Despite not being charged for his leaks by the Obama administration, the Trump Justice Department decided to dig up the old case and indict Hale in a bid to “make an example” out of would-be whistleblowers amid Trumps continuation of the war on whistleblowers. The Biden administration finalized prosecution efforts in 2021, effectively throwing the book at Hale and setting the precedent for the harshest sentence ever for a whistleblower.

In what has been rightly characterized as retaliatory and “another draconian move by the government to silence and punish whistleblowers”, Hale was then transferred to a communication management unit (CMU) at Illinois’ Marion Penitentiary — an isolation unit typically reserved for housing terrorists and other “high threat” inmates but has nonetheless come under scrutiny for its violation of due process as well as being weaponized by the Bureau of Prisons as a means of silencing political prisoners.

“It can only be seen as punitive that Daniel Hale, who has no criminal history and pled guilty to a nonviolent crime, got put in a secret, Kafkaesque, and isolated ‘terrorist unit’ with virtually no access to outsiders—or even other prisoners.” said Jesselyn Radack, one of Hale’s attorneys speaking with journalist Kevin Gosztola of The Dissenter.

Hales indictment by the Trump administration for exposing the heinous nature of the drone program comes as no surprise, since after taking office in 2017 Trump immediately began following in the footsteps of his predecessor President Barack Obama, whose own warmongering earned him the moniker of “Drone King”, and quickly began to exceed Obama’s death toll in stride. Killing more civilians with drone strikes in just nine months than Obama did in all eight years of his presidency combined. A deadly pace which Trump would maintain throughout his presidency.