Is It Possible For An Incumbent U.S. President To Be Charged With The Crime of Treason?
Not too long ago I asked this question and the answer I was given was very interesting.
As I understand it, the definition of treason (or what constitutes treason) is very clear and very well-defined.
It is highly unlikely that a sitting U.S. President would be indicted simply because of the profound effects which this would have on the institution of the Presidency and credibility of the democratic process itself (!)
[Impeachment and resignation, followed by a pardon, would be more the order of the day.]
It is highly unlikely that a sitting U.S. President would be indicted simply because of the profound effects which this would have on the institution of the Presidency and credibility of the democratic process itself (!)
[Impeachment and resignation, followed by a pardon, would be more the order of the day.]
I found this to be a remarkable answer as I had naively assumed that such, if effected, would, in the eyes of the American public, strengthen the democratic process.
[This perhaps, more shows my naivety when it comes to 'raw' politics than it does anything else.]
I was assured that such a hypothesis was highly unlikely and that a U.S. President (or President elect) would never work to undermine his own Office with such reckless behavior.
That having been said, the revelations that 'actors' (Staff) of both (incoming) President Nixon and (incoming) President Reagan both, in defiance of U.S. laws, worked quietly to undermine incumbent but outgoing Presidents for political advantage, did not re-assure me that this will not happen again.
What would be the implications of, say, Chief Executives of major oil companies, global corporations or billionaire 'actors' personally carrying secret messages to President Putin to bypass the U.S. intelligence community (such as the CIA, The NSA or the DNI) or undermine departmental individuals targeted by a 'mentally unbalanced' (psychotic) President in the White House for 'character assassination' or indeed as a
'false flag' to 'assassinate' (metaphorically speaking) potential future rivals (such as Paul Ryan as just one example.) Fanciful thinking? Beyond the Pale? Well far too much has been happening lately in the United States political world which is more in the making of a surreal play than most average folks can get a grip on.
Would 'plausible deniability' cover anyone (Trump-appointed Directors or their appointees of the CIA or DNI for example) who was personally aware that this was going on if 'all hell broke loose' and they had to explain their actions to the American public?
Fanciful thinking on my part? Well think again.
Trump and the Republicans are about to appoint many senior staff with very close links to the Kremlin. How safe do you feel?
The donkey answers from the weak, the feeble and the scared are the usual crap ''well if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear''.
Every country has business secrets, trade secrets, copyright and research secrets.
Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have already blazed the trail and shown how it is done: simply appoint (or work to have appointed) a low-level (expendable) Russian spy(ies) in the U.S. or elsewhere, ensure that she or he has the required access and, at the flick of a computer switch, relay everything to Moscow.
Scenario Example
Have any of you out there who are paid to think out of the box thought about what would happen if, under such circumstances, a hostile superpower (Russia) collapsed (again) the world economic system? Next time there might not be an Obama to 'bail' out the economy (its key players) but 'billionaires' in Trump's cabinet who would step in and 'buy up the country' (the United States) for cents on the dollars.
How do you (or I for that matter) know that the Kremlin has no such plan in place?
The U.S. and world economic order came very close to collapsing in 2008. I have said previously that Russia has never forgiven Obama for saving both the U.S. and world economic order as curently exists. [I said this long before Trump was nominated so it stands to record.]
Who would benefit from another collapse?
Certainly the current world economic order would not. Russia and the billionaire oligarchs who rule the Federation with or on behalf of Vladimir Putin most certainly would.
Trump's vision of billionaire to billionaire enslavement of the masses across continents may well be the final solution and, you know what, with such dumb-ass folks who are stupid enough to believe and vote such individuals into high office, in a way, perhaps they will get what they deserve. Having said that, how can you blame ordinary hard-working law-abiding folk who, without realising it, have already been 'dumbed-down'? [see a previous blog for a personal opinion on how this has partially been achieved.]
I started off on the subject of treason - and it's appropriate considering the fact that all the individuals mentioned here - Manning, Assange, Snowden - are all guilty of it.
[Even if you believe in open electronic frontiers -which I still do - to use classified, hacked and other materials supplied by Moscow to overthrow the democratic process is treason.]
When, however, the Oval Office and the President's Cabinet are partial, sympathetic or indeed secretly supportive to Wikileaks in opposition America's own intelligence agencies, it makes a world of a difference.
When, going on from that, the President appoints senior Military, Intelligence and Departmental Staff (at least one of whom should not be within a million kilometers of any classified data, let alone managing it, because of his known partial relationship, support from and support of Vladimir Putin) U.S. allies worldwide should carefully re-consider exactly how much and what level of data to be sharing - knowing as they now do, sharing anything with the U.S. will be, after 20th January 2017, just a data storage USB away, from sharing it all with Moscow.
©Patrick Emek, January 2017
(not if history - or jumbled collections of half-truths - continue to be written by 'lying' historians! PE)