Things that don’t matter to the Espionage Act: why he did it; whether he intended to cause harm; whether he did in fact cause harm; whether the docs were properly classified; whether the docs informed public debate; whether he shared them with journalists or dumped them online; whether the docs showed government abuse or fraud or criminality; whether he was careful to disclose only what the public needed to see; whether the leak was defensible, all things considered....
Any reasonable system would care about these things—but ours doesn’t. Maybe we need a better system?
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/what-we-owe-whistleblowers
What We Owe Whistleblowers

@jameeljaffer That's a really compelling argument. It seems likely to fall on deaf ears, but should be made anyways.