Lawyer Thomas A. Durkin has spent much of his career working in national security law, representing clients in a variety of national security and domestic terrorism matters. Joseph Ferguson was a national security prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, where Durkin was also a prosecutor. Both teach national security law at Loyola University, Chicago. The Conversation U.S.‘s democracy editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with the two attorneys about the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump on Espionage Act and other charges related to his retention of national security-related classified documents.
The word “weaponized” has been used by Trump, his supporters and even his GOP rivals to describe the Department of Justice. Do you see the Trump prosecution as different in any notable way from other Espionage Act prosecutions that you’ve worked on or observed?
