I'm not sure what happened to the thread I started regarding treason, but if it was moved perhaps someone can direct me to the correct section.

In the mean time, I had promised to post a treatise I had previously authored for another site, and so I provide that at this time so that those who suggest that failure to secure the border or even that threatening the continued sovereignty of this nation are acts that can or shoud be tried as treason. While I understand the passion behind the belief, and while I believe wholeheartedly that at least half of the Presidents and other political leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries have been traitors to their countrymen and in gross breach of their oaths of office, I cannot agree that they can be proven to have committed treason as narrowly defined by the Constitution.

The short article was written regarding treason generically, and was therefore not specific to the open borders or multinational trade agreemtns that threaten our survival as a nation. I offer it as originally written and then will comment further below:

Treason – What is it?

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary describes treason thusly:

1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family

The Constitution of the United States of America, however, limits the legal definition of treason in Art. III, Sec. 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Now, while the dictionary definition of treason and the common usage of the term are both quite broad, the legal definition which is limited by the Constitution is actually quite narrow and specific.

We often hear people accusing one or another elected official or outspoken citizen of treason. If one is adhering to the dictionary definition of treason, then this is quite acceptable. However, when one suggests criminal sanction for the act of treason, the dictionary definition becomes utterly irrelevant.

Criminal treason, which is the only treason that may be prosecuted, is strictly limited to three elements, with one element standing alone and the other two being mutually dependent. The element that stands alone is “levying War against (the states).” Any person who can be proven to have participated in the actual levying of war against the states is guilty of treason. The other two elements are the two components of the act of providing aid and comfort to the Enemies of those states. In order to be guilty of treason under this provision, one must be proven to have provided aid and comfort. Also, it must be proven that the person, group, or entity to which aid and comfort was rendered was in fact an actual (declared) enemy of one or all of the several states (or of the nation, in modern terms).

There have been fewer than 40 federal prosecutions of treason in this nation’s history, with only a handful achieving a conviction. The few times that rebellion or insurrection was tried as treason, the result was either pardon (in the case of the Whiskey Rebellion) or acquittal (as in those who resisted the Jefferson Embargo Acts and the Fugitive Slave Law), with the notable exceptions of Thomas Dorr and John Brown. Even the leaders of the Confederacy were never tried for treason.

Among the few actually convicted of treason were Tokyo Rose (Iva D’Aquino, paroled just over six jears into a ten year sentence and later pardoned by Gerald Ford), Governor Thomas Dorr (who led the Dorr Rebellion against Rhode Island, but was released from a life sentence of hard labor after only a year), Hans Max Haupt (convicted of helping his son aid the Nazis and sentenced to life), Axis Sally (Mildred Gillars, who propagandized for the Germans and was paroled from a sentence of 10-30 years upon her first request), Martin Monti (a US pilot who defected to the Nazis with his P-38 Lighting and eventually convicted and paroled), abolitionist John Brown (who led violent insurrections and murdered at least five people in the cause of abolition of slavery, and who was eventually hanged for treason against the state of Virginia), and dual US/Japanese citizen Tomoya Kawakita (convicted of treason for torturing US POWs in Japan during his employ with Oeyama Nickel, for which he was originally sentenced to death – the sentence was commuted to life by Eisenhower and he was released and deported to Japan by Kennedy).

So conviction for treason has been extraordinarily rare in this country and has never been successfully prosecuted outside of a declared war except in the case of armed insurrection.

In the past, it has not been uncommon for the occasional commentator to opine that this or that person is a traitor or is guilty of treason. Lately, however, it has become far more common for folks to actually discuss the desire to prosecute one or another person for the crime of treason, and to do so with a straight face. Such individuals clearly do not understand the history of the prosecution of treason in this country or the extremely limited list of actions which are considered to be worthy of prosecution as treason.
As regards derilection of duty or breach of oath, I believe that there are probably a number of good arguments against this President and most of the last dozen or so, as well as endless numbers of Senators, Congressmen and other officials both elected and appointed. However, as demonstrated above, the case for treason as narrowly defined in US jurisprudence, the case is extraordinarily poor.

First off, we cannot make the case for these people making war against the US unless and until armed forces are sent against the civil authority of one or more states or political divisions therein. Until this government actually uses force of arms against us, we must look elsewhere for prosecutable treason.

So what about aid and comfort to the enemy? Well, while you and I may consider one or another of the countries whose peasants are flooding our own country to be enemy states, they are not declared enemies. As a matter of fact, nations such as Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador are considered allies and trading partners by this nation's government. So while one may well make the case that our politicians are engaged in the aid and comfort of those foreign states, often to the detriment of our own, the case falls flat because there is no declared enemy in the equation.

Yes, I realize that it sucks that what you and I may consider to be blatant treason cannot be so defined within the context of the laws governing treason, but the law is what it is.

If you don't like this particular provision of the Constitution, then I suggest that you set about trying to garner support for an amendment so that it can be changed. Personally, I don't think that I want the definition of treason to be any broader because it is more likely that the government would use it as a weapon against the concerned citizenry than that the citizenry could use it against corrupt government.