Opinion | The Espionage Act Has Been Abused — But Not in Trump’s Case
"As its stock collapsed, Trump’s firm gave him huge bonuses and paid for his jet [...]"How Donald Trump Ditched U.S. Steel Workers in Favor of China [...]Throughout his campaign, Trump has maintained that some controversial decisions for his companies amounted to nothing more than taking actions that were good for business, and were therefore reflections of his financial acumen. But, with the exception of one business that collapsed into multiple bankruptcies, Trump does not operate a public company; he has no fiduciary obligation to shareholders to obtain the highest returns he can. His decisions to turn away from American producers were not driven by legal obligations to investors, but simply resulted in higher profits for himself and his family." A case study of a shyster conman."
Related: A sigh of relief regarding Judge Cannon [...]Today, we found out WHY Jack Smith seems unworried. Because this case includes national defense information as defined by the Espionage Act, it will be governed by the rules of the Confidential Information Production Act, or CIPA. [...]Joyce just told god and everybody that there's a provision in CIPA that allows for an IMMEDIATE right of EXPEDITED APPEAL. So what does that mean? P - It means that if Judge Cannon makes a ridiculous ruling that DoJ wants to appeal, SHE does NOT get to set the briefing schedule. The DoJ can appeal IMMEDIATELY to the 11th circuit - the same circuit that vacated TWO of Cannon's rulings in the Special Master case. P - Further, DoJ can utilize that trigger to IMMEDIATELY ask the 11th circuit to reassign the case to a different judge. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172139182
Reforms to the law are long overdue, but they have nothing to do with the Mar-a-Lago search.
An aerial view of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is pictured. | Steve Helber/AP Photo
Opinion by Jameel Jaffer 08/17/2022 12:01 PM EDT Jameel Jaffer is executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
The revelation that the Justice Department is investigating former President Donald Trump for violations of the Espionage Act .. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/us/trump-investigation-takeaways.html?searchResultPosition=2 .. has provoked a new wave of criticism of that century-old law, with some calling on Congress to narrow the law and at least one senator declaring that it should be repealed altogether .. https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1558579480171614209 . There are in fact very good reasons to criticize the Espionage Act — a law that has cast a dark shadow over free speech and press freedom in this country since its passage — and compelling reasons why Congress should overhaul it. That the law is being used against Trump, however, isn’t one of them.
This much the law’s new critics have right: The Espionage Act is wildly overbroad. We know this from experience. Former President Woodrow Wilson signed the measure into law in 1917 and immediately began using it as an instrument of political repression. During and after the First World War, his administration used the Espionage Act to prosecute thousands of people for legitimate political speech. One of those people was the socialist and labor activist Eugene Debs, who was sentenced to a decade in prison for an anti-war speech that allegedly obstructed military recruitment. (It’s perhaps worth noting, given questions about Trump’s future, that Debs later ran for president from his prison cell.)
Congress amended the Espionage Act after the Second World War, but the amended law, like the original, criminalizes a wide range of activity bearing little resemblance to espionage as the term is usually understood.
[INSERT: One other - Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, FinCEN Whistleblower in Government, Whistleblower of the Week Jane Turner July 12, 2022 [...]That statement preceded President Biden signing the executive order (Memorandum on Establishing the Fight Against Corruption as a Core United States National Security Interest) vowing to make global financial systems more transparent in order to “prevent and combat corruption at home and abroad; and making it increasingly difficult for corrupt actors to shield their activities.” Exposing money laundering and criminal activity around the globe was exactly what Edwards sought. The information presented the role some of the world’s biggest banks held in regard to international money laundering, trafficking of goods and people and corruption of financial regulators. The documents exposed politicians, criminal groups and obscenely wealthy individuals who used the financial system to dodge taxes and launder dirty money.]
Another major problem with the law is that, on its face, it criminalizes the publication of national security information not just by government insiders but by others as well. It was this aspect of the law that led two prominent legal scholars to characterize the Espionage Act, 50 years ago, as a “loaded gun .. https://knightcolumbia.org/documents/e1a6a40e12 ” pointed at the press, and that more recently has led press freedom groups (including the Knight Institute, which I direct) to decry the Biden administration’s prosecution of Julian Assange .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment.html . The truth is that it would be absolutely impossible for the press to do its job if it couldn’t publish government secrets, as the journalist Max Frankel famously observed .. https://www.umass.edu/ellsberg/document/affidavit-of-max-frankel-in-united-states-of-america-v-new-york-times-company-et-al-june-17-1971/ . (Imagine what the debate about counterterrorism policy after 9/11 would have looked like without the reporting about Abu Ghraib, the CIA’s black sites, the torture memos, the warrantless wiretapping program or the drone campaign.) And whether or not Julian Assange is fairly characterized as “the press,” the government’s effort to prosecute him relies on a legal theory .. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/julian-assange-still-prison-america-s-democratic-principles-are-still-ncna1253051 .. that could as readily support a prosecution of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
Trump isn’t a whistleblower or reporter or publisher. There is no serious argument that he retained top secret records so that he could inform the public about government misconduct. The concerns that have led civil liberties and press freedom groups to fear and condemn the Espionage Act simply aren’t present here. Indeed, if the facts are essentially as the Justice Department asserts them to be — that Trump left the White House with scores of top-secret documents, that he failed to adequately secure them, that he refused to return them even after receiving a request from the National Archives and Records Administration and a subpoena from the Department of Justice — even a substantially narrowed criminal regime that better accounted for the First Amendment interests of whistleblowers, journalists and the public would almost certainly reach the conduct that Trump is said to have engaged in here.
[With that, though i am very reluctant to give this populist, money grubbing, conservatively-leaning, imo, Russell 'Wanker for a Buck' Brand any further airtime here, as he does, imo, put questions in similar manner to Tucker, f*wit Carlson. Even Murdoch got rid of .. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/apr/24/tucker-carlson-leaving-fox-news .. him. Brand, in his very Carlson way, here no doubt, gives support to Trump's conspiracy infused supporters.
Trump’s Arrest EXPOSED - The REAL STORY They’re Not Telling You. That click-bait heading is unadulterated garbage. You only have to listen to about 3 min., as i did, to see what i said above is true.]
All of this said, the Espionage Act’s new critics are right that the law should be amended, even if they are wrong about why. And perhaps we can hope that the attention they are drawing to the law will inspire legislators to do what they should have done many years ago.
These kinds of proposals would perhaps not satisfy the Espionage Act’s new critics, at least some of whom seem to be motivated by fealty to Trump rather than actual principle. But by enacting them, or a version of them, Congress could reaffirm press freedom and the public’s right to know at a moment when those things could hardly be more important to our democracy.
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