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espionage act
How Trump 2.0 Is Like My Recurring Prison Nightmare
Like dreaming of being back in prison, we know what we will be getting: an arrogant, narcissistic head of state who bungles incompetently through a presidency while making people comfortable with their prejudices.
Dec 09, 2024
“A country gets the leadership it deserves.”
That was my sentiment back in 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the presidency of the United States. That rather morose and quite cynical sentiment came as I watched election results from the federal prison in Denver, where I had been since mid-2015 after being unjustly convicted of violating the Espionage Act as a CIA case officer. Prison tends to taint one’s perspective of the outside world. In 2016, I couldn’t help being cynical about an election I could not participate in. With Donald Trump again being president-elect after another contentious election season, I have that sentiment again, but in a more experienced and reasonable perspective.
Back then, I was rather dismayed by the campaigns of both Trump and Clinton. With Trump, I saw a mirror image of the prison where I was watching from, racial divisions stoked by unaccountable authority figures. With Clinton, I saw the status quo and the painful reminder that the criminal justice system that I was subjected to is not the same one for those in political power. It was disheartening to see her freely run for president without being called into account for proven actions similar to what I was falsely accused of (i.e. alleged unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials, etc.). That these were the only two candidates the nation could come up with as choices for its leadership was tragically comical. I almost felt fortunate that I couldn’t vote for either one… almost. The right and duty to vote was something I never took lightly, and being prevented from doing so, particularly under the circumstances that led to it, hurt me dearly.
So, yes, when Trump won, I felt the country deserved him as its president. I wasn’t a part of the country then, so it was easy for me to be ambivalent. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel good about it. In fact, I felt downright depressed and depression in prison is a wholly different and tragic animal. But, then again, I knew it didn’t matter who the president was or would be… I was in prison! No president has done anything to improve prison conditions. I certainly wasn’t expecting Trump, an ostensible “law and order candidate,” to do anything that would be in my or my fellow inmates’ interest.
Trump’s reelection is deserving only in the sense that it wakes us up to the reality that to have the leadership we deserve, we have to continually work for it and never cease expecting accountable and responsive government.
The next day, I couldn’t help but notice that the sun came up once again and I can recall it was a beautiful day, even viewing it from behind bars. Trump was going to be president, but the world did not end. Like every new day, I went into that new one continuing to hold on to the hope that in a few short years, I would rejoin my dear wife and be free. I went to prison knowing I would have to persevere through tough times. But, I knew I would endure because, through support and determination, I could not and would not allow prison to define me. I had work to do to fight against challenging times, and I did so because I deserved better than what American criminal justice offered me.
I was eventually released from prison in 2018. I emerged to freedom amid a Trump presidency that gave me the haunting feeling I had moved from one prison to another. His presidency was marked by the same encouraged racial discord and divisiveness as well as the lack of accountability to power that I experienced for two and a half years in prison. I couldn’t help but feel I was back to the Black-white TV room separation state of affairs that was my reality for so long.
One of the more distressing realities of prison life was the tacit acceptance of a toxic environment and broken system as being “normal.” There was nothing normal about abusive and unaccountable authority, a populace encouraged to embrace and practice its biases, and an environment of hate. I realized that, after a while, a horrible experience tends to skew one’s view of what is “normal.” The prison mindset teaches that the only solution to a terrible situation is to just fall in line and do as you’re told, even if it is wrong. That was a lesson I was slow, if not outright refused, to learn as evidenced by a stint in solitary confinement for refusing to be demeaned by an unruly prison guard. I saw nothing “normal” about being treated as less than human and chose to stand up against it, a constant for me in and out of prison. The first Trump presidency was, for comparison’s sake, that same sort of prison “normal” that we were all forced to just deal with in the best ways we could.
If the first stint in prison didn’t defeat me, I felt I had a good chance against the one I emerged into. However, as much as I did fight against it, the taint of prison is in many ways eternal. One of the most profound nightmares I have suffered through since being released was finding myself back in prison. And, a return to prison was always worse the second time around. Even though in dreams, the prison walls felt closer, the chains were tighter, and the feelings of not being in control of my own life and being in a perpetual state of persecution felt accentuated and much more desperate than what I had experienced before. I always awaken from such dreams in a cold sweat and trembling. For me, much like those recurring nightmares, a second Trump presidency is the embodiment of that oneiric return to prison that still shakes me to this day.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. On the day after this current election, even though I am not surrounded by razor wire or armed guards, there was a haunting familiarity to what I awoke to back in 2016. The same disgust I felt in 2016 has come to the fore. Instead of seeing Clinton run for president and wondering why the same criminal justice system that put me in prison didn’t treat her the same way, I now see Trump as a president-elect and similarly wonder the same thing. It is painfully ironic that Trump has been accused of similar violations as Clinton, mainly the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials specifically related to Iran, a country I specialized in while at the CIA. Allegations aside, Trump clearly violated the Espionage Act and existentially violated the laws of and endangered this country, yet he won’t see a day behind bars let alone a trial. He had a judge in his pocket to ensure the indictment was dismissed; now he will have the power of the presidency to simply make the matter go away. Such is the law and order hypocrisy of Trump and his supporters.
The weeks ending this year have been a strain for me as it feels eerily similar to those last few days of freedom I had before being forced to report to prison. It will be difficult to view Inauguration Day 2025 as anything other than a return to a familiar nightmare. That I was being pathetically quixotic about prison not being that bad was borne out in hindsight—that experience was every horror I knew it was going to be. Similarly, Trump 2.0 will have no surprises other than the very real possibility of being worse than Trump 1.0. Like dreaming of being back in prison, we know what we will be getting: an arrogant, narcissistic head of state who bungles incompetently through a presidency making people comfortable with their prejudices and continuing to spew divisive, rambling rhetoric as if he’s perpetually campaigning for office. Not having to worry about reelection down the road, there will be nothing to hold Trump back from being himself to the nth degree.
But, will this be what we as a nation deserve? Unlike my mindset in 2016, my answer to myself and us is an emphatic, “No!” This country, my country, deserves better than the prisons we have created. Trump’s reelection is deserving only in the sense that it wakes us up to the reality that to have the leadership we deserve, we have to continually work for it and never cease expecting accountable and responsive government. We deserve better than the Trump “normal” that will be revisited upon us. Even the most troubling of times can present opportunities to better oneself. Without any semblance of my previous cynicism, Trump 2.0 will provide an atmosphere of opportunity to challenge unhinged authority, confront and defeat hatred, as well as find and nurture leaders who truly work in the best interests of us all.
That’s the thing about nightmares, they are over when you wake up. My prison nightmares always end the same way, I awaken to find that I am not in prison. We know what this upcoming nightmare will be like. Whether it’s worse will depend on us and what we feel we deserve.
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Speaking Freely in the Age of Trump
Given what’s heading our way, we need a capacious view and robust defense of the First Amendment from all quarters—as we always have.
Nov 16, 2024
I thought I was done with free speech. For nearly two decades, I reported on it for the international magazine Index on Censorship. I wrote a book, Outspoken: Free Speech Stories, about controversies over it. I even sang “I Like to Be in America” at the top of my lungs at an around-the-clock banned-book event organized by the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression after the musical West Side Story was canceled at a local high school because of its demeaning stereotypes of Puerto Ricans. I was ready to move on. I was done.
As it happened, though, free speech—or, more accurately, attacks on it—wasn’t done with me, or with most Americans, as a matter of fact. On the contrary, efforts to stifle expression of all sorts keep popping up like Whac-A-Mole on steroids. Daily, we hear about another book pulled from a school; another protest closed down on a college campus; another university president bowing to alumni pressure; another journalist suspended over a post on social media; another politically outspoken artistdenied a spot in an exhibition; another young adult novel canceled for cultural insensitivity; another drag-queen story hour attacked at a library; another parent demanding control over how pronouns are used at school; another panic over the dangers lurking in AI; another op-ed fretting that even a passing acquaintance with the wrong word, picture, implication, or idea will puncture the fragile mental health of young people.
The instinct to cover other people’s mouths, eyes, and ears is ancient and persistent and not necessarily restricted to those we disagree with.
The list ranges from the ditzy to the draconian, and it’s very long. Even conduct can get ensnared in censorship battles, as abortion has over what information healthcare providers are allowed to offer or what information crisis pregnancy centers (whose purpose is to dissuade women from seeking abortions) can be required to offer. Looming over it all, we just had an election brimming with repellent utterances financed by gobs of corporate money, which, the Supreme Court ruled in its 2010 Citizens United decision, is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.
I suspect that if you live long enough, everything begins to seem like a rerun (as much of this has for me). The actors may change—new groups of concerned moms replace old groups who called themselves concerned mothers; antiracists police academic speech, when once it was anti-porn feminists who did it; AI becomes the new Wild West, overtaking that lawless territory of yore, the World Wide Web—but the script is still the same.
It’s hard not to respond to the outrage du jour, and I’m finding perspective elusive in the aftermath of the latest disastrous election, but I do know this: The urge to censor will continue in old and new forms, regardless of who controls the White House. I don’t mean to be setting up a false equivalence here. The Trump presidency already looks primed to indulge his authoritarian proclivities and unleash mobs of freelance vigilantes, and that should frighten the hell out of all of us. I do mean to point out that the instinct to cover other people’s mouths, eyes, and ears is ancient and persistent and not necessarily restricted to those we disagree with. But now, of all times, given what’s heading our way, we need a capacious view and robust defense of the First Amendment from all quarters—as we always have.
Make No Law
In a succinct 45 words, the First Amendment protects citizens from governmental restrictions on religious practices, speech, the press, and public airings of grievances in that order. It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But if a devil is ever in the details, it’s here, and the courts have been trying to sort those out over the last century or more. Working against such protections are the many often insidious ways to stifle expression, disagreement, and protest—in other words, censorship. Long ago, American abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass said, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them.” It was a warning that the ensuing 167 years haven’t proven wrong.
Censorship is used against vulnerable people by those who have the power to do so. The role such power plays became apparent in the last days of the recent election campaign when TheWashington Postand the Los Angeles Times, at the insistence of their owners, declined to endorse anyone for president. Commentary by those who still care what the news media does ranged from a twist of the knife into the Post‘s Orwellian slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” to assessments of the purpose or value of endorsements in the first place. These weren’t the only papers not to endorse a presidential candidate, but it’s hard not to read the motivation of their billionaire owners, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, as cowardice and self-interest rather than the principles they claimed they were supporting.
Newspapers, print or digital, have always been gatekeepers of who and what gets covered, even as their influence has declined in the age of social media. Usually, political endorsements are crafted by editorial boards but are ultimately the prerogative of publishers. The obvious conflict of interest in each of those cases, however, speaks volumes about the drawback of news media being in the hands of ultra-rich individuals with competing business concerns.
Journalists already expect to be very vulnerable during Donald Trump’s next term as president. After all, he’s called them an “enemy of the people,” encouraged violence against them, and never made a secret of how he resents them, even as he’s also courted them relentlessly. During his administration, he seized the phone records of reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN; called for revoking the broadcast licenses of national news organizations; and vowed to jail journalists who refuse to identify their confidential sources, later tossing editors and publishers into that threatened mix for good measure.
It can be hard to tell if Trump means what he says or can even say what he means, but you can bet that, with an enemies list that makes President Richard Nixon look like a piker, he intends to try to hobble the press in multiple ways. There are limits to what any president can do in that realm, but while challenges to the First Amendment usually end up in the courts, in the time the cases take to be resolved, Trump can make the lives of journalists and publishers miserable indeed.
Tinker, Tailor, Journalist, Spy
Among the threats keeping free press advocates up at night is abuse of the Espionage Act. That law dates from 1917 during World War I, when it was used to prosecute anti-draft and anti-war activists and is now used to prosecute government employees for revealing confidential information.
Before Trump himself was charged under the Espionage Act for illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office, his Justice Department used it to prosecute six people for disclosing classified information. That included Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on conspiracy charges—the first time the Espionage Act had ever been used against someone for simply publishing such information. The case continued under President Joe Biden until Assange’s plea deal this past summer, when he admitted guilt in conspiring to obtain and disclose confidential U.S. documents, thereby setting an unnerving precedent for our media future.
In his first term, Trump’s was a particularly leaky White House, but fewer leakers (or whistleblowers, depending on your perspective) were indicted under the Espionage Act then than during Barack Obama’s administration, which still holds the record with eight prosecutions, more than all previous presidencies combined. That set the tone for intolerance of leaks, while ensnaring journalists trying to protect their sources. In a notably durable case—it went on from 2008 to 2015—James Risen, then a New York Times reporter, fought the government’s insistence that he testify about a confidential source he used for a book about the CIA. Although Obama’s Justice Department ultimately withdrew its subpoena, Risen’s protracted legal battle clearly had a chilling effect (as it was undoubtedly meant to).
Governments of all political dispositions keep secrets and seldom look kindly on anyone who spills them. It is, however, the job of journalists to inform the public about what the government is doing and that, almost by definition, can involve delving into secrets. Journalists as a breed are not easily scared into silence, and no American journalist has been found guilty under the Espionage Act so far, but that law still remains a powerful tool of suppression, open to abuse by any president. It has historically made self-censorship on the part of reporters, editors, and publishers an appealing accommodation.
Testing the Limits
Years ago, the legal theorist Thomas Emerson pointed to how consistently expression has indeed been restricted during dark times in American history. He could, in fact, have been writing about the response to protests over the war in Gaza on American campuses, where restrictions came, not from a government hostile to unfettered inquiry, but from institutions whose purpose is supposedly to foster and promote it.
After a fractious spring, colleges and universities around the country were determined to restore order. Going into the fall semester, they changed rules, strengthened punishments, and increased the ways they monitored expressive activities. To be fair, many of them also declared their intention to maintain a climate of open discussion and learning. Left unsaid was their need to mollify their funders, including the federal government.
In a message sent to college and university presidents last April, the ACLU recognized the tough spot administrators were in and acknowledged the need for some restrictions, but also warned that “campus leaders must resist the pressures placed on them by politicians seeking to exploit campus tensions to advance their own notoriety or partisan agendas.”
The marginal might be—today or sometime in the future—what we ourselves want to say, support, or advocate.
As if in direct rebuttal, on Halloween, the newly philosemitic House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued its report on campus antisemitism. Harvard (whose previous president Claudine Gay had been forced out, in part, because of her testimony to the committee) played a large role in that report’s claims of rampant on-campus antisemitism and civil rights abuses. It charged that the school’s administration had fumbled its public statements, that its faculty had intervened “to prevent meaningful discipline,” and that Gay had “launched into a personal attack” on Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican committee member and Harvard graduate, at a Board of Overseers meeting. The report included emails and texts revealing school administrators tying themselves in knots over language that tried to appease everyone and ended up pleasing no one. The overarching tone of the report, though, was outrage that Gay and other university presidents didn’t show proper obeisance to the committee or rain sufficient punishment on their students’ heads.
Harvard continues to struggle. In September, a group of students staged a “study-in” at Widener, the school’s main library. Wearing keffiyehs, they worked silently at laptops bearing messages like “Israel bombs, Harvard pays.” The administration responded by barring a dozen protesters from that library (but not from accessing library materials) for two weeks, whereupon 30 professors staged their own “study-in” to protest the punishment and were similarly barred from the library.
The administration backed up its actions by pointing to an official statement from last January clarifying that protests are impermissible in several settings, including libraries, and maintained that the students had been forewarned. Moreover, civil disobedience comes with consequences. No doubt the protesters were testing the administration and, had they gotten no response, probably would have tried another provocation. As Harry Lewis, a former Harvard dean and current professor, told The Boston Globe, “Students will always outsmart you on regulating these things unless they buy into the principles.” Still, administrators had considerable leeway in deciding how to respond and they chose the punitive option.
Getting a buy-in sounds like what Wesleyan University President Michael Roth aimed for in a manifesto of sorts that he wrote last May, as students erected a protest encampment on his campus. Laying out his thinking on the importance of tolerating or even encouraging peaceful student protests over the war in Gaza, he wrote, “Neutrality is complicity,” adding, “I don’t get to choose the protesters’ messages. I do want to pay attention to them… How can I not respect students for paying attention to things that matter so much?” It was heartening to read.
Alas, the tolerance didn’t hold. In this political moment, it probably couldn’t. In September, Roth called in city police when students staged a sit-in at the university’s investment office just before a vote by its board of trustees on divesting from companies that support the Israeli military. Five students were placed on disciplinary probation for a year and, after a pro-divestment rally the next day, eight students received disciplinary charge letters for breaking a slew of rules.
Why Fight It
The right to free expression is the one that other democratic rights we hold dear rely on. Respecting it allows us to find better resolutions to societal tensions and interpersonal dissonance than outlawing words. But the First Amendment comes with inherent contradictions so, bless its confusing little heart, it manages to piss off nearly everyone sooner or later. Self-protection is innate, tolerance an acquired taste.
One of the stumbling blocks is that the First Amendment defends speech we find odious along with speech we like, ideas that frighten us along with ideas we embrace, jack-booted marches along with pink-hatted ones. After all, popular speech doesn’t need protection. It’s the marginal stuff that does. But the marginal might be—today or sometime in the future—what we ourselves want to say, support, or advocate.
And so, I return to those long-ago banned book readings, which culminated with everyone reciting the First Amendment together, a tradition I continued with my journalism students whenever I taught about press freedoms. Speaking words out loud is different from reading them silently. You hear and know them, sometimes for what seems like the first time. Maybe that’s why our communal celebration of the First Amendment seemed to amuse, embarrass, and impress the students in unequal measure. I think they got it, though.
I recognize that this kind of exhortation is many planks short of a strategy, but it’s a place to start, especially in the age of Donald Trump, because, in the end, the best reason to embrace and protect the First Amendment is that we will miss it when it’s gone.
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Even as Julian Assange's Release Celebrated, Deep Worries Remain for Press Freedom
"Make no mistake, the vital work of national security journalists will be more difficult today than it was yesterday."
Jun 25, 2024
Amid celebrations that a plea deal with the United States resulted in the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from a British prison, press freedom advocates on Tuesday continued to raise serious concerns about the damage done by the U.S. government's pursuit of a journalist who helped expose state secrets and evidence of war crimes.
"Julian Assange faced a prosecution that had grave implications for journalists and press freedom worldwide," said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, following news of the deal.
"While we welcome the end of his detention," Ginsberg added, "the U.S.'s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers. This should never have been the case."
After spending seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom and then five more in the London's Belmarsh Prison, Assange agreed to plead guilty to one felony to avoid more time behind bars. The 52-year-old Australian was fighting against his extradition to the United States, where he faced 18 charges under the Espionage Act and a federal computer fraud law for publishing classified material and could have been locked up for the rest of his life.
"With today's guilty plea, Julian Assange stands convicted of practicing journalism, and all investigative journalists now face greater legal peril."
"We are hugely relieved that Julian Assange is finally free—a long overdue victory for journalism and press freedom. He never should have spent a single day deprived of his liberty for publishing information in the public interest," said Rebecca Vincent, Reporters Without Borders' director of campaigns, in a statement.
"Nothing can undo the past 13 years, but it is never too late to do the right thing, and we welcome this move by the U.S. government," she added. "We will continue to campaign in support of journalists around the world who find themselves targeted for national security reporting, and for reform of the U.S. Espionage Act, so that it can never again be used to target journalistic activity."
Vincent's group is among several press freedom and human rights organizations that had long called for the U.S. Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange—and after news of the plea deal broke, several others warned of what is to come.
Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard celebrated what the deal will mean for the WikiLeaks founder and his family—including his wife Stella Assange, who plans to seek a pardon for her husband, and their young children—but said Tuesday that "the yearslong global spectacle of the U.S. authorities hell-bent on violating press freedom and freedom of expression by making an example of Assange for exposing alleged war crimes committed by the USA has undoubtedly done historic damage."
"Amnesty International salutes the work of Julian Assange's family, campaigners, lawyers, press freedom organizations, and many within the media community and beyond who have stood by him and the fundamental principles that should govern society's right and access to information and justice," she added. "We will keep fighting for their full recognition and respect by all."
Not all journalists and media outlets defended Assange, despite the precedent that his conviction could have set, and multiple Monday headlines—including at The Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post—highlighted his guilty plea. According to the BBC, Assange plans to return to Australia after finalizing the deal in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth.
"A plea deal would avert the worst-case scenario for press freedom, but this deal contemplates that Assange will have served five years in prison for activities that journalists engage in every day," said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "It will cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country but around the world."
Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, emphasized that "with today's guilty plea, Julian Assange stands convicted of practicing journalism, and all investigative journalists now face greater legal peril."
"Exposing government secrets and revealing them in the public interest is the core function of national security journalism," Wizner continued. "Today, for the first time, that activity was described in a guilty plea as a criminal conspiracy. And even if the current Department of Justice stays true to its assurances that the Assange case is unique and will not provide a precedent to be wielded against other publishers, we can't be confident that future administrations will honor that commitment."
"The precedent set by this guilty plea would have been far more dangerous had it been ratified by federal courts," he added. "But make no mistake, the vital work of national security journalists will be more difficult today than it was yesterday."
"Just imagine what an attorney general in a second Trump administration will think, knowing they've already got one guilty plea from a publisher under the Espionage Act."
Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), also looked to the future, tying Assange's deal to the November U.S. election in which Democratic President Joe Biden is set to face former Republican President Donald Trump.
The current administration "could have distinguished itself from Donald Trump, Biden's openly anti-press electoral opponent, whose administration first indicted Assange," Stern noted in a piece for the Daily Beast. "It could have dropped the case."
Instead, the Biden administration opted for a plea deal that "does not add any more prison time or punishment for Assange," Stern stressed, echoing his initial statement on the news. "Its only impact will be to legitimize the criminalization of routine journalistic conduct and encourage future administrations to follow suit—including a potential second Trump administration."
In a Tuesday opinion piece for The Guardian, FPF executive director Trevor Timm wrote: "Just imagine what an attorney general in a second Trump administration will think, knowing they've already got one guilty plea from a publisher under the Espionage Act. Trump, after all, has been out on the campaign trail repeatedly opining about how he would like to see journalists—who he sees as 'enemies of the people'—in jail. Why the Biden administration would hand him any ammo is beyond belief."
"So if the Biden administration is looking for plaudits for ending this case, they should get exactly none," Timm asserted. "Now we can only hope this case is an aberration and not a harbinger of things to come."
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