Fearing abuse of treason charges, the Framers gave treason a narrow definition and made it extremely difficult to prove. Individuals, including a former President, may also be criminally punished for treason, perhaps the highest offense in our legal system, carrying the possibility of the death penalty. “It’s very clear that would have been seen as ‘levying war,’ ” he said.īoth of Trump’s impeachments, in 20, were for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but the Constitution also names treason as an offense for which a President can be impeached. But the insurrection of January 6th changed his answer, at least with regard to Trump’s followers who attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress’s certification of the election. During Trump’s Presidency, Larson told me, his colleagues teased him by asking, “Is it treason yet?” He always said no. Ordering the military to abandon Kurdish allies in Syria, effectively strengthening ISIS, is not treason, either-though that is getting warmer. Though the term is popularly used to describe all kinds of political betrayals, the Constitution defines treason as one of two distinct, specific acts: “levying War” against the United States or “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Colluding with Russia, a foreign adversary but not an enemy, is not treason, nor is bribing Ukraine to investigate a political rival. Larson, a treason scholar and law professor at the University of California, Davis, has swatted away loose treason accusations by both Donald Trump and his critics.
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