, as I do, the charged time and expense associated with these indictments that will never see a courtroom or fall to the scrutiny of court challenges were a huge waste of taxpayer dollars to fabricate a narrative that someone was colluding with the Russians to perpetuate an "investigation" lodged under false pretenses by the US Department of Justice.

Thus, DOJ needs new rules.