Government & Communications

The nation’s top intelligence official told associates in March that President Donald Trump asked him if he could intervene with then-FBI Director James B. Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials. On March 22, less than a week after being confirmed by the Senate, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats attended a briefing at the White House together with officials from several government agencies. As the briefing was wrapping up, President Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. The president then started complaining about the FBI investigation and Comey’s handling of it, said officials familiar with the account Coats gave to associates.

Two days earlier, Comey had confirmed in a congressional hearing that the bureau was probing whether President Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 race. After the encounter, Coats discussed the conversation with other officials and decided that intervening with Comey as President Trump had suggested would be inappropriate, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. The events involving Coats show the president went further than just asking intelligence officials to deny publicly the existence of any evidence showing collusion during the 2016 election. The interaction with Coats indicates that President Trump aimed to enlist top officials to have Comey curtail the bureau’s probe.

In what appears to be a political media first, a Super Pac controlled by President Donald Trump has released an ad attacking the character of a witness in advance of a highly anticipated Senate hearing. The ad, entitled “Showboat,” was released June 6 by President Trump’s Great America Alliance and attacks the character of former FBI Director James Comey, who is scheduled to speak publicly June 8 during a Senate hearing. The spot, which will air on national TV outlets during the hearing, reportedly has a $400,000 media budget. Citing alt right news reports such as Breitbart News, American Spectator and AlternNet, the campaign attacks Comey as putting “politics over protecting America” and concludes with the tagline: “Just another DC insider in it for himself.”

Reality Winner is accused of serving as a journalistic source for a leading American news outlet about a matter of critical public importance. For this act, she has been charged with violating the Espionage Act—a World War I era law meant for spies—which explicitly forbids the jury from hearing why the defendant acted, and bars them from deciding whether the outcome was to the public's benefit. This often-condemned law provides no space to distinguish the extraordinary disclosure of inappropriately classified information in the public interest—whistleblowing—from the malicious disclosure of secrets to foreign governments by those motivated by a specific intent to harm to their countrymen.

The prosecution of any journalistic source without due consideration by the jury as to the harm or benefit of the journalistic activity is a fundamental threat to the free press. As long as a law like this remains on the books in a country that values fair trials, it must be resisted. No matter one's opinions on the propriety of the charges against her, we should all agree Winner should be released on bail pending trial. Even if you take all the government allegations as true, it's clear she is neither a threat to public safety nor a flight risk. To hold a citizen incommunicado and indefinitely while awaiting trial for the alleged crime of serving as a journalistic source should outrage us all.

The announcement of charges June 5 against a federal contractor for allegedly leaking a top secret National Security Agency document to a news website is giving journalists flashbacks to leaker prosecutions under President Barack Obama. The charges, tweeted New York Times reporter Scott Shane, followed “the precedent of Obama, whose administration set the record for leak prosecutions.” Adam Goldman, a Times colleague who had his phone records secretly seized during a 2012 leak investigation, asked whether President Donald Trump would top the number of leak prosecutions set during the previous administration.

In a letter sent to President Donald Trump, the Knight First Amendment Institute asked the President to unblock the Twitter accounts of individuals denied access to his account after they criticized or disagreed with him, or face legal action to protect the First Amendment rights of the blocked individuals. The President’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, is a “designated public forum” subject to the First Amendment, according to the Knight Institute. The First Amendment bars the government from excluding individuals from a designated public forum because of their views. The Knight Institute asked the President to unblock its clients, or to direct his subordinates to do so.

[Commentary] Today, I’m launching TrumpiLeaks, a site that will enable courageous whistleblowers to privately communicate with me and my team. Patriotic Americans in government, law enforcement or the private sector with knowledge of crimes, breaches of public trust and misconduct committed by Donald J. Trump and his associates are needed to blow the whistle in the name of protecting the United States of America from tyranny. I know this is risky. I knew we may get in trouble. But too much is at stake to play it safe. And along with the Founding Fathers, I’ve got your back.

[Michael Moore is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning director]

The Department of Justice charged 25-year-old government contractor Reality Leigh Winner with sharing top secret material with a media outlet, prosecutors announced in a press release June 5. Court documents filed by the government don't specify which media outlet received the materials allegedly leaked by Winner, but NBC News reported that the material went to the Intercept online news outlet. The Intercept published a top secret NSA report June 5 that alleged Russian military intelligence launched a 2016 cyberattack on a voting software company. Details on the report published by The Intercept suggest that it was created on May 5, 2017 — the same day prosecutors say the materials Winner is charged with sharing were created.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on whether Winner is accused of sharing the report published by the Intercept. In June, Winner allegedly “printed and improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense information” before mailing the materials to an unnamed online news outlet a few days later, according to prosecutors.

Free Press and Free Press Action Fund sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission’s general counsel calling on the agency to address its crackdowns against First Amendment freedoms during recent FCC meetings. “We write to express grave concerns about recent actions that call into serious question the Federal Communications Commission’s commitment to fostering free expression,” reads the letter authored by Free Press and Free Press Action Fund Deputy Director and Senior Counsel Jessica J. González and Policy Director Matt Wood. “In particular, the actions of FCC security and other FCC staff have chilled free speech and public participation in FCC decision-making processes that are supposed to be open to the public, and they have violated the due-process rights of Free Press and Free Press Action Fund staff and members.”

The letter details a series of incidents in which the federal agency and members of its security staff have silenced dissenting voices, manhandled a reporter and barred members of the public from attending the agency’s monthly open meeting without due process. During one incident, on the morning of March 23, 2017, two Free Press Action Fund members, Joe DeGeorge and David Combs, attempted to attend the FCC’s open meeting wearing plain white T-shirts that read “Protect Net Neutrality” in black letters. FCC security personnel informed the two that they would not be allowed to enter the public meeting room unless they removed the T-shirts or flipped them inside out to conceal their message.

President Donald Trump can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad. The latest deadly London attacks, like one in the Philippines recently, prompted visceral reactions from President Trump instead of statements shaped by the findings of the US intelligence and diplomatic apparatus. He got ahead of the facts emerging in Britain’s chaos June 3 and got it wrong in the Philippines case, calling the episode there a “terrorist attack” when it was not.

White House aide Kellyanne Conway June 5 slammed the media for its "obsession" with President Donald Trump's tweets instead of his actions. "This obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what of he does as president," Conway said. The host shot back, saying Twitter is Trump's preferred method of communication with the American people. "That's not true," Conway responded. President Trump often uses the medium to discuss his goals and go after his political enemies.