Editorials & Other Articles

Eugene

(65,777 posts) Wed Jul 2, 2025, 11:31 AM Jul 2

Team Trump Is Serious About Unleashing the Espionage Act on the Media

Source: Rolling Stone

Team Trump Is Serious About Unleashing the Espionage Act on the Media

Ryan Bort and Asawin Suebsaeng
Mon, June 30, 2025 at 8:05 PM EDT

Donald Trump hates leakers. He isn’t a fan of journalists, either. He wants to punish them both in response to reporting that early Pentagon intelligence found the administration’s recent strikes against Iran weren’t as effective as the president has been claiming.

“They should be prosecuted,” Trump said when Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business asked him about his contention that Democrats leaked the intelligence, adding that the administration could attempt to force reporters to reveal their sourcing by saying: “National Security.”

One of the ways Trump has discussed cracking down on leakers and the press is by wielding the Espionage Act, a 1917 law criminalizing the dissemination of sensitive information that could harm U.S. national security or aid a foreign nation. In the months leading up to his second presidency, Trump and several of his advisers and close allies talked about novel ways the Espionage Act could be unleashed not just against government leakers and whistleblowers, but against media outlets that received classified or highly sensitive information, according to two sources involved with such conversations with Trump.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/team-trump-serious-unleashing-espionage-000535029.html

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Team Trump Is Serious About Unleashing the Espionage Act on the Media (Original Post) Eugene Jul 2 OP

Maddow Blog--The bizarre reason Trump and his team say they may try to 'prosecute' CNN LetMyPeopleVote Jul 2 #1

Yup, FelonTraitorTrump is beginning to look a lot like Putin. Miami Blue Jul 2 #2

LetMyPeopleVote

(166,448 posts)

1. Maddow Blog--The bizarre reason Trump and his team say they may try to 'prosecute' CNN

Reply to Eugene (Original post)

Wed Jul 2, 2025, 11:44 AM

Jul 2

When an administration starts talking about prosecuting journalists for running segments the White House doesn't like, pay attention.

â€œMaddow Blog | The bizarre reason Trump and his team say they may try to â€˜prosecuteâ€™ CNNâ€
— (@serena-spencer-esq.bsky.social) 2025-07-02T15:44:29.466Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/bizarre-reason-trump-team-say-may-try-prosecute-cnn-rcna216447

Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” for example, said this week that he believes the Justice Department “needs to look at” CNN because of its report. As The New York Times reported, he wasn’t alone.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Tuesday that she was ‘working with the Department of Justice’ to see if the Trump administration could prosecute CNN for publishing an article about an app that allows users to send alerts about the presence of nearby immigration agents. ‘We’re going to actually go after them and prosecute them,’ Ms. Noem told reporters at an appearance with President Trump in Florida.

The DHS secretary went on to describe the reporting that the administration didn’t like as “illegal.”

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:aunpu65mdrhwfie7ynymlzeh/post/3lsvzae2w5c2i

Link to tweet

......In case this isn’t obvious, let’s pause to take note of a few things. First, CNN reporting on a popular and publicly available app is perfectly legal under the First Amendment. Second, “working with” federal prosecutors to target a news organization for running a perfectly legal report is unambiguous authoritarianism.

Third, CNN’s reporting on Trump’s pre-emptive military strikes in Iran wasn’t “false” — and even if it were, it wouldn’t have been illegal. (If the White House has evidence of a media outlet getting a story wrong, it can ask for a correction. It cannot sic federal law enforcement on journalists.)

But it's also worth appreciating the larger context.

In the run-up to Election Day 2024, Trump was nearly as eager to attack the free press as he was to attack Kamala Harris. The Republican, for example, referred to journalists as “the enemy of the people,” media outlets as “evil,” and news professionals as “scum.”

But the offensive wasn’t just rhetorical. As regular readers might recall, Trump also made clear that he hoped to use governmental power to crack down on journalism he dislikes. It’s why he invested so much time and energy talking about the FCC stripping TV networks of their broadcast licenses for airing coverage he disapproves of......

And then the tactics did, in fact, get worse. The president demanded that CBS face “fines and punishment” for airing a “60 Minutes” episode he didn’t like; he tried to penalize The Associated Press over its decision to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico; and the White House has also taken steps to control press pools, in part to ensure sycophantic questions.

Those who take the First Amendment’s press freedoms for granted need to recognize the fact that Trump is eyeing the kind of crackdown on journalism that’s unheard of in any modern democracy.

Miami Blue

(324 posts)

2. Yup, FelonTraitorTrump is beginning to look a lot like Putin.

Reply to Eugene (Original post)

Wed Jul 2, 2025, 12:13 PM

Jul 2

Mark my words, pretty soon FelonTraitorTrump is gonna start requiring that his Stormtroopers go to push his Critics out of their own places’ stairs and
out of their businesses staircases and windows.

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