Law & courts · press freedom

Leak & whistleblower prosecutions, by president

Prosecutions of government employees and contractors under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information to the press or the public: the measure press-freedom groups use to gauge an administration's war on sources. For nearly a century such cases were vanishingly rare: three or four in all of U.S. history before 2009, depending on the tally. Then the count jumped. The outlier here is not the current president; it is the one whose name is usually attached to the phrase “more than all his predecessors combined.”

Leak prosecutions brought under the Espionage Act, per term.

Clinton

Bush

Obama

More than all previous presidents combined (PolitiFact rated the claim true); the cases included Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, Jeffrey Sterling, and the charges against Edward Snowden

Trump I

Fewer in total but at a faster pace than Obama, all five charged in 2017–19 (Reality Winner, Terry Albury, Joshua Schulte, Daniel Hale, Henry Frese)

Biden

Jack Teixeira and one CIA case; carried the Assange prosecution to its 2024 plea deal

Trump II

Two so far (partial term): a Pentagon contractor (Jan 2026) and an Army veteran (Apr 2026); its distinguishing move is policy, not volume: see below

Beyond prosecutions: pressuring the press

Prosecuting sources is only half the story; the other half is how administrations treat journalists directly, and here the record spreads across parties. Obama's Justice Department secretly seized two months of phone records for about twenty Associated Press lines (2013) and, in a search warrant, named a Fox News reporter a criminal “co-conspirator” for doing his job. In reaction to later revelations, the Biden Justice Department in 2022 codified a bar on subpoenaing reporters' records in leak investigations. In 2025 the Trump II attorney general rescinded that protection, restoring the government's ability to pursue journalists' records. So the press-freedom story does implicate the current administration, but through a policy reversal, not a wave of prosecutions, which is why it sits in this panel rather than in the bar above.

Definitions matter here, and are drawn narrowly. This counts Espionage Act prosecutions of people who leaked to inform the public; it excludes classic foreign-spying cases (which use the same statute), and it excludes Julian Assange, who was charged under the Act but as a publisher, not a government leaker: counting him would inflate the Trump I and Biden bars. Obama's total is usually given as eight, occasionally nine, depending on which borderline retention case is included; the individuals are not in dispute, only the headline number. A higher count can reflect an era of larger digital leaks as much as greater prosecutorial zeal. Trump II is a partial term of roughly nineteen months; its figure could rise.