The thin line between sabotage and treason

Chief Justice John Roberts in Buffalo on Wednesday.Jeffrey T. Barnes / AP

On Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts, in a not-so-veiled swipe at Donald Trump, stressed that the U.S. Constitution’s “main innovation” was the creation of an independent judiciary. Our Constitutional system of government only works, he emphasized, if power shared between the three branches of federal government remains equal and balanced, and it is up to the Courts, not Trump, to decide what makes it so.

Roberts’ remarks followed the Trump regime’s astonishing flurry of demonizing attacks against the judiciary. On April 25, Attorney General Pam Bondi called judges who refused to legitimize Trump’s power grabs “deranged,” then, with characteristic bombast, warned the judiciary, “we will come after you and we will prosecute you.” That same day, Kash Patel had a Wisconsin Judge perp walked out of the courthouse in handcuffs because she allowed a defendant to exit from a side door to the main hall where everyone else, including the FBI, was waiting. Three days later, Karoline Leavitt intimated that Trump could have Supreme Court justices arrested.

Roberts can well see that Trump’s henchmen are attacking the judiciary as the last line of defense against an authoritarian coup. Perhaps more difficult to see is that Trump’s attacks, in concert with his deliberate weakening of national security, are acts of sabotage. He is wrecking our constitutional form of government in an effort to replace it with something else. From this perspective, it is difficult to see Trump’s strategy as anything short of treasonous.

A president who projects his own criminality

Throughout his first 100 days, Trump engaged in wild and unprecedented acts of retribution against the rule of law and anyone who tried to make him answer to it. Last week, describing Trump’s EO to punish and extort lawyers who represented his political adversaries, a federal judge noted that, “No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue” in an attempt to march the country toward totalitarianism.

Aside from metastasizing power grabs, the most common thread running through Trump’s EOs-- announced through a series of White House propaganda papers issued every other day-- is Trump’s projection of his own crimes and misdeeds onto others. Anyone trying to map Trump’s elusive plan of governance need only look at what he purports to attack in his orders, because those are his true intentions. On his first day in office, for example, Trump issued an EO “Ending the weaponization of the federal government,” dialing weaponization of government power to levels not seen since King George.

Freighted with propaganda, the White House memo regurgitated Trump’s grievances about efforts to hold him legally accountable for his actions, falsely proclaiming as “fact,” under seal of the White House, that:

“The American people have witnessed the (Biden) administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community…

The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process (with) numerous Federal investigations and politically motivated funding revocations…”

Trump then turned these accusations into a plan of action targeting political opponents, the intelligence community, the judiciary, and members of the bar in ways never before seen in American history. He has ordered the AG, DOJ and FBI to conduct political investigations, arrests and prosecutions; made repeated threats against judges who rule against him; weaponized federal tax status, weaponized federal contractor status, threatened to withhold licensing and funding already appropriated by Congress, and attempted to extort (and did extort) law firms.

On brand, Trump accuses others of treason

Determined to rule by fiat in order to bypass both legislative and judicial branches, Trump has issued a slew of incongruent declarations and EOs too wide ranging to list. To squelch dissent and criticism of those orders, he describes critics as ‘enemies of the state,’ and accuses them of treason.

Trump’s presidential memorandum about “leakers” of government information describes as “treasonous” any disclosure of sensitive information for the purposes of undermining foreign policy, national security, or government effectiveness. ‘Undermining,’ of course, is whatever Trump says it is, which means any criticism can be deemed ‘treason.’

It’s a bold intimidation campaign meant to facilitate prosecution and imprisonment of critics in the near future. In this regard, Trump is modeling authoritarians like Russia’s Putin, El Salvador’s Bukele, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

While his left hand attempts to silence critics Putin style, Trump’s right hand is actively sabotaging national security, by:

• Exposing secrets of the US intelligence community on easily hacked commercial messaging apps;

• Making threats to NATO that serve and align with Russian interests;

• Purging career civil servants and replacing them with incompetent loyalists to destabilize the government;

• Pausing or ceasing federal enforcement of foreign bribery laws;

• Trashing security alliances by threatening allies; and

• Ending the Justice Department’s task force on covert foreign influence even as threats from foreign influence are rising.

Step by step, agency by federal agency, Trump is systematically disabling institutions that could interfere with his acquisition of domestic power, while at the same time inviting a foreign attack. Standing alone, each act weakens national security in ways that can’t be measured because the consequences have not yet materialized. Taken in concert, they reflect Trump’s intentional subversion of our national security interests.

Treason

Treason, a federal crime, is defined by the Constitution as ‘levying war’ against the nation; it also includes “giving aid and comfort” to our enemies. Trump credibly has been accused of treason for aiding Russia’s interests over our own. In 2023, his actions in fomenting the J6 attack were also deemed treasonous when the Colorado Supreme Court found that he engaged in insurrection, a decision with roots in the Constitution’s definition of treason.

In a decision they may already regret, the Supreme Court found a workaround to avoid Colorado’s application of the 14^th Amendment on grounds that had nothing to do with—and did not disturb—Colorado’s finding of insurrection.

Treason is defined as the betrayal of one’s country; it is hard to imagine a deeper betrayal than an American president questioning the basic rule of the US Constitution while he actively subverts it.

I have no illusion that the spineless Republican party is prepared to rein Trump in at this juncture; as one Senator admitted, they are all too “frightened” of retribution to do their Constitutional duty. So for now, thanks to a feckless Supreme Court and cowardly federal legislators, we are a nation held hostage by a lawless president of questionable sanity and his power-drunk sycophants.

As America wonders how bad it will get before he is stopped, at least we are learning a shared civics lesson: we are learning why the Constitution prohibits traitors from being elected into office.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. Her columns can be found in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN,Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.