Month: May 2019

Chaos Erupts In Paris As “Armageddon” Protesters Riot During French Holiday

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Paris and other French cities on Wednesday to mark International Workers’ Day (also known as Labor Day), only to clash with French riot police. The demonstrators included Yellow Vests, trade unionists, climate change protesters and Black Bloc (antifa) – which posted on social media that they wanted an “Armageddon” rally that would turn Paris into the “Riot Capital of Europe,” according to the Daily Mail. 

More than 7,400 police, gendarmes and soldiers were on hand to quell the more violent protesters. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said “‘There’s no question of dramatising anything, it is a question of being prepared,” adding that “1,000 to 2,000 extremists” were expected to join the protests. 

Marching alongside labor unions, pensioners, students and others, the protesters were hit with large amounts of tear gas, baton strikes and other crowd control measures. 

According to The Local, over 200 people have been arrested around Paris’s Montparnasse neighborhood. Of those, 148 remain in police custody. Police have performed over 12,400 checks on protesters, according to the report. 

Clashes with police begain in Paris around 1pm, as numerous hooded and masked troublemakers were spotted. 

The founder and former leader of France’s right-wing Front National (FN) party, Mean-Marie Le Pen delivered a May 1 speech at the Place des Pyramides during a rally to honor Jeanne d’Arc. 

“Let’s have the courage to be nationalists,” he told the crowd, predicting “serious social and political dramas” to come. 

Meanwhile in the southern French city of Toulouse, over 1,000 protesters made their way through the streets of la ville en rose, however local media has yet to report any violence according to The Local. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J3feCC Tyler Durden

Foot-Voting Nation

My just-published book chapter, “Foot-Voting Nation,” is now available for free downloading on SSRN. It is part of a new book, Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative, edited by Joshua Claybourn. Here is the abstract:

Democracy and ballot box voting have often been held up as central elements of the American political tradition. Less emphasis has been placed on the centrality of “voting with your feet.” Yet in many ways, it is an even more fundamental and distinctive feature of American politics than electoral democracy. Many nations have had democratic governments, and the idea of democracy long predates the founding of the United States.

In modern times, a good many political systems have been more democratic than the US, in the sense of giving greater power to political majorities. By contrast, few if any other nations have been so heavily influenced by “foot voting,” through both internal and international migration. Both immigration and internal migration between states are, in most cases, forms of foot voting: the use of mobility to choose which government policies one wishes to live under.

Part I of this chapter provides a brief overview of the role of immigration in the American political tradition, which has deep roots going back to the Founding. Part II focuses on internal foot voting. Unlike immigration, the importance of the latter was not well understood by the Founding Fathers. They nonetheless designed a political system that facilitated it in crucial ways, and it has had a profound impact since.

Finally, Part III considers the continuing importance of foot voting in modern times, and emerging threats to its effectiveness, in the form of nationalist movements hostile to immigration and regulatory barriers that impede internal foot voting.

Other contributors to the book include prominent legal scholars Richard Epstein, Cass Sunstein, and Gerard Magliocca, historian Gordon Wood (probably the leading historian of the American Founding), David Blight (author of major works on race, the Civil War, and Reconstruction), Jim Banks, Spencer P. Boyer, Eleanor Clift, former Senator John C. Danforth, Cody Delistraty, Nikolas Gvosdev, Cherie Harder, Jason Kuznicki, Markos Moulitsas, Alan Taylor, James V. Wertsch, and Ali Wyne.

I thought it interesting that both Yale historian David Blight and I begin our respective chapters with quotations from Frederick Douglass’ 1869 “Composite Nation” speech,  which I previously wrote about here. Hopefully, our two chapters will stimulate new interest in Douglass’ underrated classic rumination on the meaning of America and the right to freedom of movement.

In June, the Volokh Conspiracy will be hosting a symposium that will include many of the contributors to Our American Story. Stay tuned!

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Congress Releases ‘Mueller Letter’ To AG Barr

Acquiescing to Democrats’ demands, AG Barr has turned over the full ‘Mueller Letter’ to the House Judiciary Committee, and the letter was released to the public shortly before the beginning of Wednesday’s testimony.

In the brief letter, ostensibly written to convey certain decisions made on redactions in the report, claimed that Barr’s summary was misleading and risked undermining public confidence in the Mueller probe.

Still, as the special counsel requested, the full redacted report has been released to the public.

Read the full text of the letter below:

Dear Attorney General Barr:

I previously sent you a letter dated March 25, 2019, that enclosed the introduction and executive summary for each volume of the Special Counsel?s report marked with redactions to remove any information that potentially could be protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure that concerned declination decisions; or that related to a charged case. We also had marked an additional two sentences for review and have now con?rmed that these sentences can be released publicly.

Accordingly, the enclosed documents are in a form that can be released to the public consistent with legal requirements and Department policies. I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time.

As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the Department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Of?ce?s work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Of?ce?s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is new public confusion about critical aSpects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public con?dence in the outcome of the investigations. See Department of Justice, Press Release (May 17, 2017).

While we understand that the Department is reviewing the full report to determine what is
appropriate for public release?a process that our Of?ce is working with you to complete?that
process need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the
misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about
the nature and outcome of our investigation. It would also accord with the standard for public release of noti?cations to Congress cited in your letter. See 28 C.F.R. 609(c) (?the Attorney
General may determine that public release? of congressional noti?cations ?would be in the public
interest?).

Sincerely yours,

WMA.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2DGYuxj Tyler Durden

Ron Paul Warns: “Hapless” Guaido Now “Worth More Dead Than Alive” To Washington’s Venezuelan Coup-Creators

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido failed to kick-start a military uprising on Tuesday. After this fizzle, RT reports that his life may be in danger from his own CIA backers, the director of the Ron Paul Institute argued in a debate.

Daniel McAdams and Ron Paul, the former libertarian representative from Texas, discussed the repeated attempts by Guaido to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with the backing from the US government. Despite all the efforts, Maduro remains in power, supported by many Venezuelans and in control of its military and police forces.

Paul said he was concerned that the Latin American country may be plunged into large-scale violence by some provocation.

“The big danger is a hard war breaking out. I’d still bet it won’t be too bad, with thousands of troops moving. But it could be a guerrilla war or something like that. If there is a false flag or some important official on either side gets killed, you can’t tell what might happen,” he said.

McAdams pointed out that Guaido himself, with his record of failing to mobilize the protest against the Maduro government, could be a target for such a provocation.

He has been a kind of a hapless figure so far. He calls for mass protests and no one shows up. I don’t think he realizes right now that he is actually now worth more dead than alive not only to the CIA, but also to his own opposition people. A shot in the crowd or something like that to take Guaido out. It might shock you, Dr. Paul, but the CIA is pretty good at this kind of things.

He said Tuesday’s events, when Guaido declared a military-backed coup to be underway in Caracas which as of now seems to have led to little consequence for Maduro, seemed like an act of desperation.

“[Guaido] said: ‘this is the final phase of [the] plan to overthrow the government’. It sort of smacks of desperation because he declared himself [interim] president in January and nothing happened. He kept trying to do things to get the military to turn and he was unsuccessful,” he said.

Paul blasted US officials rooting vigorously for Guaido and his efforts to seize power in Venezuela while denouncing with indignation things like the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“How many places have we been involved in in the last 20-30-40-50 years? I mean – that’s our business. It’s solidifying our empire,” he said. “I think it’s pure hypocrisy for us to think that we are doing [the interference in Venezuela] and we are against government interference. We love it, except’ when we don’t.”

The devoted constitutionalist added people like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or National Security Advisor John Bolton, who appealed to Venezuelan soldiers to protect their nation’s constitution by siding with Guaido, were “a bunch of clowns.”

They don’t have the vaguest notion about what the constitutional law in our country would be like. And they are going to restore the constitutional law in other countries? It’s just clichés and nonsense!

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V5oBsF Tyler Durden

WTI Slides After Huge Crude Build, Record Production

WTI slid lower overnight amid signs of a sharp increase in U.S. crude inventories from API and concerns over the strength of economic growth in China, but rebounded back to pre-API level ahead of this morning’s official inventory data as the dollar tumbled.

Prices also slid as an attempted uprising against President Nicolas Maduro in OPEC member Venezuela appeared to fizzle.

“The market is currently witnessing the largest number of barrels subject to potential outage in many years, between Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Algeria and Libya,” said Leo Mariani, a KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. analyst.

API

  • Crude +6.81 mm (+1.5mm exp)

  • Cushing +1.353mm

  • Gasoline -1.055mm (-1.5mm exp)

  • Distillates -2.058mm (-1mm exp)

DOE

  • Crude +9.93mm (+1.5mm exp) – highest since Nov 2018

  • Cushing +265k

  • Gasoline +917k (-1.5mm exp)

  • Distillates -1.307mm (-1mm exp)

US crude inventories rose for the 5th week in the last 6 with a 9.934mm build – the biggest since November. At the same time, the 10-week streak of draws in gasoline inventories is over as stocks rose 917k last week…

“Amid this host of bullish catalysts is one deepening pocket of weakness — U.S. oil stocks are swelling due to an upswing in crude inventories,” said Stephen Brennock, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates Ltd. in London.

“Glum alarm bells are ringing louder in the U.S.”

US Crude production rose to a new record high, bucking the lower rig count trend…

Notably, February crude output was 11.68 million barrels a day in the latest monthly report released Tuesday. As Bloomberg notes, that’s quite a bit lower than the 12 million in the EIA’s weekly figures for the month.

After erasing the post-API drop. the machines started to lose control into the DOE print and after the major build, WTI prices slipped lower…

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2USQM99 Tyler Durden

Tesla’s ‘Dirty’ Little Earnings Secret: Pollution, Not Profits, Saved Musk

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

The surprise in the SEC 10-Q filing when no one was supposed to pay attention.

On April 29th, when no one was supposed to pay attention any longer, Tesla filed its quarterly report Form 10-Q with the SEC. Tesla had reported “earnings” on April 24, a doozie of a net loss of $702 million. But today, after the hoopla of its earnings report had died down, Tesla disclosed a slew of things that it hadn’t disclosed last week, including a record amount of sales of pollution credits.

Without those taxpayer-funded pollution credits that Tesla gets from the government and sells to other companies, its loss as automaker and solar-panel company would have been $918 million and its negative cash flow wouldn’t have been a cash drain of $919 million but a cash sinkhole of $1.14 billion

Tesla calls these taxpayer-funded pollution credits – part of the package of rich corporate welfare programs that Corporate America benefits from in numerous ways – “regulatory credits.”

The sales of these regulatory credits are booked as revenue, so they increase revenues by that amount. Since there are no costs associated with them, they also inflate by that amount gross profits, income from operations, net income, and cash flow. In other words, those taxpayer-funded credits are at the core of Tesla’s business model and flow straight from the top line all the way down to the bottom line.

Tesla discloses these “regulatory credits” – when it finally discloses them – in two categories:

  • Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) credits and

  • Non-ZEV regulatory credits.

On April 24, as I noted at the time, Tesla disclosed merely its $15 million in ZEV credits. But it kept its non-ZEV credits secret, and for a very good reason, with this kind of earnings chart:

On April 29th, in its 10-Q filing, it disclosed what was really going on with one sentence in a note discussing the composition of its revenues under the heading, “Automotive & Services and Other Segment” (I added the bold):

“Additionally, there was an increase of $170.6 million in sales of non-ZEV regulatory credits to $200.6 million in the three months ended March 31, 2019.”

Those regulatory credits in Q1 of $15 million in ZEV credits plus $200.6 million in non-ZEV credits amount to $215.6 million, or 4.8% of the Tesla’s revenues. These disclosures show to what extent it depends on the taxpayer for revenues, profits (well, lower losses), and cash flow.

Without those credits:

  • Gross profit wouldn’t have been $566 million but merely $350 million.

  • Net loss wouldn’t have been $702 million but $917.6 million, which would have been its largest loss ever by far.

  • Operating cash flow wouldn’t have been the whopper of a negative $919.5 million that it disclosed on April 24, but a negative $1.137 billion!

This is the reason Tesla doesn’t disclose these credits fully during its earnings release when the media might jump on it (possibly) but delays the disclosure until it files its quarterly 10-Q with the SEC usually the following week.

Without the revenues from selling those taxpayer-funded credits to other companies, Tesla’s operations as an automaker and a solar-panel maker would look a whole lot worse than they already do. And this comes on top of the enormous benefits Tesla still reaps from the now phasing-out taxpayer-funded credits that buyers of its vehicles obtain from the federal government and from some state governments.

The ruse that helped Tesla’s shares jump 20%. Read...  Tesla Reports Another Doozie

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GTGBNY Tyler Durden

Victims of Communism Day 2019

Bones of tortured prisoners. Kolyma Gulag, USSR.

Today is May Day. Since 2007, I have advocated using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. I outlined the rationale for this proposal (which was not my original idea) in my very first post on the subject:

May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their [authority]. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so….

Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events promote awareness of the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government domination of the economy and civil society.

While communism is most closely associated with Russia, where the first communist regime was established, it had equally horrendous effects in other nations around the world. The highest death toll for a communist regime was not in Russia, but in China. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward was likely the biggest episode of mass murder in the entire history of the world.

November 7, 2017 was the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the establishment of the first-ever communist regime. On that day, I put up a post outlining some of the lessons to be learned from a century of experience with communism.  The post explains why most of the horrors perpetrated by communist regimes were intrinsic elements of the system. For the most part, they cannot be ascribed to circumstantial factors, such as flawed individual leaders, peculiarities of Russian and Chinese culture, or the absence of democracy. The latter probably did make the situation worse than it might have been otherwise. But, for reasons I explained in the same post, some form of dictatorship or oligarchy is probably inevitable in a socialist economic system in which the government controls all or nearly all of the economy.

While the influence of communist ideology has declined since its mid-twentieth century peak, it is far from dead. Largely unreformed communist regimes remain in power in Cuba and North Korea. In Venezuela, the Marxist government’s socialist policies have resulted in political repression, the starvation of children, and a massive refugee crisis—the biggest in the history of the Western hemisphere. The regime continues to hold on to power by means of repression, despite growing international and domestic opposition. The struggle for freedom in Venezuela is continues even as I write these words.

In Russia, the authoritarian regime of former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin has embarked on a wholesale whitewashing of communism’s historical record. In China, the Communist Party remains in power (albeit after having abandoned many of its previous socialist economic polcies), and has recently become less tolerant of criticism of the mass murders of the Mao era (part of a more general turn towards greater repression). In the West, only a small minority advocates communism. But many more tend to downplay its evils, or are simply unaware of them.

In a 2012 post, I explained why May 1 is a better date for Victims of Communism Day than the available alternatives, such as November 7 (the anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia) and August 23 (the anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact). I also addressed various possible objections to using May Day, including claims that the date should be reserved for the celebration of labor unions.

But, as explained in my 2013 Victims of Communism Day post, I would be happy to support a different date if it turns out to be easier to build a consensus around it. If another date is chosen, I would prefer November 7; not out of any desire to diminish the significance of communist atrocities in other nations, but because it marks the establishment of the very first communist regime. But I am more than willing to endorse almost any other date that could command broad support. Unless and until that happens, however, May 1 will continue to be Victims of Communism Day at the Volokh Conspiracy.

NOTE: Much of this post is adapted from last year’s Victims of Communism Day post.

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Victims of Communism Day 2019

Bones of tortured prisoners. Kolyma Gulag, USSR.

Today is May Day. Since 2007, I have advocated using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. I outlined the rationale for this proposal (which was not my original idea) in my very first post on the subject:

May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their [authority]. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so….

Our comparative neglect of communist crimes has serious costs. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other similar events promote awareness of the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of left-wing forms of totalitarianism, and government domination of the economy and civil society.

While communism is most closely associated with Russia, where the first communist regime was established, it had equally horrendous effects in other nations around the world. The highest death toll for a communist regime was not in Russia, but in China. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward was likely the biggest episode of mass murder in the entire history of the world.

November 7, 2017 was the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the establishment of the first-ever communist regime. On that day, I put up a post outlining some of the lessons to be learned from a century of experience with communism.  The post explains why most of the horrors perpetrated by communist regimes were intrinsic elements of the system. For the most part, they cannot be ascribed to circumstantial factors, such as flawed individual leaders, peculiarities of Russian and Chinese culture, or the absence of democracy. The latter probably did make the situation worse than it might have been otherwise. But, for reasons I explained in the same post, some form of dictatorship or oligarchy is probably inevitable in a socialist economic system in which the government controls all or nearly all of the economy.

While the influence of communist ideology has declined since its mid-twentieth century peak, it is far from dead. Largely unreformed communist regimes remain in power in Cuba and North Korea. In Venezuela, the Marxist government’s socialist policies have resulted in political repression, the starvation of children, and a massive refugee crisis—the biggest in the history of the Western hemisphere. The regime continues to hold on to power by means of repression, despite growing international and domestic opposition. The struggle for freedom in Venezuela is continues even as I write these words.

In Russia, the authoritarian regime of former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin has embarked on a wholesale whitewashing of communism’s historical record. In China, the Communist Party remains in power (albeit after having abandoned many of its previous socialist economic polcies), and has recently become less tolerant of criticism of the mass murders of the Mao era (part of a more general turn towards greater repression). In the West, only a small minority advocates communism. But many more tend to downplay its evils, or are simply unaware of them.

In a 2012 post, I explained why May 1 is a better date for Victims of Communism Day than the available alternatives, such as November 7 (the anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia) and August 23 (the anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact). I also addressed various possible objections to using May Day, including claims that the date should be reserved for the celebration of labor unions.

But, as explained in my 2013 Victims of Communism Day post, I would be happy to support a different date if it turns out to be easier to build a consensus around it. If another date is chosen, I would prefer November 7; not out of any desire to diminish the significance of communist atrocities in other nations, but because it marks the establishment of the very first communist regime. But I am more than willing to endorse almost any other date that could command broad support. Unless and until that happens, however, May 1 will continue to be Victims of Communism Day at the Volokh Conspiracy.

NOTE: Much of this post is adapted from last year’s Victims of Communism Day post.

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Julian Assange Sentenced to 50 Weeks in U.K. Prison for Skipping Bail

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was hit with a 50-week prison sentence in a British court on Wednesday for jumping bail.

In 2012, Assange faced allegations of sexual assault, with Sweden requesting he be extradited to that country. As a result, Assange successfully sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he stayed until Ecuadorian officials got tired of harboring him and revoked his asylum last month. British police quickly took him into custody.

“By entering the embassy, you deliberately put yourself out of reach, whilst remaining in the U.K.,” Judge Deborah Taylor said in court Wednesday, according to Sky News. “You remained there for nearly seven years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country.” His stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy cost British taxpayers 16 million pounds (about $21 million), Taylor said, as police had to continuously monitor the building until last month. “It’s difficult to envisage a more serious example of this offense,” Taylor said.

Swedish prosecutors have since dropped the assault charges against Assange. But as The New York Times notes, it’s possible they could reopen the case now that he’s no longer confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange’s efforts to seek asylum “undoubtedly affected the progress of the Swedish proceedings” regarding the sexual assault allegations, Taylor said, according to The Washington Post.

But to hear Assange’s attorney tell it, the whistleblower skipped out on his bail because he didn’t want to be extradited to the U.S. The WikiLeaks founder is perhaps most well-known for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also been accused of working with the Russian government to release thousands of Democratic National Committee emails prior to the 2016 presidential election.

Assange “was living with overwhelming fear of being rendered to the U.S.,” his lawyer, Mark Summers, told the court, the Associated Press reported. Assange was worried U.S. authorities might send him to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which is normally reserved for terrorists, Summers said.

In a letter that Summers read to the court, Assange expressed regret for some of his actions. “I apologized unreservedly to those who consider that I have disrespected them by the way I have pursued my case,” he wrote, per the BBC.

“I did what I thought at the time was the best and perhaps the only thing that could be done—which I hoped might lead to a legal resolution being reached between Ecuador and Sweden that would protect me from the worst of my fears,” the letter added. “I regret the course that this took; the difficulties were instead compounded and impacted upon very many others.”

But Taylor wasn’t buying it. “Whilst you may have had fears as to what may happen to you, nonetheless you had a choice, and the course of action you chose was to commit this offense,” she said.

So what comes next for Assange? On Thursday, he’ll be in court again. This hearing could determine whether he’s extradited to the U.S., where federal prosecutors have charged him with helping to crack a password stored on government computers in order to access classified information back in 2010.

The organization Assange founded, meanwhile, doesn’t think he’s getting a fair shake. “Julian Assange’s sentence is as shocking as it is vindictive,” the group wrote on Twitter following his sentence. “We have grave concerns as to whether he will receive a fair extradition hearing in the UK.”

For more Reason coverage of Julian Assange, you can click here.

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Julian Assange Sentenced to 50 Weeks in U.K. Prison for Skipping Bail

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was hit with a 50-week prison sentence in a British court on Wednesday for jumping bail.

In 2012, Assange faced allegations of sexual assault, with Sweden requesting he be extradited to that country. As a result, Assange successfully sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he stayed until Ecuadorian officials got tired of harboring him and revoked his asylum last month. British police quickly took him into custody.

“By entering the embassy, you deliberately put yourself out of reach, whilst remaining in the U.K.,” Judge Deborah Taylor said in court Wednesday, according to Sky News. “You remained there for nearly seven years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country.” His stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy cost British taxpayers 16 million pounds (about $21 million), Taylor said, as police had to continuously monitor the building until last month. “It’s difficult to envisage a more serious example of this offense,” Taylor said.

Swedish prosecutors have since dropped the assault charges against Assange. But as The New York Times notes, it’s possible they could reopen the case now that he’s no longer confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange’s efforts to seek asylum “undoubtedly affected the progress of the Swedish proceedings” regarding the sexual assault allegations, Taylor said, according to The Washington Post.

But to hear Assange’s attorney tell it, the whistleblower skipped out on his bail because he didn’t want to be extradited to the U.S. The WikiLeaks founder is perhaps most well-known for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also been accused of working with the Russian government to release thousands of Democratic National Committee emails prior to the 2016 presidential election.

Assange “was living with overwhelming fear of being rendered to the U.S.,” his lawyer, Mark Summers, told the court, the Associated Press reported. Assange was worried U.S. authorities might send him to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which is normally reserved for terrorists, Summers said.

In a letter that Summers read to the court, Assange expressed regret for some of his actions. “I apologized unreservedly to those who consider that I have disrespected them by the way I have pursued my case,” he wrote, per the BBC.

“I did what I thought at the time was the best and perhaps the only thing that could be done—which I hoped might lead to a legal resolution being reached between Ecuador and Sweden that would protect me from the worst of my fears,” the letter added. “I regret the course that this took; the difficulties were instead compounded and impacted upon very many others.”

But Taylor wasn’t buying it. “Whilst you may have had fears as to what may happen to you, nonetheless you had a choice, and the course of action you chose was to commit this offense,” she said.

So what comes next for Assange? On Thursday, he’ll be in court again. This hearing could determine whether he’s extradited to the U.S., where federal prosecutors have charged him with helping to crack a password stored on government computers in order to access classified information back in 2010.

The organization Assange founded, meanwhile, doesn’t think he’s getting a fair shake. “Julian Assange’s sentence is as shocking as it is vindictive,” the group wrote on Twitter following his sentence. “We have grave concerns as to whether he will receive a fair extradition hearing in the UK.”

For more Reason coverage of Julian Assange, you can click here.

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