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espionage act
Named for Daniel Ellsberg, Tlaib Proposal Would Protect Whistleblowers and Journalists
"With whistleblowers, journalists, and civil liberties under significant attack and government decision-making shrouded in increasing secrecy, reining in the abuses of the Espionage Act could not be more urgent.”
Mar 12, 2026
Warning that the Espionage Act has been used to "persecute and criminalize" dissenters, journalists, and whistleblowers numerous times since it was passed into law, US Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Thursday introduced the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act to "rein in" the 109-year-old law.
The proposal is named for the military analyst-turned-activist who disclosed decades of deception by the US government regarding Vietnam when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971—an act that led the government to charge Ellsberg with espionage, conspiracy, and other crimes before the case was thrown out over the Nixon administration's misconduct.
In the cases of Ellsberg, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and other journalists and whistleblowers, "Espionage Act prosecutions have been used to silence dissent and undermine government transparency and are a clear violation of the First Amendment and the fundamental right to due process," said Tlaib (D-Mich.).
“Alerting the public to government wrongdoing is not a crime,” said the congresswoman. “The Espionage Act has been abused by administrations of both parties to target whistleblowers and journalists for sharing critically important information with the public. With whistleblowers, journalists, and civil liberties under significant attack and government decision-making shrouded in increasing secrecy, reining in the abuses of the Espionage Act could not be more urgent.”
Tlaib noted that in addition to past administrations using the Espionage Act to prosecute media sources and whistleblowers who alerted the public about mass surveillance, torture, drone assassinations, and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter in January in connection to the prosecution of a government whistleblower.
The proposed legislation would limit the scope of the Espionage Act to foreign agents and government employees who have a legal duty to protect classified information—prohibiting the use of the law to prosecute publishers, journalists, or members of the public.
It would also increase due process standards and safeguards for whistleblowers who disclose government wrongdoing, war crimes, or abuses of power to the public. The legislation would create and affirmative public interest defense and require the government to prove that a whistleblower acted with the specific intent of harming the US or aiding a foreign power.
Under the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act, said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel for the ACLU, "the government could no longer abuse [the Espionage Act] to silence those sharing information that is beneficial to the public."
“For too long the Espionage Act has been used to persecute and silence whistleblowers, journalists and publishers,” said Leventoff. “But journalism is not a crime—it is a First Amendment protected activity that protects our democracy by allowing the public to hold our nation’s leaders to account."
The Espionage Act was originally passed to crack down on those who spread information that could interfere with the war effort during World War I, and "from its inception," said Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent, "the law has been used to stifle public debate and has become the go to weapon against whistleblowers and now journalists."
"Public servants who witness egregious crimes like torture, mass surveillance of Americans, or the killing of civilians, and seek to alert the American people about them are whistleblowers," said Gibbons. "Yet, using the Espionage Act the government prosecutes them as though they were spies. And with the government going further and prosecuting a journalist under the Espionage Act, the threat not just to press freedom, but to our very democracy, posed by this antiquated law is growing. Rep. Tlaib’s bill is desperately needed as it is well past time to bring the Espionage Act in line with the First Amendment.”
Tlaib noted that before his death in 2023, Ellsberg expressed public support for the reforms the congresswoman had proposed, when she introduced them as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.
“For half a century, starting with my own prosecution, no whistleblower charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 has had, or could have, a fair trial," said Ellsberg in 2022. "These long-overdue amendments would remedy that injustice, protect the First Amendment freedom of the press, and encourage vitally needed truth-telling.”
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Bar Complaint Filed Against Prosecutor Who Petitioned for Raid of Journalist's Home
"When prosecutors abuse their power to facilitate efforts to silence reporting and intimidate news sources, disciplinary authorities must hold them accountable and impose real consequences," reads a filing.
Feb 09, 2026
Soon after the FBI raided Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home in Virginia last month, the Freedom of the Press Foundation said it suspected that the Trump administration was either "ignoring or distorting" federal law when it allowed the search and seizure of Natanson's electronic devices to go forward.
On Monday, the organization said that recently unsealed court documents had proven its suspicions were correct as it filed a formal disciplinary complaint against the federal prosecutor who signed the search warrant application: Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg had failed to disclose to the magistrate judge who approved the warrant the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which strictly limit search warrants for journalists' work products and materials.
That allegation led the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) to file a disciplinary complaint with the Virginia State Bar on Friday.
By not alerting Judge William B. Porter to the law, Kromberg "appears to have violated an ethical rule that requires lawyers to reveal relevant legal authority to the court, even if it undermines their arguments," said FPF.
Seth Stein, the chief of advocacy for FPF, filed the complaint nearly a month after the FBI executed the search warrant at Natanson's home and seized several devices.
The raid was completed as part of an Espionage Act investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor who's accused of leaking classified information to Natanson. The journalist has extensively covered the experiences of people in the federal workforce in the past year, as the Trump administration has fired or pushed out more than 350,000 employees.
The Privacy Protection Act prohibits searches of a journalist's materials unless there is probable cause to believe that the reporter themself has committed a crime related to their work materials. The law stipulates that the mere possession of materials by a journalist cannot trigger that exception unless the materials are child sexual abuse imagery or national security secrets.
As the New York Times reported last week, "It is disputed whether it is constitutionally permissible to apply the Espionage Act to ordinary news gathering activities by people without security clearances."
Prosecutors have never charged a traditional reporter with violating the Espionage Act for news gathering activities. The Department of Justice alarmed First Amendment advocates during President Donald Trump's first administration when it charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified files; Assange later struck a plea deal so the constitutionality of his charges were not tested in court.
Stein emphasized in the filing that Kromberg's omission of the Privacy Protection Act "could not have been a mere oversight—the warrant in question was, predictably, a subject of national news, given that raids of journalists’ homes during investigations of alleged leaks by government personnel are, according to experts, unprecedented."
"Disciplinary bodies cannot look the other way and ignore misconduct that threatens the First Amendment, particularly from an administration with a long history of misleading judges and everyone else."
"Under the Department of Justice’s own policies," reads the filing, "the search should have been discussed with and authorized by the highest levels of the DOJ, including the attorney general."
Several legal experts who specialize in ethics told the Times last week that if Kromberg knew about the Privacy Protection Act and didn't alert Porter that the search could violate the law, he violate an ethical statute called Rule 3.3, “Candor Toward the Tribunal."
New York University professor emeritus Stephen Gillers told the Times that Kromberg was required “to disclose the Privacy Protection Act because it is ‘controlling,’ which means the judge was required to consider it in his ruling on the government’s request, and because the act’s provisions are ‘adverse,’ which means its requirements could have the effect of denying the government’s request.”
Stein said in a statement that Kromberg and the federal government "omitted a federal law that should have prohibited the raid of Hannah Natanson’s home when applying for a search warrant."
Natanson and the Post filed a lawsuit demanding the return of her electronic devices and data, arguing that under the Privacy Protection Act, it is illegal for the government to review her reporting work that is unrelated to the investigation into Perez-Lugones.
In the filing on Friday, Stein warned that in addition to harming Natanson's ability to complete her work, the FBI has jeopardized the confidentiality of her sources, and "journalists and whistleblowers across the country are sure to think twice about drawing the ire of the current administration" in light of the reporter's ordeal.
"Disciplinary bodies cannot look the other way and ignore misconduct that threatens the First Amendment, particularly from an administration with a long history of misleading judges and everyone else," said Stein on Monday. "When prosecutors abuse their power to facilitate efforts to silence reporting and intimidate news sources, disciplinary authorities must hold them accountable and impose real consequences.”
FPF called on the Virginia State Bar to take "appropriate disciplinary action, up to and including disbarment," against Kromberg.
The bar, said the group, should "expedite disciplinary proceedings due to the dire consequences for First Amendment freedoms if illegal newsroom raids and seizures of journalists’ work product are allowed to go unchecked."
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Indictment of Ex-Trump Adviser John Bolton Called a 'Warning Shot to Every American'
The indictment has been condemned as part of the president's crackdown on his "enemies list," but some legal experts are also highlighting how the case differs from those of Letitia James and James Comey.
Oct 17, 2025
While critics of John Bolton have long called for him to be tried at the International Criminal Court, the federal indictment of President Donald Trump's ex-national security adviser on Thursday is generating widespread alarm.
Bolton surrendered at a courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland Friday morning after a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging him with violating the Espionage Act—specifically 18 counts of unlawfully retaining and transmitting national defense information. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.
When former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey was indicted last month, Trump pledged that "there'll be others." Then Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James—who successfully prosecuted the president for financial crimes—was indicted last week. Critics accuse Trump of weaponizing the US Department of Justice (DOJ) against his enemies.
Some of the reactions to Bolton's indictment were similar, including from the 76-year-old himself, who served in not only Trump's first term but also the Reagan and both Bush administrations. He said in a lengthy statement that "Donald Trump's retribution" against him began when he resigned from the president's first administration and began publicly criticizing him.
"Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts," Bolton said. "These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive efforts to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct."
"Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America's constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom," added Bolton, a longtime advocate of regime change in other countries. "I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power."
Bolton's lawyer is Abbe Lowell, who is also representing James and Lisa Cook, whom Trump is trying to oust from the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. His former clients include the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner. Lowell said that "like many public officials throughout history, Ambassador Bolton kept diaries—that is not a crime."
Co-chairs of the Not Above the Law coalition—Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Brett Edkins of Stand Up America—connected Bolton to James and Comey in a Friday statement:
Three indictments in three weeks. Three Trump critics. Three prosecutions designed to intimidate anyone who dares challenge this president. Three people who were on Trump's "enemies list." The pattern is undeniable: Speak out against Trump, become a target of the DOJ.
The message from this administration couldn't be clearer: Loyalty gets rewarded, dissent gets investigated. While Trump's handpicked prosecutors work overtime delivering indictments against his critics, actual threats to American safety go unaddressed.
A Department of Justice that acts in service of presidential revenge rather than public safety threatens democracy itself. This isn't just about Bolton—it's a warning shot to every American that dissent now comes with the threat of prosecution.
Congress has a constitutional duty to intervene, restore DOJ independence, and end this dangerous abuse of law enforcement before more lives are destroyed for political purposes.
However, University of Alabama law professor and former US attorney Joyce Vance argued on Substack Friday that the Bolton indictment "is entirely different" from those against Comey and James in the Eastern District of Virginia, pointing out that "the US attorney in Maryland is a career prosecutor. But she didn't go into the grand jury to obtain the indictment. It's signed off on by two senior prosecutors in her office as well as lawyers from DOJ's National Security Division."
"Instead of the factually deficient indictments we've seen in the other cases, this is the sort of detailed indictment we are used to seeing in a serious matter," she highlighted. "There is undoubtedly truth to the allegation that Donald Trump wanted Bolton prosecuted. But the intervening layer of professional prosecutors here, people who assessed the case and the evidence and decided there was enough to move forward, may make it difficult to win a selective prosecution argument."
"In the Comey and James cases, experienced prosecutors declined to bring the cases, and the US attorney sacrificed his job for principle. The cases were only brought because Trump dropped in a loyalist to replace him," Vance added. "Here, unless Bolton has some evidence that these prosecutors did not proceed professionally, he may not have a winnable legal argument."
CNN's Aaron Blake published a similar analysis early Friday. Blake also noted that in 2020, US District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, "ruled in Bolton's favor in a civil case stemming from a dispute with the Trump administration over the publication of Bolton's book. But Lamberth otherwise excoriated Bolton for his handling of classified information."
Meanwhile, Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, used Bolton's indictment to call for broader reforms on Friday. He began by noting that "John Bolton is an unrepentant war criminal and one of most odious national security hawks in Washington. As part of his antipathy for press freedom, whistleblowers, and anyone who challenges the national security state, he called for both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden to be executed for exposing abuses of power by our government."
"Similarly, he called for journalist Julian Assange to get 'at least 176 years in jail' for publishing truthful information about US war crimes," Gibbons explained. "Now, Bolton, like Manning, Snowden, and Assange has been indicted under the Espionage Act."
"We at Defending Rights & Dissent were one of the leading voices in Washington in support of Manning, Snowden, and Assange. And we remain the leading voice on reforming the Espionage Act so it can no longer be used to prosecute courageous whistleblowers and journalists," he said. "As part of our reform proposal, we advocated the Espionage Act be amended to require the government to prove a defendant intended to harm the national security of the US."
"Nothing in the indictment of Bolton indicates the government believes Bolton had that level of intent," Gibbons stressed. "As a result, we do not believe Bolton should be indicted under the Espionage Act. This is the same position we took regarding Donald Trump, who himself has been responsible for abusing the Espionage Act to silence journalists and whistleblowers."
"The Espionage Act is an overly broad, archaic law. As a result, it is ripe for selective, politically motivated enforcement. It is for these reasons that Bolton championed it as a tool for political persecutions against whistleblowers and journalists. And it is for this reason the Trump administration has chosen it as a tool for their petty retaliation against a national security hawk who shares much of their views on the use of the Espionage Act," he concluded. "Enough is enough. It is well past time to reform the Espionage Act once and for all."
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