Steve Bannon Speaks the T-Word - Lawfare

The Constitution defines treason very narrowly.  So we lawyers won't use it regarding L'Affaire Russe as it has been called.   But Bannon used it.  And it has a fitting ring to it. - gwc
Steve Bannon Speaks the T-Word - Lawfare
by Jonathan Rauch (Contributing Editor - The Atlantic; Senior Fellow Brookings Institution)
***So back to Bannon. We know that a Trump campaign official eagerly tried to connect the campaign with the Russians. We know that senior campaign officials, including the candidate's son, when offered dirt against Hillary Clinton by a known emissary of a foreign government, leapt at the opportunity rather than calling the FBI. We know that the candidate himself, in full public view, encouraged that foreign government to violate U.S. law in order to steal his opponent’s emails and then use them to influence the election—which is exactly what the foreign government did. We know that Trump, first as candidate and then as president, continued to dismiss overwhelming evidence that the foreign government had done exactly what he had asked it to do. We know that the president fired an FBI director partly for pursuing the matter.

This is no mere trail of breadcrumbs. As Lawfare writers have argued (more than once), Trump, whatever he may have done secretly, collaborated with the Russians to undermine the election’s integrity in full public view. Although such behavior is unconscionable and profoundly dangerous to democracy, no one ever thought it needed to be banned, so it might be legal. It certainly is not treason in the Constitution’s narrow sense of the term.

But how else, exactly, should we describe the encouragement by an American politician of a foreign power’s efforts to break our law in order to influence our election? Is there any word that fits better than Bannon’s choice of words: “treasonous”? Morally speaking, what else is someone doing when he is offered intelligence by a foreign adversary seeking to influence the election, and he replies “I love it!” Sedition? Conspiracy? Not really.

From the point of view of common sense and everyday morality, Bannon seems about right. That is not a legal judgment, to be sure. But the law, in the present situation, is of secondary importance. More important is to help ourselves and the public understand what is at stake if a U.S. politician helps a foreign adversary to undermine our constitutional order. In that regard, “treasonous” seems pretty apt, and closer than anything else.

As the founders knew and often said, the ultimate defense of our constitutional order is public morality, not public law. Let it be said that the controversial Bannon has struck a blow for re-moralization.