Jeff Sessions, Julian Assange, and the First Amendment
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
...
This is a terrible idea for three reasons.
1) The Espionage Act is a terrible law, a monster out of the Wilson administration through which the spirit of A. Mitchell Palmer still stalks the halls of the Department of Justice. It should have been repealed years ago.
2) I can't see any way for the DOJ to proceed in a prosecution like this without threatening to subpoena journalists, or to actually charge them. The Obama administration's assault on leakers and the people to whom they leak was the worst part of that administration's record on law enforcement. They made the lives of reporters miserable. But this would be a giant step beyond anything that administration did. And, finally…
3) It's these guys. This is the lens through which any action this administration takes must be judged. The president* is Donald Trump. The attorney general is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. The presumption of incompetence on the one hand, and authoritarianism on the other, must always control in any action this administration takes. The Espionage Act is a terrible law. JeffBo is a terrible AG. This is the ironclad context in which any action taken should be judged.
I don't care what you think of Julian Assange, or Glenn Greenwald, or The Intercept, and I don't care which side you were on during the 2016 Democratic primaries. (In fact, I wish you'd all shut the hell up about that.) Unleashing Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III on the Bill of Rights is a ghastly prospect that should be fought at every turn. The only court in which Assange rightly should appear is in Sweden.
the rest:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54669/julian-assange-espionage-act/
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