Don’t watch Fox News, ever. Try again. And what about Obama actually going after journalist with the espionage act?
CNN's Tapper: Obama has used Espionage Act more than all previous administrations
I don’t see trump going after Omurosa, or Comey with the espionage act. You can’t just ignore the fact that Obama went after whistleblowers, and the journalist they contacted HARD.
Every media that agrees with Fox is just more of the same b******* propaganda... Rush Savage Laverne Jones Etc are pure crap.
Ok, I listen/watch to none of these. Once again, Obama enacted the espionage act more than any other president combined to go after journalist and whistleblowers...what’s you’re response to something I actually say? Is there a ghost version of my account posting stuff that I’m not saying? Who the hell are you talking too?
CNN's Tapper: Obama has used Espionage Act more than all previous administrations
Well I don't know where you were coming from originally then... Anyway the Espionage Act? Okay highly debatable that's the way it goes LOL I don't care. And it is very debatable what Tapper was doing LOL
CNN's Tapper: Obama has used Espionage Act more than all previous administrations
By
Jon Greenberg on Friday, January 10th, 2014 at 10:00 a.m.
The federal criminal charges filed against National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden make it seven times that the Obama administration has used the Espionage Act against government workers who shared information with the press. In at least two instances, the government’s investigations have delved into the practices of reporters and news organizations and put reporters in legal jeopardy.
This has raised red flags among defenders of the media. In a vigorous exchange on
CNN’s The Lead, host Jake Tapper asserted to Ruth Marcus of the
Washington Post that "the Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who leaked to journalists ... more than all previous administrations combined."
On one level, a simple tally would address Tapper’s claim and -- spoiler alert -- the raw numbers back him up. But a scrupulous vetting of the record uncovers important ambiguities in the entire business of talking about leaks in Washington.
The basic numbers
Most tallies, like the one by the
investigative service ProPublica, begin with Daniel Ellsberg and the release of the Vietnam War era documents known as the Pentagon Papers. Including Ellsberg, the government has used the Espionage Act 10 times to prosecute government workers who shared classified information with journalists. If we push back to 1945, there is one more case. So of those 11, seven have taken place while Barack Obama has been president.
Law professor David Pozen at Columbia University, has researched th
The whistleblower label debate
The Justice Department does not quibble about number of prosecutions but in a statement to PunditFact, the department said: "It is definitely not the case that anyone who leaks classified information is a whistleblower. Very few of those prosecuted in recent years for unauthorized disclosures even sought to be considered that way."
To take a couple of examples, in 2010, State Department contractor Stephen Kim was indicted for providing information about North Korea to Fox News. Later that year, Jeffrey Sterling, a Central Intelligence Agency officer, was indicted for sharing information with a journalist James Risen about America’s work to counter Iran’s nuclear program. Both defendants have pled not guilty
No matter how broadly interpreted, Kim and Stirling don’t seem to fit that definition. In a
statement given to ProPublica, the Justice Department said it does not target whistleblowers who follow the rules, but "we cannot sanction or condone federal employees who knowingly and willfully disclose classified information to the media or others not entitled to receive such information."
We raised this issue of who is and isn’t a whistleblower with Tapper and he said in the fast pace of a live interview, he might have wanted to use slightly different words to make his point.
"It would be better to say ‘leakers, many of whom are seen as whistleblowers,’ instead of just ‘whistleblowers’," Tapper said.