Right-wing commentators are attempting to mount a strange public defense of former President Donald Trump from the charges he now faces under the Espionage Act. In essence, Trump’s apologists argue that even if he willfully mishandled and withheld classified documents, improperly stored them in unsecure conditions, and misled investigators who attempted to recover them, the charges he faces for violating the Espionage Act would still be inappropriate because he has not been accused of spying on behalf of a foreign government or selling U.S. secrets.
The problem is the applicable legal standard doesn’t require Trump to have been a literal spy or traitor — the allegation that he willfully committed all the above conduct is enough to be a violation of the law.
Washington Post senior writer Aaron Blake explained that while “some provisions of the Espionage Act” require a direct intention to harm the United States, “the particular provision at issue in the Trump case only requires the defendant to act ‘willfully’ and with ‘reason to believe’ the information ‘could’ be used in such a manner.” For example, when Trump boasted to a political supporter that he now possessed a classified “plan of attack” regarding a foreign country (reportedly Iran) he certainly must have known that the disclosure of such information could potentially put U.S. service members in harm’s way during an actual conflict.
In addition, The New York Times has a lengthy rundown of other cases in which people have been sentenced to prison or paid harsh fines for knowingly mishandling classified information, even as they did not act directly to harm the United States. In the case of a former Air Force intelligence officer who cooperated with investigators but was nevertheless sentenced just this month to three years in prison, his attorney told the court that his client “now shares a stage” with the former president of the United States.
This whole drama played out on Tuesday’s edition of Fox News’ America Reports, when law professor and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley alleged that the Espionage Act was an “odd fit” for charging Trump in this case. “That act does talk about mishandling, but it also has an intent standard, to harm national security or to help some foreign adversary,” he said.
“Nobody is arguing that there’s evidence of harm to national security or an intent to do so,” Turley claimed, contrasting this with Trump’s seeming move to keep documents “sort of like a trophy” and “out of vanity.”
Fox News anchor Bret Baier then asked further questions: “Was there a document destroyed, was there a document that was somehow accessed or given to the press or some foreign entity? Was there harm here, in understanding how they’re handled? But does that factor into the legal aspects of this?”