For the past two years, Democrat politicians, liberal pundits and disgruntled former national security officials have stoked “collusion” hysteria in the media with accusations of treason against President Trump.
The mainstream media were able to keep their fake collusion narrative going for so long in large part because a steady stream of “expert” commentators were on hand to assure liberal journalists that the hoax was real.
“The spirit of what Trump did is clearly treasonous,” presidential historian and CNN commentator Douglas Brinkley once said.
On MSNBC, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman declared that “There’s almost no question this is treason.”
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine proclaimed that the Mueller investigation could broaden to include potential “treason.”
“We’re now beyond obstruction of justice in terms of what’s being investigated,” Kaine said. “This is moving into perjury, false statements, and even into potentially treason.”
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters said Trump “committed treason” if he got information from the Russians, and Former CIA Director John Brennan said “I stand very much by” accusing Trump of treason.
Charles Blow of The New York Times wrote an op-ed titled, “Trump, Treasonous Traitor” — in which he wrote: “Simply put, Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous.”
Treason is not a term to be thrown around lightly, however.
According to 18 U.S. Code § 2381, treason amounts to “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
As White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders pointed out, that’s an incredibly serious crime to accuse someone of without evidence, especially when that someone is the president.
“Take a second and let that sink in, take a minute and realize how outrageous and how serious and how malicious an accusation like that is,” she told CNN. “They literally accused the president of the United States of being an agent for a foreign government, that’s equivalent to treason — that is punishable by death in this country.”
She’s right. The media malpractice of condoning baseless accusations of treason against President Trump was a travesty that never should have happened in this country.
For far too long, politicians, journalists, and media commentators have been allowed to throw around words like “traitor” with zero repercussion. Elections are the American people’s way of peacefully changing power from one administration to the next, and the wild allegations against the president were nothing more than an attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election.
Trump is, beyond any doubt, the legitimate 45th president of the United States, and the efforts to frame him as a tool of Putin have failed miserably. Nineteen U.S. attorneys, over 2,800 subpoenas, and 500 search warrants have vindicated Trump and discredited those who sought to take him down with lies and false accusations.
Everyone involved in this conspiracy should be held accountable by the American people. As President Trump said, “this should never happen to another president.”
Harlan Hill is president of the Logan Circle Group and an advisory board member for the Trump-Pence 2020 re-election campaign.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.