Trump's Alarming Definition of Treason
The president accused two FBI agents of betraying the United States. The Founding Fathers would disagree.
January 12, 2018
'The Constitution narrowly defines treason and establishes a high bar for conviction. “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort,” Article Three states. “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.”
In an interview on Thursday with the Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump offered a disturbingly broader definition of the crime.
The remarks came during an exchange about the Russia investigation, where Trump repeated his frequent and unsubstantiated claim that Democrats colluded with the Russian government. Alluding to text messages exchanged between two FBI agents during the 2016 campaign that were critical of him, Trump said, “That’s treason right there.”
One of those agents, Peter Strzok, is a veteran counterintelligence expert who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation until this summer, when Mueller learned of the texts and removed him. In one of those texts, sent shortly after Trump had won the Republican nomination, Strzok wrote to agent Lisa Page, “I want to believe ... that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40…”
The Journal reported in December that Strzok meant to convey that Clinton’s probable victory didn’t mean that the FBI should underemphasize an investigation that could uncover evidence of collusion between Trump’s associates and Moscow. But Republicans in Congress and conservative media outlets have seen the comment in a different light, however, and questioned whether the text is evidence of bias against Trump and his associates in the Russia investigation’s early stages. Speaking with Journal reporters yesterday, Trump took those concerns even further.
“And what went on with the FBI, where a man is tweeting to his lover that if she loses, we’ll essentially go back to the—we’ll go to the insurance policy, which is—if they lose, we’ll go to phase two, and we’ll get this guy out of office,” he told reporters. “I mean, this is the FBI we’re talking about. I think that is—that is treason. See, that’s treason right there.” When a Journal reporter tried to interject, Trump underscored the point again. “By the way, that’s a treasonous act,” the president insisted. “What he tweeted to his lover is a treasonous act.”'>>>
https://newrepublic.com/article/146600/trumps-alarming-definition-treason
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