Consensus – Russia tried to hack election

Well, it finally looks like we have a consensus (even Donald Trump is now on board) that Russia tried to mess with our presidential election. It did so by hacking servers of both of our political parties, but only releasing the Democratic Party’s stolen files through Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks (despite his denials). Russia and Putin also used “fake” news posts to plant false “stories” into our media blender. All of this to try and embarrass Hillary Clinton’s operation.

Replaying the election is a waste of time and energy – Trump won, Clinton lost and Donald Trump will be our next president. The Wikileaks stuff was really just one step above a revelation from the National Enquirer or TMZ. There were internal political spats in a campaign – what a revelation??!!! Assange portrays himself as some sort of media hero in making the private public – while also holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London hiding from sexual assault charges.

Did Assange and Putin actually affect the election? Err, not likely. More likely, FBI Director Comey’s letters (whether justified or not) had more impact on the result than Putin’s operation.

Yet, Assange was gleeful in his assault on the integrity of our election process. Assange’s release of “fake” news, as Putin’s lap dog, played us all for fools.

The same thing can be said about BuzzFeed putting out a “dossier” about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. This “report” started as opposition research paid for by disgruntled Republicans, even so it was published for our consumption without any sourcing for truth and accuracy.

All of this recklessness fades the lines separating protected free speech and privacy – legitimate journalism from mere “noise.” This demeaning of journalism has brought a backlash, which we can trace back to Assange’s mischief even before this election cycle.

Wikileaks first really jumped into our consciousness in 2010 with the publication of the files Bradley (now “Chelsea”) Manning stole from our government, airstrike video and diplomatic cables from Iraq. It reached a whole new level when Edward Snowden gave Assange the secret files he had stolen that were published in Wikileaks. Snowden’s thievery was scary enough, potentially handing over some of our most secret information to China and then Russia. The idea that these secrets would be made public by a misanthropic dilettante to publish is positively frightening. That’s because there is a whole free speech, intellectually shallow, angle, that the public had a right to know about how our government was going all Big Brother everywhere, which brings into question the value of free speech.

The Obama administration reacted furiously to thefts of classified material by characters like Manning and Snowden and similar leaks by government officials. Chelsea Manning received 35 years in prison for her crimes. Mr. Snowden remains a fugitive banished to Russia.

The “main stream” media is caught up in the miniaturization of free speech. The Obama Justice Department inherited a Bush administration criminal case against a former CIA officer, Jeffrey Sterling, for alleging leaking information to New York Times reporter James Risen about our attempts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. The Bush administration had charged Mr. Sterling with being the source for Mr. Risen’s 2006 book, “State of War.” After seven years of courtroom drama, Mr. Sterling was eventually convicted of espionage and sentenced in 2015 to 42 months in prison.

What happened to Mr. Risen is Orwellian chilling. Along the way, Mr. Risen was first subpoenaed in 2008 to testify, refused to reveal the source of his book, and the Justice Department asked him to be held in contempt and jailed. He declined to testify based on the deep-seeded cultural claim that a reporter does not have to disclose confidential sources; setting up a tension between the government’s power to prosecute and free speech.

Eventually, this dispute was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where Mr. Risen lost his ability to keep his source private. The contempt issue was dropped by Justice and Mr. Risen never went to jail for refusing to answer questions about the source for his book, but there is now Supreme Court precedent justifying the imprisonment of a reporter for trying to protect a source.

Of course, there is even an earlier example of this when Judith Miller spent almost 90 days in jail for refusing to indicate if Scooter Libby was her source for “outing” Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Ironically, although Mr. Libby was eventually convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison, President George W. Bush commuted his sentence after only a month.

Reporters are going to jail, while characters like Assange and Putin are weaponizing our free speech rights against us. Privacy rights are being obliterated. There is a new world emerging for our First Amendment rights. It is not a pretty one.

Warner Robins attorney Jim Rockefeller is the former chief assistant district attorney for Houston County and a former assistant state attorney in Miami. Owner of Rockefeller Law Center, he has been in private practice since 2000. Email your comments or confidential legal questions to ajr@rockefellerlawcenter.com.

HHJ News