The Real Question: Treason or Incompetence?
The silence is deafening. Where are they? I’m talking about the people who can add and subtract without using their fingers and toes. Let’s see, Mr. Trump sent his closest henchmen to meet with Russian agents during his presidential campaign intending to subvert official U.S. policy in exchange for the Russians’ help in the campaign. Trump and his ex attorney general claim that even if it is “collusion” of some sort, it’s still “legal.” Trouble is, it adds up to “treason” even without the use of one’s fingers and toes. The only real question is how many of Trump’s “employees” actually engaged in these assorted acts that “add up” to treason and to what extent? We know that Russia purposely helped Trump get elected both by the use of social media and by the hacking of various states’ computer systems, and also through voter distribution data given to them directly by the Trump campaign itself.
Later, in May, 2017, President Trump deliberately revealed classified military information about a planned Islamic attack operation directly to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak in an apparent effort to prove his loyalty to Russian dictator, Putin. The information created security concerns for Israel and other of our allies. Soon after, a valuable covert source in the Russian government had to be extracted due to repeated mishandling of classified information by Trump and his administration. In February of 2018, against strenuous pleas not to do so, Trump declassified information about our “secret” nuclear weapon system for his own aggrandizement in his childish spitting contest with Kim Jong-un. Later, he weakened our nuclear treaty with Russia and cancelled much of our Air surveillance of that nation. These are only a few of the president’s flirtations, constantly dancing on that fine line between incompetence and treason.
Now that all of his admittedly “legal” attempts to overturn a legitimate election have failed, he and his henchmen are deliberately hampering the next president, clearly at the expense of the American people. Ironically, after interfering with the investigation into Russian interference in his own victorious election, he personally sought to interfere with this year’s election by blatantly adding to chronic Republican subversion of the postal service in an overt effort to block legitimate mail-in voting. Not only did he deny his own intelligence agency’s findings that various states’ election mechanisms and rolls were hacked, but most treacherous of all, he interfered with and fired the key cybersecurity personnel, apparently to hide the fact of the Russian hack. How the president’s actions actually enabled the Russians and whether he has been colluding all along with them has to be an open question. Add to this his handling of the pandemic literally as if it were caused by the common cold. Then his disdain for testing because it might reveal the actual number of COVID-!9 cases, as well as his involving favorite campaign donors in profiting from their deliberate mishandling of PPE early in the pandemic and the question that has to be asked is whether or not Mr. Trump and his cohorts are guilty of treason? Reckonings and angry reprisals are far less important than determining just how far a “citizen” of this country is allowed to go, simply because we call him “President.”
Frankly, if the above actions by President Trump and his cronies, in addition to the matter of Trump’s emoluments are not investigated and policies are not clarified regarding these activities, then next time, what is to keep someone much more competent, more intelligent and yes, even more despotic than Trump from wreaking unimaginable havoc on the American people and our Constitution?
Allen Finkelstein 12/22/20