Trump charged under Espionage Act – which covers a lot more crimes than just spying

• The Espionage Act has historically been employed most often by law-and-order conservatives.
• While navigating the sound and fury over the Trump indictment, here are a few things to note about the Espionage Act.

Espionage Act seldom pertains to espionage

• One portion of the act – 18 U.S.C.
• section 794 – does relate to spying for foreign governments, for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment.
• More typically, as in the Trump investigation, the act applies to the unauthorized gathering, possessing or transmitting of certain sensitive government information.
• All of these prohibited activities fall under the separate and more commonly applied section of the act – 18 U.S.C.

A violation does not require an intention to aid a foreign power

• Current claims by Trump supporters of the seemingly innocuous nature of the conduct at issue – simply possessing sensitive government documents – miss the point.
• It concerned the unauthorized soliciting, obtaining, possessing and publishing of sensitive information that might be of help to a foreign nation if disclosed.
• Petraeus shared classified information with an unauthorized person for reasons having nothing to do with a foreign government.

The act is not just about classified information

• Top secret-sensitive compartmented information is reserved for information that would truly be damaging to the U.S. if it fell into foreign hands.
• The Espionage Act applies to all national defense information, or NDI, of which classified materials are only a portion.
• This kind of information includes a vast array of sensitive information including military, energy, scientific, technological, infrastructure and national disaster risks.

The public can’t judge a case based on classified information

• Cases involving classified information or NDI are nearly impossible to referee from the cheap seats.
• Because they are classified.
• And even if a judge in an Espionage Act case had access to all the information needed to evaluate the nature and risks of the materials, it wouldn’t matter.
• The fact that documents are classified or otherwise regulated as sensitive defense information is all that matters.
• The case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, is the most prominent prosecution of that era.