Boies Schiller Flexner partner Scott Gant was quoted in an article in USA Today on the legal issues surrounding charges by the U.S. Justice Department against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“It appears at first blush that some of the charges concern merely publishing information and don’t have to do with alleged illegality with respect to how the information was obtained,” Gant said in an interview with USA Today. While the First Amendment does not immunize Assange from illegal activity with respect to collecting information, the First Amendment “with the rarest of exceptions” protects the act of publishing, Gant said.
Gant practices complex civil litigation and constitiutional law in the firm’s Washington D.C. office, and is the author of the book “We’re All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age.”