DONALD TRUMP HAS HIS OWN HISTORY WITH THE ESPIONAGE ACT – By Micah Lee (The Intercept) / Aug 16, 2022
The Trump administration used the controversial law to target media outlets and sources who provided important information to the public.
LAST WEEK, FBI agents executed a search warrant on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seizing 11 sets of classified documents, including one at the highest classification level in the U.S. government. The search warrant cited three criminal statutes. One related to obstruction — which the New York Times said could be because a lawyer working for Trump signed a written statement asserting that they had already returned all classified documents, which wasn’t true. Another related to the theft of government records. And the last one involved Section 793 of the Espionage Act, a statute that covers “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.”
The 1917 Espionage Act has become controversial. Despite its name, it isn’t really used much anymore to prosecute spies. In recent years, both Democratic and Republican administrations wielded it as a weapon to intimidate media as well as sources who have provided important information to the public — raising the ire of civil rights advocates.
This isn’t Trump’s first brush with the Espionage Act, though it is the first time he’s the one being accused. According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, Trump’s Department of Justice charged five journalist sources — none of them spies — under the Espionage Act. (Several more journalistic sources were prosecuted under lesser statutes.) Here’s how the Espionage Act charges went for the people Trump used it against.
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2022/08/16/trump-espionage-act-classified-documents/
