Hillary Clinton (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty)
It’s highly unlikely — I would say unimaginable — that the simple downloading of documents made public by WikiLeaks is criminal. I don’t know of any case that so holds or statute that requires such a result.
— First Amendment scholar Floyd Abrams of Cahill Gordon, explaining why it would be difficult for one to get into legal trouble for downloading copies of Hillary Clinton campaign emails published by Wikileaks. Professor Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law agrees, noting that “possessing illegally made copies (again, when you weren’t involved in the illegal copying) isn’t illegal, and likely can’t be made illegal consistently with the First Amendment.”
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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.