Don’t Charge Trump With Espionage
Former President Donald Trump shouldn’t be charged with espionage for taking classified documents with him —some of them apparently very highly classified — when he left the White House for semi-retirement at his Mar-a-Lago home.
Nobody should be charged with espionage unless they are working for a foreign power and mean harm to the United States. The Espionage Act, which was written 105 years ago to combat German saboteurs, is rarely used now to target spies and traitors. Instead, it’s used as a cudgel to silence whistleblowers, journalists, and occasionally a stupid former president.
To understand the damage that this deeply flawed law has done, and will continue to do, we have to look at its origins. The Espionage Act was written in 1917, at the height of World War I. The U.S. was panicked at the thought of German spies working undercover to steal its secrets and to disrupt its ability to produce war materiel and support its allies.