Many people have been charged and jailed under the Espionage Act since it was passed in 1917, as the U.S. entered World War I.
But not every case is a good comparison with the charges brought against former President Donald Trump for holding on to top-secret files after leaving office.
Some people have been jailed for many years, or even for life, under the Espionage Act. Trump’s case is not in that category. If convicted, Trump would likely face no more than a few years in prison, if he faces any time at all. Trump is charged with 38 counts. Of these, 31 relate to the"willful retention of national defense information," which violates a portion of the Espionage Act. The other seven counts relate to Trump’s alleged obstruction of the government’s attempts to retrieve these records.The most severe penalties for those convicted under the Espionage Act have been meted out to those who passed classified material to foreign adversaries.
With the help of the federal prosecutor Roy Cohn, who became a close Trump ally decades later, the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 in a case that aroused strong partisan passions and in Ethel's case, remains controversial., the former U.S. government employee who leaked highly classified files from the National Security Agency about the U.S. surveillance apparatus to a group of journalists.
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