1/Today we dismissed former Secretary of Defense #MarkEsper's prepublication classification review lawsuit against @DeptofDefense.
We successfully ensured this unvarnished account of his tenure in Trump's Admin will be published on schedule in May 2022.
We successfully ensured this unvarnished account of his tenure in Trump's Admin will be published on schedule in May 2022.
https://twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/status/1465087421222211591
3/My statement reads:
"This case presented a prepublication classification review challenge of a manuscript under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that was pursued by the highest-ranking official – a former Secretary of Defense – to ever file this type of lawsuit...
"This case presented a prepublication classification review challenge of a manuscript under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that was pursued by the highest-ranking official – a former Secretary of Defense – to ever file this type of lawsuit...
4/...The Plaintiff, Mark T. Esper, had a distinguished federal career, both in uniform in the combat service of our country’s military and as a civilian. He most recently served as Secretary of Defense from July 2019 to November 2020, ...
5/...and before that as Secretary of the Army from November 2017 to July 2019.
The state of the law is clear: the U.S. Government has absolutely no authority to prevent anyone from publishing unclassified information. That is an incontrovertible constitutional right ...
The state of the law is clear: the U.S. Government has absolutely no authority to prevent anyone from publishing unclassified information. That is an incontrovertible constitutional right ...
6/...and established by binding precedent. Frankly, Secretary Esper has no interest in publishing properly classified information, which he has sworn to and has protected for decades....
7/This lawsuit was filed because after taking months to review the Secretary’s manuscript, A Sacred Oath, which presents an unvarnished account of his tenure during the Trump Administration, the Defendant redacted as classified significant swaths of information ...
8/...on more than fifty pages that absolutely gutted substantive content and important storylines. As a former Cabinet officer, it was not an easy decision for Secretary Esper to sue the Department he led, not to mention having to incur attorney’s fees and legal costs ...
9/...out of his own pocket to defend the very constitutional rights he served in uniform to protect. The prepublication classification review system is clearly broken if it requires litigation and a financial burden, which not everyone can incur, to create an environment...
10/...where constitutional legal rights can be protected. And it is further clearly broken when the existence of litigation compels the Defendant to reverse its position on an overwhelming majority of classification decisions ...
11/...it earlier asserted were so vital to the national security interests of the United States, when the fact is they never were.
Thanks to the success of this litigation, A Sacred Oath will now be published in May 2022, with minimal redactions.
Thanks to the success of this litigation, A Sacred Oath will now be published in May 2022, with minimal redactions.
12/Although the Government still claims what little redacted text remaining is properly classified, these redactions are not central to his memoir and will not disturb the flow of reading the book. While it remains the position of Secretary Esper that not one of the ...
END/...asserted redactions is properly classified, and that Government representatives specifically, in fact, told him that, the Secretary is comfortable with the success that was achieved and believes it is no longer necessary to continue the lawsuit.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
