“There was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016,” US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard alleged in a July 18 press release, “committed by officials at the highest level of our government.”

If the timing of that release, which revisits the “Russiagate” hoax, feels opportunistic/propagandistic, that’s because it is.

The walls seem to be closing in on US president Donald Trump as he unsuccessfully seeks to distract attention from his once … close … friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Meanwhile, Gabbard completed her transformation from opportunistic political gadfly to fully compliant junior Trump propagandist last month when she reversed her (true) claim that the US intelligence community doesn’t believe the Iranian regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons to support Trump’s claim that it is.

The best distractions, though, are factual distractions. All we’re really getting in Gabbard’s latest document dump is confirmation of, and details on, things we already knew to be true, but those details and confirmations are worth having.

We’ve known, for years now and beyond reasonable doubt, that “Russiagate” was simply an after-the-fact attempt on the part of the Democratic Party establishment and its allies in the federal bureaucracy to shift blame for Donald Trump’s “surprise” victory in the 2016 presidential election away from themselves and their candidate.

Hillary Clinton simply COULDN’T have lost because she was among the most universally loathed individuals in America politics, or because she ran a lazy and ineffectual campaign. There had to be some other reason, and the reason they settled on was “Russian influence.”

Their efforts came to even less than naught: Not only was the story never credible, but it gave Trump gallons of the “victim” cred he so thrives on. Now he’s returning to the well for another bucket full of accusations, probably true ones, to pour on the heads of his Epstein-obsessed pursuers.

I doubt it will work, but again, the more information we have on the Russiagate hoax the better. Exposing these machinations makes future attempts to put over such hoaxes less likely.

BUT!

No, the Russiagate hoax, while certainly a conspiracy, was not “treasonous.”

The term “treason” gets thrown around a lot by Republicans and Democrats alike to describe each others’ actions, but it’s a word with a specific legal meaning laid down in Article 3 of the US Constitution:

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

Treason is a crime of war. The US  has not legally been in a state of war since December 31, 1946 (when Harry Truman signed a presidential proclamation declaring the end of World War 2).

That’s why the only successful US treason prosecutions SINCE World War 2 have been for actions taken DURING World War 2. It was literally impossible to commit treason against the United States in 2016 (and it’s literally impossible to do so right now).

By all means, learn from these disclosures — but don’t let hype about “treason” distract you from demanding the truth about the Trump-Epstein relationship too.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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