The FBI's raid of journalist's home was the product of decades of backsliding | Seth Stern and Chip Gibbons

"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."

"Following the publishing 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."

Government national-security tools and prosecutions have increasingly been used against journalists and their sources, culminating in the raid of a journalist's home and jailing of an alleged source as an escalation of a long trend. Historical precedents include the Nixon-era use of the Espionage Act against Daniel Ellsberg and later normalization under the Obama administration, which prosecuted multiple whistleblowers. High-profile whistleblowers were criminalized despite revealing war crimes, torture, and illegal surveillance. Targeting sources leads to pressure on journalists, exemplified by attempts to force James Risen to identify a source while prosecuting the alleged source, Jeffrey Sterling, using metadata evidence.

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