https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...fends-wikileaks-use-hacked-dnc-emails/572587/
The Trump Campaign Says Exploiting Hacked Emails Is Free Speech
Lawyers for the campaign asserted in court papers a right to disclose “even stolen information.”
In a motion to dismiss a new lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump’s campaign team of illegally conspiring with Russian agents to disseminate stolen emails during the election, Trump campaign lawyers have tried out a new defense: free speech.
Furthermore, the Trump lawyers argued, the First Amendment protects the campaign’s “right to disclose information—even stolen information—so long as (1) the speaker did not participate in the theft and (2) the information deals with matters of public concern.”
While there is no evidence yet that the Trump campaign knew about or aided in the hacking itself, campaign-finance laws prohibit candidates from accepting “anything of value” from a foreign national. The Trump campaign could face legal exposure, then, if a prosecutor could prove that Trump or his campaign associates made an agreement with Russia to publish the stolen emails—which were clearly valuable to the campaign, given how often Trump quoted from them during rallies—via a third party such as WikiLeaks, as Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, has written.
The Trump Campaign Says Exploiting Hacked Emails Is Free Speech
Lawyers for the campaign asserted in court papers a right to disclose “even stolen information.”
In a motion to dismiss a new lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump’s campaign team of illegally conspiring with Russian agents to disseminate stolen emails during the election, Trump campaign lawyers have tried out a new defense: free speech.
Furthermore, the Trump lawyers argued, the First Amendment protects the campaign’s “right to disclose information—even stolen information—so long as (1) the speaker did not participate in the theft and (2) the information deals with matters of public concern.”
While there is no evidence yet that the Trump campaign knew about or aided in the hacking itself, campaign-finance laws prohibit candidates from accepting “anything of value” from a foreign national. The Trump campaign could face legal exposure, then, if a prosecutor could prove that Trump or his campaign associates made an agreement with Russia to publish the stolen emails—which were clearly valuable to the campaign, given how often Trump quoted from them during rallies—via a third party such as WikiLeaks, as Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, has written.
