Famous Prosecutions under the Espionage and Sedition Acts
Since World War I, several Americans have been convicted or indicted for violations of the espionage and the sedition acts. A few of the more notable cases include:
Eugene V. Debs
In 1918, prominent labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who had long criticized America’s involvement in the war, gave a speech in Ohio urging young men to resist registering for the military draft. As a result of the speech, Debs was arrested and charged with 10 counts of sedition. On September 12, he was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 10 years in prison and denied the right to vote for the rest of his life.
Debs appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which
unanimously ruled against him. In upholding Debs’ conviction, the Court relied on the precedent set in the earlier case of Schenck v. United States, which held that speech that could potentially undermine society or the U.S. government was not protected under the First Amendment.
Debs, who actually ran for president from his jail cell in 1920, served three years in prison, during which his health deteriorated rapidly. On December 23, 1921, President
Warren G. Harding commuted Debs’ sentence to time served.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
In August 1950, American citizens
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted on charges of spying for the Soviet Union. At a time when the United States was the only country in the world known to have nuclear weapons, the Rosenbergs were accused of giving the USSR top-secret nuclear weapon designs, along with information about radar, sonar, and jet engines.
After a long and controversial trial, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage and sentenced to death under Section 2 of the Espionage Act of 1917. The sentence was carried out at sundown on June 19, 1953.
Daniel Ellsberg
In June 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, former U.S. military analyst working for the RAND Corporation think tank, created a political firestorm when he gave the New York Times and other newspapers the
Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon report on President
Richard Nixon’s and his administration’s decision-making process in conducting and continuing America’s participation in the
Vietnam War.
On January 3, 1973, Ellsberg was charged with violations of the Espionage Act of 1917, as well as theft and conspiracy. In all, the charges against him carried a total maximum prison sentence of 115 years. However, on May 11, 1973, Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. dismissed all charges against Ellsberg, after finding that the government had illegally collected and handled evidence against him.
Chelsea Manning
In July 2013, former U.S. Army Private First Class
Chelsea Manning was convicted by a military court-martial for violations of the Espionage Act relating to her disclosure of nearly 750,000 classified or sensitive military documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The documents contained information on more than 700 prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay, a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan that killed civilians, over 250,000 sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables, and other Army reports.
Originally facing 22 charges, including aiding the enemy, which could have brought the death penalty, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the charges. In her court martial trials in June 2013, Manning was convicted on 21 of the charges but was acquitted of aiding the enemy. Manning was sentenced to serve 35-years at the maximum-security disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. However, on January 17, 2017, President
Barack Obama commuted her sentence to the nearly seven years she had already been held.
Edward Snowden
In June 2013,
Edward Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 with “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified intelligence with an unauthorized person.” Snowden, a former CIA employee and U.S. government contractor, leaked thousands of classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents dealing with several U.S. global surveillance programs to journalists. Snowden’s actions came to light after details from the documents appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and The New York Times.
Two days after his indictment, Snowden fled to Russia, where he was eventually granted asylum for one year after being held at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport for over a month by Russian authorities. The Russian government has since granted Snowden asylum until 2020. Now president of the
Freedom of the Press Foundation, Snowden continues to live in Moscow while seeking asylum in another country. Snowden and his disclosures have fueled wide debate over mass government surveillance of the people and the balance between the interests of national security and personal privacy.
And if you think Trump will be prosecuted for this, you are STUPID, son. Look at the cases here that DID.
