Thread by @steve_vladeck

The superseding indictment just unsealed against Julian Assange is exactly what the first indictment wasn't:

17 of the 18 charges are for violating the Espionage Act, under which there's never previously been a successful prosecution of a third party (as opposed to the leaker).

This is going to cause significant complications in the UK (there's a "political offense" exception to our extradition treaty), and on this side of the Atlantic, where the new charges would provoke a major test case of whether the First Amendment protects the right to publish.

The issue isn't whether Assange is a "journalist"; this will be a major test case because the text of the _Espionage Act_ doesn't distinguish between what Assange allegedly did and what mainstream outlets sometimes do, even if the underlying facts/motives are radically different.

For a detailed parsing of the statutory text, and why it raises a First Amendment issue in cases like these, see this article I wrote in 2007:

digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewconten…

And here’s the indictment itself:

justsecurity.org/wp-content/upl…