It’s not correct to assume that treason charges can be lodged only during wartime. Treason is narrowly defined in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution as "levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
The term "levying War" has been interpreted to mean taking up arms against the United States government, while "adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" has been interpreted to include a wide range of activities, such as providing intelligence to the enemy, sabotaging U.S. military operations, or recruiting spies.
There have been a number of treason prosecutions in the United States during times of peace. For example, in 2006, Adam Gadahn, an Oregon-born 28 year old homeschooled Christian resident of Orange County who converted from death metal music to Islam, was indicted for treason for producing propaganda videos for al-Qaeda. So, for those who question whether or not Trump can be tried for treason… there you go. Young Adam wasn’t tried, though. He was assassinated in a drone strike in Pakistan.
Although I absolutely do believe that Trump should be executed, I feel he should be charged with treason and tried first, even though it’s difficult to convict someone for treason. The Constitution requires that two witnesses must testify to the same overt act of treason, or that the defendant must confess in open court. The last person to be tried for treason was in 1952— Tomoya Kawakita, a Japanese American who was convicted of defecting to Japan during World War II and broadcasting propaganda. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1955. Five years later he was released and deported to Japan, where he died in the 1990s.
The feds have only indicted Trump for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights, none of which are capital crimes. Many legal scholars feel that Trump’s involvement in the January 6th attempted coup and insurrection merit treason charges, defined thusly:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Remember, on January 6th, Trump gave a speech to his supporters— who he had assembled from all over the country— in which he urged them to march to the Capitol and "fight like hell" to overturn the election results. The Trump supporters then stormed the Capitol, breaking windows and doors and forcing their way into the building. They fought with police and vandalized and sacked the Capitol, causing millions of dollars in damage and several deaths.
Everyone I know— except a MAGA sister— agrees that Trump's actions on January 6th meet the narrow constitutional definition of treason. They argue that Trump's speech to his supporters was an incitement to insurrection, and that his supporters' actions at the Capitol constituted an act of war against the United States. A few people think he should be imprisoned for life but most people think he should face a firing squad.
Now, speaking of treason… soon after occupying the White House, Trump revealed highly classified intelligence to Sergey Lavrov and top Russian spymaster Sergey Kislyak, in the Oval Office, including Israeli military intelligence which probably played a part in the Hamas raid into Israel which resulted in the deaths and kidnappings of many American citizens. “[T]he fear is that Russia will be able to determine exactly how the information was collected and could disrupt [Israel’s] espionage efforts.” The Israeli intelligence was “considered so sensitive that American officials did not share it widely within the United States government or pass it on to other allies.” They did make the grievous error of giving it to Trump.
Over the weekend, we learned that in 2020, Trump shared nuclear secrets with one of his cronies, Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt who skirted election laws to give Trump way over a million dollars thought a Trump victory would be “good for business” (and documents show that the relationship between the two shady character “was indeed beneficial for both men and their businesses.”
The interactions were ultimately swept up in one of the two federal criminal cases that the special counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump. Prosecutors have interviewed Pratt in the case in which Trump is charged with taking classified documents with him from the White House when he left office and obstructing efforts to retrieve them. Pratt is listed as a potential witness who could testify against Trump at a trial next year.
In his interviews with prosecutors, Pratt recounted how Trump once revealed to him sensitive information about American nuclear submarines, an episode that Trump denies. Another witness told prosecutors about hearing uncorroborated reports that Pratt spent $1 million for tickets to a Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve gala— voluntarily paying the club a huge markup for tickets that actually cost $50,000 or less, according to two people with knowledge of the previously unreported testimony.
New details of how an American president and an Australian billionaire bonded over their mutual self-interest help to document the transactional ethos of the Trump presidency, and show how Trump melded his White House with his personal business in a way that, according to prosecutors, had ramifications for national security.
Pratt was hardly the only favor seeker circling Mar-a-Lago, which became the fulcrum of the president’s two overlapping worlds, and a marketplace of sorts where favors, secrets and opportunities to lobby the president over clubhouse burgers were treated as currency. But Pratt, who rode in Trump’s motorcade and attended a White House state dinner, played the game better than most.
…Behind closed doors, however, Pratt described Trump’s business practices as being “like the mafia,” according to covert recordings obtained by 60 Minutes Australia and shared with The Times.
…On the recordings, Pratt recounts how Trump shared with him in December 2019 what he describes as elements of a conversation the president had with Iraq’s leader right after a U.S. military strike there aimed at Iranian-backed forces. Days later, a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad would kill Iran’s top security and intelligence commander.
At one point, Pratt said, Trump discussed the phone call he had with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine earlier that year that had helped lead to Trump’s first impeachment. “That was nothing compared to what I usually do,” Trump said, in Pratt’s recounting.
This was Trump’s reaction to the story on his failing social media site.
Rolling Stone reporter Peter Wade, wrote that Pratt said Trump is “outrageous. He just says whatever the fuck he wants, and he loves to shock people.”
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton told 60 Minutes Australia that the conversations Pratt described are “typical Trump behavior” and said that announcements of military operations are usually delayed “so that we can be sure that those who carried it out are back safe home.”
…The billionaire said of Trump, “He knows exactly what to say and what not to say so that he avoids jail, but gets so close to it that it looks to everyone like he’s breaking the law. Like he won’t go up to someone and say, ‘I want you to kill someone.’ He’ll say, he’ll send someone, to tell someone, to kill someone.”
…Pratt also tried to get close to Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, paying him almost a million dollars to attend Pratt’s 60th birthday. The appearance was later cancelled due to Covid, but Pratt said on the recording that Guiliani calls him regularly. “Now he rings me once a week,” the Times reported Pratt as saying on the recordings.
“Rudy is someone that I hope will be useful one day,” Pratt said on tape. “Plus I just think he’s cool. It’s not all just sort of like seat of the pants shit. I think that [Trump] and Rudy are like that, and they’re plotting all this out.”
Pratt continued, explaining his reasoning for cozying up to the then-president and his allies: “All of these guys are like the mafia. Trump, Rupert [Murdoch], Rudy. You want to be a customer, not a competitor.”
Bolton agreed that Trump “talks like a mafioso,” giving the example of an indirect kind of threat that Trump or a mafia boss might make: “That’s a nice little business you’ve got there, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”
I wonder if Anthony Pratt's Mar-a-Lago membership was rescinded (and if his membership dues returned).
Make the case as often and as incontrovertibly as you want. You're only being hypocritical... still.
Until you decide to advocate for electing a party that will grow a gonad, do its constitutional duty and prosecute treason (and other violations of law and constitution), all you are doing is proving that you are a hypocrite.
You can either be principled about such things... or you can support a party that will always refuse to *DO* those things... but you cannot actually BE both. not honestly.]
Bitching more often, louder or more well researched and proved... only makes the hypocrisy worse.