Is it really unlawful or did CNN lie about that?
I am not a lawyer but I'd say this is a legal gray area.
The leaker probably broke a law. E.g., hacking Podesta's private emails would have been illegal under computer fraud and abuse. It's alternately possible that the leaker had legal access but breached contract to release the data publicly.
Now that the information has been leaked, it's hard to say that it's clearly illegal for John Q. Public to access what Wikileaks has made publicly available. The anchor is unable to point to a specific statute in his tweet above and also mentions that it hasn't been tested in court to his knowledge.
A central theme of the leaks so far is that large segments of the media have been overly cooperative with the Clinton campaign in spite of feigned objectivity. This HN comment has curated some links to primary evidence https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722664 . Take a quick perusal and you'll be about as informed as anyone on the answer to your question.
This is a nice bit of propaganda you've put forth here.
Here's a Harvard study into the majority of the 2016 election coverage including primaries which shows a demonstrably strong bias in the media pro-Trump and anti-Clinton and demonstrates that Clinton has received a FAR more harsh relationship with the major press.
http://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016-...
http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/figu...
It demonstrates that coverage of Clinton was on average negative about her for the entirety of 2015.
It demonstrates that Trump enjoyed a very positive and cushy relationship with newsmedia who combined to give him hundreds of millions USD of free exposure.
I would argue that Clinton has had mostly negative coverage up until the end of September 2016.
Hrm: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/785615427913199616
I hope you are rational enough to see the hilarious doublespeak being engaged in here:
* Positive coverage of hillary is due to Hillary's cozy relationship with media
* Positive coverage of her opponent, is due to Hillary's cozy relationship with media
Come on man. I hope readers of this particular site are rational enough to apply occam's razor and think critically.
I also find it extremely telling that Donald Trump, Mr Reality TV and the "hyper-successful" media and real estate man isn't responsible for his own success, but rather it's his opponent which is apparently so powerful that every single event occurring is by her design...?
How feckless Trump appears in your "everything good or bad happening to both candidates was preordained in a conspiracy" viewpoint!
Not everything is a conspiracy, I hope you're capable of rational thought.
I, for one, am also comfortable blaming the Republican electorate for allowing the three pied pipers, including Trump, to have been elevated.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-press-buries-hillary-clinton...
"tell the press to [take] them seriously"
I guess he never explicitly said it was legal for CNN -- maybe he was claiming that CNN is generously taking on all that legal risk so the rest of us don't have to?
> But the Clinton #wiki cache doesn't include any classified info as far as I know. So fine to read/download.
> Only classified or state secrets. Regular emails can be downloaded without consequence by media or others. I was wrong to group both types.
More interesting that CNN thinks they can read them but the public can not. Media organizations have no security clearances and thus are subject to the same access as anyone else.
Oh CNN.
Proving that those who say the media thinks they're above the rest of us are right.
There is also the famous Pentagon Papers case, which to my knowledge rests on the "freedom of the press" language in the First Amendment.
That said, this was a stupid thing for the CNN anchor to say. Regardless of the law, no federal prosecutor is going to waste their time trying to find and prosecute every U.S. citizen who visits the Wikileaks website.
It was about the printing press and the ability to print what you wanted and, just as importantly, not be forced to print the things you didn't.