Episode 14: Potential Assange Charges, and More From Some Island in the Pacific

The National Security Law Podcast

Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck

Courses, Politics, News, Education, Government

4.8 • 646 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2017

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Professors Chesney and Vladeck run through the array of potential criminal charges against Julian Assange and Wikileaks (in light of recent rumblings that DOJ has revived that possibility), and they discuss the prospects for the First Amendment objections that would surely follow. This leads into a discussion of the charges that Mike Flynn one day might face, and that in turn prompts a disagreement about what to make of the White House letter rebuffing requests for information submitted by the House Government Oversight Committee. In other news, the Supreme Court denied cert. in connection with the ACLU attempt to use FOIA to acquire a complete copy of the SSCI interrogation investigative report (aka the "Torture Report"); the Administrative Office for the U.S. Courts released a surprising statistic about applications under Section 702 (with implications for the inquorate PCLOB); a news alert triggers an impromptu discussion of the intersection of conditional spending doctrine and the anti-commandeering rule in relation to DOJ efforts to bring "sanctuary cities" into line with federal policy; and to wrap things up Tyrion Lannister is toppled from his erstwhile status as the top dog in Steve's pantheon of outstanding TV fictional characters. That, and Bobby claims he'll answer the question Andy Priest tweeted about, but then he just doesn't.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello from Austin. Welcome to episode 14 of the National Security Law Podcast, brought to you by the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Today is Tuesday, April 25th, and I'm Bobby Chesney. And I'm Steve Lodick. Bobby, we have these beautiful brand new microphones. These are nice. They are blue microphones, the Yeti Pro 2.0, if you are a sound file, which we have clearly
0:23.8	not been if you've listened to any of the first 13 episodes of this podcast. Audio files have
0:27.6	clearly been suffering, and yes, we know we still don't have music. I did recommend earlier
0:33.6	to Steve that we bring kazooz. And I have a lot of children's musical toys at the house. I can bring them in. So know I have a lot of children's musical toys at the
0:38.3	house I can bring them in so I just have a lot of children's songs something like the Sesame
0:41.7	Street alphabet is in my head right now but we could just start humming that oh you know I might
0:45.3	just bring in a guitar and we'll just do something extemporaneous it is for elbow oh my god okay
0:50.5	what else we go to talk about today Steve oh that's it. No. So as opposed to last
0:54.7	week where our Bobby, I thought we were a little light for content. We don't really have that
0:58.1	problem today. That is not a problem today. There's some stuff going on. There's this guy, Assange.
1:04.0	He's a fella who's in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Haven't we all been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London at one point in our lives? Metaphorically speaking, many of us feel like we're there right now. The Hotel Ecuadoria.
1:15.8	Anyways, he may be glad he's staying there since now we are hearing hints that DOJ is reconsidering
1:23.5	whether to pursue legal action against him, should he ever step foot outside of there?
1:28.4	And should he not go straight to Sweden to face sexual assault charges?
1:32.3	Should he end up in U.S. hands, he may face charges after all.
1:35.4	So, Steve, we have a lot to talk about in relation to things like the Espionage Act and
1:39.2	conspiracy and theft of government property.
1:41.2	Never heard of any of those things.
1:43.3	I've heard somebody using your name has written some about this. Well, you know,
1:46.8	I've heard that there are multiple of me, so maybe it was the other guy. It certainly seems like it
1:50.0	from a productivity point of view. So we'll do a deep dive on Assange. I was going to say from an
1:53.5	intellectual consistency point of view. There's more than what? There's more than what. So after Assange, we'll turn to everybody's second favorite person in the news, former retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn. Yes, the water has gotten a little bit hotter.
	...

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