Why the Democrats still need to be careful about careless accusations of treason [deep sigh...]

Given the massive number of incidents, financial connections, guilty pleas, detailed indictments, intelligence reports, and stragely deferential policies toward Vladimir Putin's Russia involved in the Trump-Russia scandal, it is downright cautious to say that the information currently in the public record makes it highly probably that President Trump is not only compromised by the Russian government but may well be engaged in actual treason.

The Administration's clear (though barely this side of explicit) threat to turn former Ambassador Michael McFaul over to Russia authorities for prosecution or worse is only one of the most recent telling examples. (Ex-ambassador thanks Senate for resolution against Trump handing over officials The Hill 07/19/18)

Still, I would prefer to see the Democrats pushing hard for impeachment proceedings - which the timid Party establishment doesn't even want Democratic candidates to talk about in the 2018 campaigns - than try to shame Republicans into dissenting from Trump policies by escalating accusations of treson. Not that Democratic elected officials are combative enough even for that, in most cases!

Here's one reason Democrats and the left/center-left generally should be cautious and strategic with the treason rhetoric: Travis Gettys, Bernie Sanders’ campaign strategist Tad Devine turns up 16 times in evidence against Paul Manafort Raw Story 07/19/2018.

The headline will no doubt send a thrill up the leg of many a Hillary hardliner. The article is about the fact that Bernie's campaign "chief strategist" in the 2016 primary campaign "in contact" with Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and presumed Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik. There is no allegation of Devine in any way cooperating with an Russian election interference. According to the article, Devine had previously worked with Manafort on lobbying work for the Russian-friendly Ukrainian government of former President Viktor Yanukovych.

And, note bene, as they say in Latin:

The former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump and Devine worked together nearly a decade ago for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Kremlin Party of Regions, and the pair remained in contact until at least 2014.

According to the new court filing, Manafort and Devine communicated by email through June 2014, about five months before he joined the Sanders campaign that November.

Devine and Sanders had worked together on campaigns in the 1990s, and the Democratic strategist has also worked as a campaign aide to Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis. [my emphasis]

Some of the Hillary hardliners have tried pretty much since Election Day to use the Trump-Russia scandal to smear Sanders and Democratic progressives, as well.

So, if Bernie Sanders, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis can be smeared with a vague guilt-by-association with dubious actors, can we really be surprised that Trump's defenders think they convince his fans that Hillary Clinton is the real Russian agent? For just one odious example: Benny Johnson, Rand Paul: The Only Person We Know Coluded With the Russians The Daily Caller 07/18/2018.

It's not a recent thing, either. It's been a Republican taling point for a while.

Digby Parton that tactic in Latest weird right-wing trick: The Russians were actually helping Hillary! Salon 10/24/2017. The Reps were encouraged by a new report that week that special prosecutor Robert Mueller is looking into possible failure to register as a foreign agent by a lobbying firm considered to by close to the Democrats:

Needless to say, the right-wing media went nuts at this news. This was the hook they've been waiting for. For months they've been pushing a narrative that has Hillary Clinton as the real beneficiary of Russian manipulation, and this is supposed to be proof that connects all the dots. Rush Limbaugh has cooked up a massive conspiracy featuring President Barack Obama, Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Russians over that uranium sale from years ago that's going to blow the lid off everything. (If you can make heads or tails out of what Limbaugh says happened or will happen, take a drink. You need it.)

This uranium story is all over the alternative-facts media, particularly Fox News, with breathless accounts of nefarious Clinton illegality and corruption. According to Rush and others, congressional investigators are on it.

A New York Times story on Monday indicated that the three congressional committees that were supposed to be looking into Russian interference in the election, and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, are hitting a wall. Partisan infighting and GOP lack of focus and interest are pointing toward the conclusion that nothing will be done about any of it. If Mueller's investigation comes up with something concrete, maybe they'll take another look -- but if anyone was expecting the U.S. Congress to be even slightly concerned about the propaganda campaign, the hacking or the attempts to break into actual voting systems, they're going to be disappointed. The Republicans don't give a damn about any of that and they are running the show. [my emphasis]

Trump tossed it out himself in a 2016 in what I still say was a clumsy effort by Hillary to tie Trump to Russian collusion. Trump responded in a typical, "no, your're the poopy-head" mode (Trump to Clinton: 'No, You're the Puppet' Bloomberg Politics 10/19/2016):

And, sad to say, the Republicans are just better at this kind of sleaze-slinging than the Democrats are.

This is not to say that Democrats or the left shouldn't make fact-based criticims of left-leaning arguments that Russian election interference shouldn't be considered a serious matter.

It is to say that Democrats should avoid the temptation to use treason accusations ins a cheap-shot fashion against Trump and the Republicans. The politics of treason are complicated. And the politics of combatting treason should be, also.

Election security and its opponents

Richard Clarke and Robert Knake have a straightforward and practical recommendation about vote security (The Russians Will Be Back. Will We Be Ready? Politico 0713/2017:

A central requirement of any attempt to protect the voting system must be that states evolve past the first generation of electronic voting machines and voter database systems to newer, defensible ones that were built with modern cybersecurity in mind. Even then, it’s imperative we have certain fail-safe measures—especially a paper trail of all votes, so that voters can be sure their ballots were counted correctly and the entire system can be audited and tallied by human beings.

What they don't describe is the single biggest political roadblock to this. Systems and procedures that would prevent election fraud would also have to focus on securing the voter rolls before the elections and preventing irregular alterations of them.

But the Republican Party nationwide is completely committed to segregationist voter suppression, i.e., minimizing the number of black and Latino citizens registered to vote. Securing election systems and voter rolls would frustrate much of this activity, though not all of it. The Republicans will fight tooth and nail against it.

The Republicans in Congress and the White House also don't display a lot of obvious concern about whether Russia wants to meddle illegally in American elections.

I'm in favor of critical restraint on the claims people make about the Trump-Russia scandal and the labels they attach to it. (Carlton F.W. Larson, Sorry, Donald Trump Jr. is not a traitor Washington Post 07/11/2017)

But it's also painfully obvious that the Republicans would mostly just prefer to see Trump-Russia scandal investigation to just dissolve into smoke.

Trump-Russia scandal: the Fusion GPS Dodge

The Republicans are starting to try out a new dodge on the Trump-Russia scandal in which the real scandal is ... Hillary Clinton and Fusion GPS.

What is Fusion GPS, you may ask? Marcy Wheeler gives us a reality-based explanation here, Be Careful How You Define Collusion: On the Veselnitskaya Bombshell and the Steele Dossier Emptywheel 07/10/2017:

Remember: A supporter of Hillary Clinton paid an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, to hire a British spy who in turn paid money to Russians — including people even closer to the Kremlin than Veselnitskaya — for Russia-related dirt on Don Jr’s dad.

Yes, the Clinton campaign was full of adults, and so kept their Russian-paying oppo research far better removed from the key players on the campaign than Trump’s campaign, which was run by incompetents. But if obtaining dirt from Russians — even paying Russians to obtain dirt — is collusion, then a whole bunch of people colluded with Russians (and a bunch of other foreign entities, I’m sure), including whatever Republican originally paid Fusion for dirt on Trump.

Breaking: Our political process is sleazy as **** (but then, so are most of our politicians).

The claim that merely meeting with Veselnitskaya is collusion is all the more dangerous given that it invokes some weird details about the Fusion dossier. Most importantly, as Trump’s lawyer’s spox has pointed out (incoherently, at first), like whatever Clinton supporter retained the oppo research firm, Veselnitskaya also employed Fusion. An update to NYT’s Friday story laid some of this out, in the form of Mark Corallo’s more clever than you actually might think suggestion that the Democrats might have paid Fusion to set up this meeting.

Marcy notes, like just about everyone else who is talking about it and is not a partisan Republican, that Don Jr.'s emails that he himself released makes a case for collusion much stronger than anything we've seen so far in the public record.

But the Reps are obviously starting to talk up a story that the whole thing with Veselnitskaya was a Hillary false-flag operation, or something. It's preposterous. But we're talking about the Republicans here.

Rachel Maddow on her show Tuesday explained the bits of the emergin Republican narrative, Donald Trump Jr Collusion Admission Leaves Jared Kushner Exposed 07/11/2017, especially after 7:30:





On a related issue, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware explains why he's cautious on using the word "treason" to describe the picture that is emerging, Dem Sen: Donald Trump Jr. Russian Meeting Emails Are 'Jaw-Dropping' 07/11/2017:





I'm in that camp myself, because Article 3 of the Constitution does specify a definition of treason: "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."

Back during the Vietnam War, there was some serious discussion about whether North Vietnam or the Vietcong (National Liberation Front) counted for Article 3 purposes as an enemy. Because Congress never declared war on either of them. And as James Madison wrote in Federalist #43, the Founders were keenly aware that there was a strong temptation during political disputes to expand the definition of treason:

As treason may be committed against the United States, the authority of the United States ought to be enabled to punish it. But as new-fangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the convention have, with great judgment, opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author. [my emphasis]

George Fletcher discusses the complications of the legal definition of treason in Ambivalence about Treason North Carolina Law Review 06/01/2014