The Guardian

01/15/2026

The raid of a journalist’s home, along with the jailing of their alleged source, are shocking acts of authoritarianism. And they are in line with Trump’s willingness to use the national security state as a weapon against the press, which is a serious threat to our democracy. But those weapons were not invented by Trump nor did he pioneer their use against free press.

The raid of Hannah Natanson, is a shocking escalation, not a rupture. The United States has been backsliding to this point – at both the federal and local levels – for quite some time.

Following the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon administration turned to the first world war-era Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Nixon’s illicit campaign against Ellsberg, modelled after techniques like break-ins then routinely used by the FBI and CIA, tanked the prosecution. But the Espionage Act sat as a loaded gun against both journalists and their sources. It went largely unfired until the Obama administration.

The former constitutional law professor had promised the most transparent administration in history. Instead, his administration normalized the archaic Espionage Act as the go-to weapons for prosecuting journalists’ sources. Whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou, who helped journalists inform the public about war crimes, torture and unconstitutional surveillance, were transformed into criminals.

Targeting journalists’ sources is an affront to press freedom. It also quickly leads to targeting journalists. The Obama administration attempted to compel the national security reporter James Risen to name his source about a botched CIA covert action, threatening him with jail if he refused to name names.

While the Department of Justice backed off on incarcerating the prestigious journalist, they put his alleged source, Jeffrey Sterling, on trial. Although Sterling maintains his innocence, he was convicted in part based on metadata that showed he had called or emailed Risen. Surveilling journalists is key to building cases against their sources.

As bad as these prosecutions were, the government’s pursuit of WikiLeaks took the threat to press freedom to a whole new level. WikiLeaks source Manning was subjected to torturous conditions of confinement and a then unprecedented prison sentence. But the government was not satisfied with persecuting the source alone. From the beginning, there was an attempt to pursue publisher Julian Assange, as well.

Many speculated that the harsh treatment of Manning was an attempt to turn her into a witness against Assange. During Trump’s first term, the moribund case against the WikiLeaks founder was resurrected in the form of an unprecedented Espionage Act indictment. Some of those counts dealt with pure publishing; the vast majority alleged the journalist-source relationship constituted a criminal offense. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Justice extracted a plea deal from Assange.

According to the plea deal, Assange, by receiving and publishing newsworthy information from Manning about US war crimes, backroom dealings, and abuses of power, was guilty of conspiring with her to violate the Espionage Act.

Routinely prosecuting whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, surveilling journalists to enable the prosecution of their sources, and ultimately prosecuting a journalist himself under the Espionage Act all created the condition Trump needs to go after the press – not just legally, but in the court of public opinion.