Abuse of The Espionage Act

I'm not going to defend John Bolton, but he is the latest victim of the USA abusing the antiquated and broken Espionage Act. In my recent post about the prosecution of whistleblowers, I mentioned many of the recent high-profile cases where the act was abused to prosecute people who didn't carry out any espionage. One of the best examples is Reality Winner who served out her jail time for releasing a single secret NSA document that proved Russia hacked our election systems. Trump prosecuted her and Biden refused to pardon her, so she languished in prison for years over a very patriotic act. Since 2009, we've seen a dramatic increase in prosecutions under the act because the accused can't present any evidence in their defense if everything is classified. This graph is from Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press: