New Assange Indictment a Frontal Assault on Press Freedom

The DOJ has secured a criminal indictment of Julian Assange Under a provision of the Espionage Act, for publishing classified documents. This provision has *never* been used to indict a "publisher" before, and it is a direct attack on our press freedom. Even if England doesn't extradite Assange, even if the government doesn't get the conviction, this is so patent a warning shot to the nation's press outlets, it might be the scariest thing that's happened yet, considering Trump's gleeful statements that the press is "the enemy of the people."

Lest you think this isn't a big deal, the real-world end result of this could be a country where the Government can "leak" whatever information they want, but the press will be prohibited (under threat of prison sentences) from publishing the results of any investigations by whistle-blowers, insiders who leak information. To bring it down to specifics, under this threat, we may never have heard about water-boarding, the drone program, and the removal of infants from their parents at the border.

It doesn't matter what one might think of Assange, the precedent this might set would be a complete sawing off of one leg of the stool upon which our country precariously rests.

It's bad, and it seems clear to me that Bill Barr is by far the single biggest threat to this country.