Would need to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt in US federal court, that the US government considered that a state of war existed between the US and Russia.
Without that, treason charge would fail.
An unintended consequence of deciding not to call wars “wars” after WWII? We don’t declare war anymore, do we, as a matter of policy? So the definition of “treason” which is based on a formal declaration of war (the norm before Korea) is effectively obsolete.
This is unfortunate in the case of an actual traitor, against whom we have fewer legal recourses now.
We’ve never had a viable legal recourse save for impeachment against Presidential overreach, or a President who conspires to actively undermine national sovereignty. Even if Trump were convicted of ‘something’ substantial (and given the lack of first hand witnesses who would testify to or incontrovertible evidence of any conspiracy or “giving…aid or comfort” to an enemy that would be a nearly impossible case to press in a court of criminal law) the conviction would almost certainly be overturned by a federal appeals court, or taken to the Supreme Court which would exonerate him with a Clarance Thomas-penned majority opinion that “this is all just a bunch of liberal hoo-dickey.” And none of it would prevent Trump for running for the office of US President again regardless.
The way you prevent a democracy from being undermined by a mob of autocracy-leaning voters is to ensure that they are in the minority. And sadly, we’re close enough to that not being the case that there is a real possibility of a second Trump presidency and all that entails.
Stranger
So, I’m going to say some probably unpopular things, and I’ll take my lumps for them. But first, a few things to get out of the way - first yeah, Garland was too hesitant to move forward (Smith gets kudos for getting the dominos lined up and carrying through), and our system provides far, far too written controls on the president (and Trump is happy to ignore the unwritten ones), and the role of Republicans in our legislative branch and judicial branch cannot and should not be forgotten.
But… IMHO, we’re talking about the wrong problem. It shouldn’t have been the Justice’s Department job to protect us from Trump. It’s theoretically our role, and that of our fellow citizens, to do that. If we were even a semi-rational species, Trump wouldn’t have been elected, but well, we are known for following crazes. Something noted as far back as our first experiments with elected government at least to the age of Pericles.
In 2020, the fact that Trump increased his votes (even though he didn’t win) shows a profound failure in our fellow citizens in supporting him. Yes, I blame Fox et al, and the other propaganda outlets for not putting the nation before their profits, but yeah, what do I expect? And there were efforts to pivot away, and course correct, but they all depended upon Trump losing support from his base, and his ability to play kingmaker.
Which… didn’t happen. His base would not let go, so he continued to be able to demand special treatment, and Garland and the rest kept hoping that the political issues would fade so they could do their jobs. If Trump had been like most former presidents, his influence would have been vastly reduced, and they could have moved forward with a more normal, slow and stead process, while Trump’s harm was mitigated.
But it wasn’t.
So fundamentally, this isn’t (again) IMHO a failure of the JD (although it also isn’t by any means one of their shining moments) - it’s a fault of a system where far too much was dependent upon unwritten rules, and the written checks and balances utterly failing due to a popular despot that the voters will not let go of.
I blame us ( Americans in general, not most of the posters here who have voted, supported efforts to remove and get rid of Trump, etc) for not protecting ourselves and our Republic from Trump. It’s a lot less comfortable than blaming Garland and the DOJ (and as mentioned, there’s plenty of valid criticism to be had for them!) but it’s more honest.
While he’s President, we’re limited to the flawed political process known as impeachment. But the moment Trump left office, he should have been in handcuffs. The Justice Department had four years to prepare for that.
Honey, you barely made a dent. This will take the heat off you.
It’s fun to target a scapegoat to blame for one’s perceived grievances, rather than take the time to understand the complexities and nuances of the actual situation, isn’t it? Evil, evil Merrick Garland. Just blame him, and then you can avoid putting in the effort to gain a true understanding of what has really happened!
That Merrick Garland. Such power! It was him who delayed his own confirmation by the Senate until March of 2021, so oversight of investigations into Trump would be delayed for months past the events of January 6, 2021.
Garland was surely behind Bill Barr’s efforts to make investigations into Trump go away ahead of the 2020 election at both the federal and state levels.
(Gift link)
Nasty Merrick Garland just has that much power, to go back in time and erase efforts made by the Justice Department under Barr to investigate Trump for 4 years and beyond!
The gnarled, malevolent hand of Merrick Garland can also be seen in the choice to immediately prosecute “from the bottom up,” meaning the insurrectionists who carried out the violence on January 6th. It’s a completely normal way for investigations to be done, but that Merrick Garland… what a tool! And of course, two investigations proceeding on separate tracks, one highly visible and one completely silent, is simply impossible.
I’m sure the corruption and hollowing out of the Justice Department under Barr, firing and persecuting employees who were doing their jobs such as Andew McCabe and Peter Strzok, were Garland’s fault, too.
Merrick Garland must have been constantly whispering in Trump’s ear to always waive time to prolong his judicial proceedings. It’s pretty standard stuff for a guilty defendant – any guilty defendant – to spool out the time it takes to bring a case to trial, but there must have been vile intent in the heart of Merrick Garland when he forced Trump to do it. “Try every doorknob, rattle every window, in your efforts to slow down the proceedings!” he must have implored.
And surely Merrick Garland was responsible for the fact that Trump has more doorknobs and windows to rattle than any defendant before him, due to his being the very first sitting president to be tried for felony crimes. Damn, that must’ve taken some extraordinary planning on the part of Merrick Garland!
The shocking delay by the Supreme Court when Trump appealed to them on the nonsensical (should have been, anyway) immunity issue? Wicked chicken shit Merrick Garland really outdid himself on that one, getting the SCOTUS to delay their decision from December of 2023 until July 2024! A ruling that, incidentally, ensured that no trial could possibly be held ahead of the election. Pure malicious genius by Merrick Garland!
We should definitely blame immoral milquetoast Merrick Garland for appointing Jack Smith to the case. No, really, we should! Without Merrick Garland, there would be no hand-picked attack dog Jack Smith. Garland really did that. Terrible choice, one guaranteed to ensure Trump would never be prosecuted. I am in awe of Garland’s efforts to make Trump’s prosecutions disappear!
Aileen Cannon? Garland really shone with that ploy. Not only did he manage somehow to get her appointed to the bench, but then he engineered her assignment to the Mar A Lago documents case in Florida! He probably sent her a secret memo detailing how to dismiss the documents case against Trump on the nonsensical assertion that Garland’s earlier appointment of Jack Smith was illegal! What a brilliant strategist is our Merrick Garland.
This whole thread sickens me with the ignorance on display, with a few notable exceptions. The lack of understanding about our judicial system, how it was designed to be slow and deliberative. This is not a failure. It is normal. Most legal types will tell you that the speed with which the investigations into Trump proceeded were in fact quite quick, especially considering the unique complexities of the cases and the immense opposition arrayed against them. No one dragged their feet in this endeavor.
Don’t fall for bullshit media talking points. Or look for convenient scapegoats. In the words of our most worthless former First Lady but under the heading of, Even-a-blind-pig-finds-a-truffle-now-and-then, “Be better.”
Apart from misspelling Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon’s name, I can find absolutely nothing to quarrel with in that excellent post.
Oops. 
(In my defense, I have a friend named ‘Aeleen,’ and I always get that wrong!) Thanks for the correction. I had time to fix it. 
Yep, exactly.
Again, for what provable crimes?
Stranger
I don’t object to anything you said. I don’t like much of it, but I think it’s accurate.
Well @Aspenglow did come in after my comparatively moderate chastisement and let us all have it with both barrels. AND I think we’re all intellectually honest enough to acknowledge a lot of the problems. And I know you didn’t like it much, and I didn’t like typing it to be honest. But most of the posters in thread, at some point or another, have noted similar issues. I mean, it’s a trope of history that Republics often elect their own dictator with fanfare (often via a minority of the population!) to great tragedy.
We absolutely don’t want it to happen here, but…
Aaaaand now I need a drink. Or two.
Another factor is that the House Select Committee served a major role in the evidence-gathering, which it then turned over to the DOJ in late 2022. That massive investigation was of course condemned as politically motivated, but the House can do things that are politically motivated which might be impossible to do by the DOJ.
As well, the Committee had investigatory resources which the DOJ did not have.
From news accounts, I gather that the massive package of info that the Committee sent to the DOJ, along with recommendations to consider prosecuting, was a major factor in the appointment of Smith by Garland.
Thank you to Aspenglow and ParallelLines for their posts.
This bit here especially resonated.
Some people here and elsewhere think that federal agents should have been ready to arrest Trump on Day 1 of Biden’s presidency. But a DOJ led by a Trump-appointee was never going to conduct a serious investigation of the Orange One. And even if Trump has appointed an honest AG who insisted on running a non-partisan operation and doing everything above-board and by the book, that person wouldn’t have lasted long in the job once they started to look closely into the big boss’s activities. See how things turned out for Jeff Sessions after he refused to intervene in the Mueller investigations.
And while Garland has made some missteps, even the most bullish prosecutor was going to take their time putting their case together. If you’re going after a former president, especially one as wily as Trump, you can’t half-ass it.
To the “it takes years” folks: WHY does it take years? Could it take less time with more staff and / or more money? If so, that’s a (theoretically) solvable problem. If we just don’t want to solve it, and prefer an achingly slow justice system, we should admit that it’s a choice.
Is there some reason it just has to be slow?
Rich and powerful people with a grossly outsized influence on setting priorities in policy and governance are understandably uninterested in improving and strengthening the capabilities of state authorities that investigate and prosecute rich and powerful people.
It really isn’t any more complicated than that.
Yes. Every allegation has to be researched as to whether is is prosecutable or if it is, then whether it is defendable. Note that this is not an investigation; those turn up allegations. If your research into the allegation is sound, with solid cites (if this sounds like the SDMB, it’s not much different), then you can proceed with prosecuting or defending the allegation. If it goes in your favour, then you have to deal with the other side appealing, which will require more research at the appellate level. Your research will go into briefs (or facta), which will be submitted to the Appeals Court and the other side, before oral argument begins. Lose again and you can appeal again, depending on whether you’re granted certiorari, which is where the higher appeals court decides to hear your case. If they do, it’s more research, more briefs, more oral argument.
Then there are intervenors, or amici curiae, who are doing their own research and submitting their own briefs. All of which all parties have the opportunity to review, and address in their briefs.
These are general principles only, and may differ in your jurisdiction. And things tend to be a lot more complex than this very simple explanation. But it should give some idea as to why things take so long.
Most lawyers hate doing legal research. Me (and yes, I am a lawyer), I love it. But it takes a lot of time, of plowing through caselaw, both online and in the law library, of composing a report to the side that commissioned it. Do you want it done fast, or do you want it done well? You can have one of the two, not both, when it comes to legal research.
I think it is not this and rather more this incredible reluctance in government to go after the president because the presidency itself is somehow under threat if we hold a president criminally accountable.
There was a lot of hand wringing over this with Nixon (not to mention his vice president Spiro Agnew who was also a crook and being busted at the same time). Both pretty much avoided criminal consequences by virtue of their office and not out of some sense of trying to look “fair.” The president is not a king but many in government seem to treat the person there as they would a monarch.
We’ve seen it in the recent supreme court decision which grants the president incredible immunity because the president is special and must be protected in ways no regular citizen ever is.
Yeah. If the government was actually interested in enforcing the law against the wealthy Trump would have been thrown in prison decades ago. He’s been “under investigation” for his entire adult life, yet those investigations for some mysterious reason never come to fruition. It’s no wonder he’s so confident he’s above the law when he has been above the law for so long. When he said he could just shoot somebody and get away with it, he was perfectly correct.
Or, to answer the OP’s question: “Why did the Justice Department fail to protect us from Trump?” Simple; the Justice Department is more about protecting him from the rest of us than is is about protecting us from him. As a rich man he’s essentially treated as a god, beyond all restraint and censure.
The more complicated the potential crime, the longer it will take. That was the point I was getting at in my earlier comment. If you’re caught on video assaulting a police officer and breaking into the Congress, prosecution is relatively straightforward. On January 7, the prosecutors had loads of potential suspects and potential evidence — of street violence and low-level thugs. Those are easy prosecutions. The context was highly unusual, but the crimes were straightforward.
Conspiracies, on the other hand, are a lot more difficult to prove. On January 7, what evidence was there that Trump had committed a criminal offence? He gave a fiery speech, then went back to the White House and watched events on tv. What crime had he committed, that he could be charged with at that time? A politician giving fiery speeches is at the heart of the First Amendment protection.
Smith’s case, as I understand it, isn’t about that. It’s about all the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring by Trump and his associates, like Giuliani and Eastman. How does the prosecution find all that? These aren’t people who have been doing violent stuff in the streets. It’s all back room. Who said what to whom? When? What did Trump know and do, not just on January 6, but in the two months leading up to it?
Who is prepared to talk to the police or law enforcement agency about it? Those are complicated investigations. Generally speaking, citizens have a right not to talk to law enforcement. And, law enforcement agencies have to be very careful with political matters, because we don’t want weaponised police and prosecutors.
That is a real concern in a democracy, because we don’t want the criminal power of the state to be routinely used against political opponents. That’s not the same as saying politicians are above the law; it’s that law enforcement has to tread very cautiously and be very sure of its case.
That’s why the House Select Committee was so important. As a political body, they have greater leeway to investigate political activities. They have to be careful to keep it to political oversight of the executive and not try to take the place of a law enforcement agency, but they have greater leeway, as I understand it, to conduct oversight investigations. They also had the power to subpoena witnesses to testify, in a legislative oversight context, which is different from a criminal investigation.
Another point is that the politicians in the House are experts in how government works, in a way that LEO and prosecutors are not. They have a greater intuitive understanding of what to look for and the implications of particular actions. That’s an important part of their job. They could put together a case in a way that a non-political actor may not immediately understand.
If in the course of their oversight investigations, they uncover potential criminal activity, they can refer it to the DOJ, but the DoJ then has to do its own investigation from the perspective of a potential criminal investigation, to determine if they have probable cause, on a legal standard, not a political one. Will charges stand up in a court of law, as opposed to a court of public opinion?
There’s been a lot of comparison of Trump to a mob boss, and I’m afraid that’s accurate. Why did it take so long for Gotti to be charged and convicted? Because conspiracies are hard to prove. It’s relatively easy to go after the mob’s foot soldiers who are the muscle in the streets, doing the obvious criminal stuff. It’s much harder to go after the mob boss, who is pulling the strings behind the scenes, with a code of omertà. It’s only when Sammy the Bull sings that Gotti is in trouble.