Michael Moore Posts Bail For WikiLeaks Founder

Award-winning director Michael Moore is coming out in support of WikiLeaks, posting $20,000 in bail money for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

WikiLeaks has come under increasing pressure in the wake of releasing thousands of documents - most recently the confidential cables sent from embassies of the United States. Many of those documents contained embarrassing revelations. WikiLeaks was also denounced by the U.S. government after it made hundreds of thousands of documents outlining U.S. strategy and operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Assange was arrested in Britain after a warrant was issued in Sweden for sexual assault charges. His supporters maintain that the criminal case is an attempt to discredit him.

WikiLeaks has had much of its funding cut off after PayPal and MasterCard both stopped processing transactions for the site, and its servers had to be moved to a site in Switzerland. The U.S. Justice Department is also considering charging Assange with violating the 1917 Espionage Act.

In his witness statement to the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Moore says that Assange has performed a valuable, patriotic service.

What do we do with someone who informs the authorities -- and in this case it is the free people in a democracy who are the authorities -- that a crime has been committed? Do we arrest HIM? Do we try to shut his mouth? Do we hound him, threaten him, track him down and hunt him as if HE is the criminal? He bravely informed the citizenry of what was being done in their name and with their tax monies. That is no crime. That is an act of patriotism, he wrote.

Moore also said he is willing to offer servers to WikiLeaks. I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars, he said in his Huffington Post essay.