The example of Holla Forums should be instructive for you. Back before it became a 4chan clone, this website pissed a lot of people off. Did Hotwheels get extradited? Did the FBI/DoJ/etc seize the Holla Forums servers, which were located in the U.S.? Nope.
But third parties made life extremely difficult for the wheelieman. They flooded the .co registrar with bogus complaints and got Holla Forums.co seized, they harassed every payment processor than Holla Forums tried to use to fund itself, and things of that nature.
Same with Wikileaks. Of course various western governments did marginalize Assange by getting the Swedes to pursue bogus rape charges against him, tying him up in legal and extradition proceedings for years, but the main way they put pressure on Wikileaks was by putting pressure on Visa and MasterCard not to process donations for them. They complied.
So keep in mind that if what you're planning on publishing is controversial enough, anonymity is your friend. Because even if what you're doing is legal, there are plenty of ways for people who don't like you--or the government, through various third parties--to make your life a living hell. You can be sent spurious cease-and-desist requests which, nonetheless, you will have to either comply with or pay lawyers to fight, in addition to enduring other forms of harassment.
Think about the recent NYT article about the women who are accusing Trump of trying to grab them by the pussies. Trump's lawyers sent a threat to the NYT, demanding a retraction. The NYT didn't fold, not because they're in the right (though they are, as what they published does not constitute libel or defamation), but because they have a team of lawyers who responded to Trump's lawyers and told them to fuck off or file a lawsuit. They're not going to do that, so the matter is at an end.
So if you publish something that pisses off a powerful person, or even a not-powerful person who has a cousin who's a lawyer, and you get a cease-and-desist, are you going to be able to hire your own lawyer? Are you going to chance going to court?
The best practice is to give a potential enemy nowhere to send a cease-and-desist, or a DMCA notice, or a SWAT team: publish on a Tor hidden service or I2P and practice good opsec.