Respecting a traitor 62

For some years a gang of traitors – affiliated with an inimical international movement – has been trying to overthrow the elected president of the United States.

One of the gang leaders is now running for the office of president himself.

Which is more necessary to the nation: that he be allowed to run and possibly become the head of the state which he tried to undermine, or that he be brought to trial?

David Horowitz writes at Front Page:

This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them.  – President Trump.

Perhaps the most troubling – and dangerous – aspect of the current political conversation is the unwillingness of virtually every elected official and every media pundit to confront what “Obamagate” is obviously about, which is treason. Specifically, treason committed by the Obama White House in attempting to block and then overthrow the Trump presidency. Obamagate is about the failed attempt by President Obama and his appointees to use government intelligence agencies to spy on the Trump campaign and White House, to concoct a phony accusation of collusion with Russia against the president and then to obstruct his administration and overthrow him.

Rudy Giuliani, attorney to President Trump, was willing to call it treason:

They wanted to take out the lawfully elected President of the United States and they wanted to do it by lying, submitting false affidavits, using phony witnesses — in other words, they wanted to do it by illegal means . . . What is overthrowing government by illegal means? It’s a coup; treason.

This aggressive statement by the president’s lawyer is a sure guarantee that a reckoning is coming in the days ahead. But first there are the semantics. Responding to Giuliani’s accusation, law professor Jonathan Turley wrote: “No, James Comey Did Not Commit Treason.”  According to Turley: “Giuliani is engaging in the same blood sport of using the criminal code to paint critics as not just criminals, but traitors. …”

Technically, but in a very limited way, Turley is right. Treason is defined in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution in these words:

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.

There’s a reason the Founders designed so restrictive a definition of treason. They were all guilty of it for rebelling against their king. This led to Benjamin Franklin’s famous quip: “We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.”

But this legal definition of the crime is only one aspect of the issue, and in the end it is the less important one for understanding the significance of what has happened. There is also the common usage of the words “treason” and “traitor”, which speak to the moral dimensions of the crime. It is these meanings that provide a proper guide to the seriousness and scope of what Obama, Biden, Comey, Brennan, Clapper and the others involved actually did.

This is the Merriam Webster definition of treason: “1: the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family. 2: the betrayal of a trust: treachery.”

“To overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance” –is a pretty precise definition of what Obamagate is about.

Although early on, the outlines of this conspiracy were clear to dogged investigators like Congressman Devin Nunes, they have remained obscure to anti-Trump partisans. This is due to the protective wall created for the conspirators by Obama appointees at the Department of Justice, unprincipled Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, and a corrupt news media that has redefined its mission to be that of a propaganda squad for the conspiracy itself. Consequently, it has taken nearly four years to recover the documentary evidence that might persuade an honest critic of the Trump administration of the crime the anti-Trump camp has committed.

Two recent actions have served to demolish the plotters’ protective wall and bring the true dimensions of Obamagate to light. The first was Trump’s appointment of Rick Grenell as acting Director of National Intelligence. Until then the transcripts of the impeachment hearings had been closed to the public by the Intel Committee chairman, Adam Schiff. This allowed Schiff to leak testimony damaging to the president and suppress testimony exonerating him. The full testimonies by high-ranking foreign policy officials had remained under Schiff’s lock and key for over a year.  Grenell told Schiff that he would unlock the testimonies if Schiff didn’t, which is how they came to light.

What the newly released testimonies showed was that one Obama appointee after another when questioned by Republicans on the committee had said they had no evidence whatsoever that there was any collusion between Trump or the Trump team and the Russians. In other words, from the very beginning of the plot against Trump, the conspirators including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the heads of the intelligence agencies knew that the charge of collusion – of treason – which they had concocted to destroy Trump was fraudulent. Despite this, they went ahead with the $35 million Mueller investigation that tied Trump’s hands in dealing with the Russians and spread endless false rumors about his allegiances, and in the end found no evidence to support the character assassinations the investigation spawned.

The second revelation was the result of an FBI declassification of hitherto hidden documents describing a White House meeting on January 5, 2017 – two weeks before the inauguration of the new president. The meeting was attended by the outgoing president and vice president, the heads of the intelligence agencies, the acting Attorney General and Obama’s outgoing National Security adviser Susan Rice. The subjects of the meeting were the targeting of General Michael Flynn – Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser – and the infamous Steele dossier which the Hillary campaign and the DNC had paid a former British spy to compile with information from the Russian secret police. The dossier was designed to discredit Trump and set up the Russia-collusion narrative. The targeting of Flynn involved unmasking an innocuous conversation with the Russian Ambassador which was then used to smear Flynn and get him fired. Shortly after the meeting the fact that Flynn was under investigation was leaked to the Washington Post – a felony punishable by 10 years in jail. This leak opened a floodgate of public accusations – backed by no evidence – that Trump and everyone close to him were agents of the Russians.

The secret war the Obama White House declared on Trump before he was even elected, was a war on America.

Several years prior to the 2016 election, Obama had begun using the intelligence agencies to spy on his Republican opponents. This was a direct attack on the most fundamental institution of our democracy – elections. It was a much more destructive interference in the electoral process than anything attempted by the Russians. The subsequent cynical attempts to frame Trump as a traitor and then to impeach him for concocted offenses is without precedent.

Because they were attacks on our democracy itself, Obamagate is the worst political crime committed against our country in its entire history.

Horowitz concludes by saying that “the culprits involved need to be exposed and prosecuted“.

Implied is the optimistic theory that if these traitors are punished to the fullest extent of the law, the nation will be spared such treasonous acts in the future.

It might be so. The chance is better than probable.

“People should be going to jail for this stuff,” the president said.

But what is not probable is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be prosecuted.

Attorney General William Barr has already announced that they would not even be investigated. “Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.” he said.

His reason? Joe Biden (senile though he is), looks to be the Democrats’ candidate for the presidency and –

Mr. Barr said it was important the American public would be able to vote in November for a presidential candidate “based on a robust debate of policy issues”.

Although he also reiterated that “Mr. Trump was the victim of a years long ‘utterly false Russian collusion narrative’ and that standards at the Justice Department were abused to reach a particular result”, and declared, “We can’t allow this to ever happen again,” nevertheless in his opinion the process of democracy transcends the requirement of justice.

We cannot allow this process to be hijacked by efforts to drum up criminal investigations of either candidate. I am committed that this election will be conducted without this kind of interference.

But does the process of democracy transcend the requirement of justice?

Was it not the very process of democracy that was subverted by the actions of the traitors – their attempts, which the Attorney General acknowledges, to overturn the result of an election?

If justice cannot reach them, what will that process ever be worth again?