Not sure why you are getting all snarky about it. But it’s perfectly valid to demonstrate how a legal situation would “play out” by referencing past similar cases. Which in the case of “treason” are particular rare. Even the Rosenbergs where convicted of espionage, not treason.
People may throw around the “T” word, but IMHO it’s no different from previous times in American history where it was used as rhetoric and hyperbole against political opponents and largely dropped when the political mood changed.
So short of Trump selling West Point to the North Koreans (who we are technically “at war” with as no treaty was ever signed), I’m not sure what else he could do to be charged with treason.
Only if you don’t actually read the constitution. The constitution explicitly lays out what constitutes treason, but says zippo about what constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors. And you can bet your bootie there was a very specific, and very good reason that the Founders explicitly put the definition into the constitution. One of those reasons, if not the only or main reason, was to make sure that it was not “in the eye of the beholder”. Now, we have common law precedents about both of those going back to before the US was the US, but we still have an explicit description of what constitutes treason in the constitution, and we have more than just a handful of cases on which to base precedent.
Now, if you want to say that, in the vernacular, treason can be in the eye of the beholder, that’s one thing. But I’m not at all interested about the vernacular. I’m interested in the legal meaning of the term, especially as it relates to who is or is not “an enemy”.
The problem with the treason clause is not just the definition of an enemy. An enemy could be defined but the ‘adhering’ and ‘aid and comfort’ parts are more problematic. The concept is also difficult to solidify, treason is based on a notion of disloyalty, in our case disloyalty to country as opposed to a king, but that makes the issue thornier. When people say they want to move to Canada because of some bozo living in the White House we don’t charge them with treason. We allow people to express contempt for the country and don’t charge them with treason. We allow people to conduct business with obvious enemies and it’s not considered treason. There are other laws that are more specific about the particular activities that are not allowed and they will serve us better.
True, but sometimes it’s helpful to break things down into digestible chunks in order to focus.
Really? That seems to mean that you have in some way “joined” with the enemy and taken actions to help them fight against the US. At any rate, we do have about 30 cases of treason having been tried in the US, so there is some level of jurisprudence on the subject. But I don’t think we have much jurisprudence on the whole “enemy” thing because we haven’t seen treason cases int he modern era when allegiances aren’t as clear cut as the were in the past.
Not sure why that is germane to the discussion. Would anyone seriously consider Canada to be an enemy of the US? If we made a list of potential enemies, Canada would be at the very bottom.
That’s because “expressing contempt for the country” isn’t listed in the constitution as an act of treason, and also because we have the 1st amendment that explicitly says we can do that.
We do? That sort of begs the question (in the real sense of that fallacy) about what an “obvious enemy” is. Did we allow people to do business with Germany and Japan during WWII?
So what? We can still discuss the topic, and when people are actively engaged in making the charge, it seems relevant to do so.
If we accept the Taliban as an enemy, what about nations that support the Taliban like Russia is apparently doing? Does arming our enemy to fight us constitute being an enemy?
Who is an enemy as an isolated problem is easy, the government can designate what countries or groups are enemies. Very easy when it comes to North Korea, much more difficult for Russia. It is the other parts of the clause that make that difficult because it doesn’t say you can’t associate with our enemies in other ways, but that you can’t ‘adhere’ or ‘aid and comfort’, so it takes more that just an ‘enemies list’.
Of course there are obvious cases of treason. Join the army of an enemy nation actively engaged in war against the US and you will easily be convicted of treason. In the modern world wars aren’t so clearly defined in terms of soldiers on the battlefield. Or perhaps they don’t need to be and treason should be limited to such circumstances and we’ll deal with other cases through espionage laws and the like. It will certainly be easier to have particular offenses defined by statute rather than an interpretation of the treason clause.
We know Canada is planning an invasion some day, that’s why they have most of their population massed along the border with the US. Suppose someone gives them our secret plan to thwart that invasion which lets them know the way they can march right across the border unhindered and politely ask us to surrender? Has that person committed treason?
That doesn’t stop that kind of activity from being called treasonous. How far can one go? Was Jane Fonda committing treason when she visited North Vietnam? She was certainly giving comfort to our enemies and many would describe it as adhering to them as well. In a treason trial when the question is put before the jury can they fairly interpret the constitution to determine these matters in the midst of highly charged emotion over an active war and distinguish between free speech and providing aid and comfort or adherence? The clause doesn’t define that line.
Again, the intricacies of the modern world. We try to resolve our differences with diplomacy instead of open war, and that’s often economic diplomacy. If we can only categorize a country as an enemy in terms of active war in regards to treason then that’s fine, but it leaves a lot of room to aid a country which has hostile intents before such active war exists. Can someone help Russia develop military technology that will someday provide them with military superiority to be used against us? If that’s not treason by definition then what crime would that person have committed? Or is not a crime at all?
I’m not trying to stop the discussion, but it discussion of the broader impact of the interpretation of ‘enemies’ shouldn’t be excluded from the conversation either.
One place I’ve seen it defined is United States v. Greathouse from 1863:
“The term ‘enemies’ as used in the second clause, according to its settled meaning, at the time the constitution was adopted, applies only to the subjects of a foreign power in a state of open hostility with us. It does not embrace rebels in insurrection against their own government. An enemy is always the subject of a foreign power who owes no allegiance to our government or country.”
OK. So lets get very specific. Is Russia an enemy? If so, when and why did they become one? If so, what specifically does this designation mean for govt officials? what can and can’t they do? What does it mean for businesses? For private citizens?
If Trump was acting in good faith and, doing as many world leaders do, sharing information that may be of importance to both countries that, later, Russia uses against us or our allies, is that treason, or an unforeseen consequence?
We don’t actually, or at least we claim no to. There are laws governing who we can and cannot sell arms to. If it turned out that the French government had knowingly financed the 9/11 hijackers, you honestly would be okay with it?