EDW: Treason Is a Constitutional Crime, Not a Mood

Just after midnight on April 24, Trump started reposting accusations that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Brennan committed treason over the Steele dossier. Two reposts repeated an allegation that Clinton funded and created the dossier, Obama directed it, and Brennan’s CIA carried it out, calling this treason. A third hoped Obama would be arrested before an event in Chicago. This was not a stray thought. It was a cluster.

That matters because treason has an actual meaning.

The Constitution defines it narrowly: levying war against the United States, or adhering to its enemies and giving them aid and comfort. Conviction requires either a confession in open court or the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act. Congress’s constitutional commentary explains that the Framers wrote it this way precisely to stop leaders from turning treason into a catchall weapon against political enemies.

So this is the first thing to say plainly: reposting “treason” at midnight because your old grievances are still fermenting in the basement is not legal analysis. It is rage in a courthouse costume.

Now, there is a real Brennan investigation. Reuters reported last week that the FBI under Trump intensified a criminal probe into Brennan over the 2017 intelligence assessment and his later congressional testimony. AP reported on April 21 that recently issued subpoenas for Washington grand-jury testimony were withdrawn in favor of requests for voluntary interviews. That is a real inquiry. It is also a very different thing from proving that Obama, Clinton, or Brennan committed constitutional treason.

And here is where the whole performance starts to collapse under its own melodrama.

Reuters’ Brennan story also says the core conclusion at issue, that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, was later affirmed by the Justice Department, a bipartisan Senate panel, and a CIA review. The CIA review nevertheless criticized the assessment’s methods, including the confidence attached to Putin’s intention to help Trump and its handling of the Steele dossier. In other words, Trump is reposting “treason” over a set of events whose central finding was repeatedly upheld, even while specific conduct inside that history remains under investigation. That is a lot less cinematic than his followers would like.

This is why the repost spree is so corrosive.

A serious government can investigate former officials.
A serious government can reopen old controversies.
A serious government can prosecute actual crimes where evidence supports it.

A serious government does not use treason like seasoning.

Because once treason becomes whatever embarrassed Donald Trump in public life, constitutional language stops anchoring politics and starts serving it. The word shrinks. The standard dissolves. The audience gets trained to hear “treason” and think, “Ah, another person Trump wants punished.”

That is not strong-government energy. That is banana-republic diction with better tailoring.

And yes, the timing tells on him too. These were reposts, not a formal legal argument, not a charging document, not a presidential statement laying out evidence and standards. A repost is how a politician borrows certainty without earning it. It is the social-media version of shouting “people are saying” and hoping the mob will do the paperwork.

Which brings us to the deeper problem.

The Framers narrowed treason because they knew power gets emotional. They knew leaders love to inflate personal injury into national betrayal. They knew the temptation to criminalize opposition would always be there. The Treason Clause is one of the places where the Constitution tells power to calm down and use a smaller word unless it can prove the largest one.

Trump’s repost storm runs the opposite direction. It takes the largest word and uses it first. It turns one of the rarest crimes in the constitutional order into partisan confetti. It treats the law as though it should expand to fit his grievance instead of restraining it.

That is the tell.

He is not trying to clarify what treason means.
He is trying to make sure the word means whoever he needs it to mean next.

And that should bother people far beyond party.

Because once a president gets his followers comfortable with “treason” as an all-purpose label for rivals, the constitutional order starts sounding less like law and more like theater. And theater has terrible evidentiary standards.

So call this what it is.

A repost spree.
A revenge fantasy.
A late-night attempt to turn constitutional language into partisan weaponry.

Treason deserves more than that. So does the country.

If this helped clear the fog, share it around. Follow EDW. Some words are supposed to mean something, and treason is one of them.