Trump Campaign Lawyers: First Amendment Protects Right to Share Stolen Information

Lawyers for the Trump campaign are attempting to argue that the First Amendment protects their clients from being held responsible for WikiLeaks publishing stolen Democratic National Committee emails, according to The Atlantic. A lawsuit filed last month by two donors and one former DNC employee alleged that the Trump campaign, along with former Trump adviser Roger Stone, “worked with Russia and WikiLeaks to publish hacked DNC emails” on the website and violated their privacy. In a brief filed Tuesday, lawyers argued the Trump campaign had the right to “disclose” stolen information so long as “the speaker did not participate in the theft” and “the information deals with matters of public concern.” They also argued that a concern for “privacy cannot justify suppressing true speech during a political campaign,” and that the three plaintiffs did not present a “plausible” case that the campaign and Russians worked in a “collaborative” effort to publish the emails.