If I had dealings with Russia, or Iran, or North Korea, and I got caught, the FBI would arrest me and I’d be charged with treason.
Republicans have dismissed Trump Jr.’s email smoking gun with “he made a rookie mistake, no big deal.”
It’s still a crime, folks, when you collude with a foreign government to attack the United States.
If I got caught with my dealing with Russia, or Iran, or North Korea, I’d be going to prison, and if I told the judge or the jury “sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing, it was a rookie mistake,” they’d simply laugh.
And I’d rot in prison.
It concerns me to see the word “treason” bandied about as a political epithet. Treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution. It was deliberately given a very precise definition: Giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States in time of war. We are not at war. While I can think of several laws Trump Jr. might have violated, treason isn’t one of them. Treason might be, oh, say, a U.S. presidential candidate encouraging the president of Vietnam to reject peace talks so the candidate could base his campaign on the war. And after he won, he could use convoluted means to help supply the North Vietnamese troops, such as funding the building a truck factory in Russia, after which the Ho Chi Minh trail was lined with south-bound Russian-made trucks. Now, that would be treason.
I stand corrected – “Crimes” – I remember you commented on that once before somewhere. Lawyer, lawyer. However, we kind of are at war, at least in the colloquial sense, as we say that our war in Afghanistan has been our longest ongoing war.
What about selling state secrets to Russia? What, if convicted, would that crime be called?