Thread by @AriMelber

A legal fact:

Trump DOJ’s theory against Assange invokes the same source-protection methods that top news publishers use — signal, anonymous contact, dropboxes — as evidence of a criminal “conspiracy”..
citing a “folder on a cloud drop box of WikiLeaks“

theintercept.com/2019/04/11/the…

People can say “Assange is not a journalist.”

That’s not the legal question.

If the gov can win a conviction against *activities* in journalism, the precedent can apply to the press.

The legal issue isn’t about Assange at all— though the Trump DOJ may want you to think it is.

None of the objective legal analysis turns on opinions about Assange — he is controversial for valid reasons as we’ve reported.

Analyzing the potential reach of a precedent always requires looking beyond the given case, and at how the rule or law will apply in the future.

Since this is an indictment against a publisher for *conspiracy* — not for actually stealing or hacking — it could be applied broadly to press activities like reporting, asking sources for classified info, and talking to them about methods and anonymity.

Those concerns led the Obama DOJ to review the same messages and facts, from 2010, and charge the leaker but *not* the publisher.

We know the Trump DOJ came to the opposite conclusion in 2018

So we are assessing the first ever indictment of a publisher by Trump DOJ/AG Sessions

After 9 years of investigation, if DOJ had a hacking charge to make against Assange — they would probably make it. And that might be a narrower precedent.

This is not a charge of hacking or stealing.

It’s a charge about working with a source who stole.