r/politics • u/robot_pirate • 6d ago

Trump Should Never Have Had This Platform Paywall

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/debate-trump-platform-january-6/678818/
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u/Royals-2015 6d ago

He should have been prosecuted for treason. Between J6 and the documents at MAL, what the fuck is he doing running for Pres again?

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u/urk_the_red 6d ago edited 6d ago

Treason has a specific meaning delineated in the US constitution. “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. 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.” What Trump did wasn’t treason.

If you want to call it insurrection, an attempted coup, theft of top secret documents, reckless illegality, shockingly negligent, or just about any other descriptor, I’m all on board. But it wasn’t treason.

In a perfect world, Trump would have been in prison since the ‘70’s. In a less than perfect but much better world, he would have been strung up on Jan. 7 for trying to end our democracy. In the world we have I will take any significant consequences at all.

He has done many things which ought to be utterly disqualifying for holding the presidency, but the single most damning and unforgivable thing he ever did was trying to end our democracy. The fact that so many Americans refuse to see that is a disgraceful indictment of our society.

Edit: I’m getting a lot of comments that posit Russia as an enemy of the state or one of the failed states infested with terrorists, or whatever. None of those meet the definitions required to be treason.

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u/harrisarah 6d ago

Quite frankly he may have committed treason with those documents, on top of the crimes of keeping them in the first place.

Or the secret no-notes meeting with Putin. He easily could have given enemies "aid and comfort". Or "adhered" to them whatever the fuck that means. If it meant a buck or made his peepee feel big you know he did it.

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u/urk_the_red 6d ago

We’re not at war with any of those nations, so they don’t meet the necessary criteria to be enemies. It’s not treason. It’s criminal as all hell, it’s an immediate danger to national security, it’s a slam dunk of a criminal case with any judge who isn’t complicit, but it’s not treason.

The founding fathers gave the definition of treason a narrow and specific scope for good reasons.

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u/espinaustin 5d ago

What makes you think we need to be “at war” with a foreign country for it to be considered our “enemy?” Are you just assuming that, or do you have a source? And do you mean there must be a congressional declaration of war? So in that case Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, etc. were not “enemy” nations and no one could be convicted of treason for aiding them? I think you misunderstand the legal meaning of “enemy.” I’m not sure Russia meets that definition, but I’m not sure it doesn’t.

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u/noctar 6d ago

We're involved in Yemen and Somalia to this day. I somehow doubt that nothing in those papers involved any of those theaters.

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u/urk_the_red 6d ago

That doesn’t meet the definition of treason.