The history of the WikiLeaks investigation, which was initiated by the Obama administration, proves how menacing this new indictment is. While the Obama administration was willing to hunt down and prosecute journalists’ sources using the Espionage Act, it never charged WikiLeaks simply for publishing classified information. That indictment pretended it was prosecuting Assange for allegedly helping Manning hack into government databases to steal secret material. By this reasoning, imprisoning Assange for publishing documents poses no dangers to “real journalists” because press freedoms are inapplicable to Assange (or, presumably, anyone else denied the “journalist” designation). But the Trump administration, from the start, escalated that threat severely and quite publicly.

Source: Washington Post May 28, 2019 10:00 UTC