"Treason" enters the political vocabulary

It's not often that the word "treason" is spoken in U.S. political conversations, but it happened yesterday in response to President Donald Trump's boot-licking press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump's admiration and adulation of Putin is well known. He thinks the guy is a great leader and a swell friend. Others, including the intelligence agencies and most public officials of western democracies, think he's a corrupt, murderous, empire-seeking, authoritarian, violent dictator focused on destroying western democracy and re-establishing the old Soviet empire, for which he used to toil.

Asked point-blank whether he believed the U.S. intelligence agencies, which all agree that Russia, at the direction of Putin, attempted to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Trump chose his best buddy Putin, who assured him the U.S. intelligence community was mistaken. It's his word against theirs. Who you gonna trust?

That exchange, and Putin's admission that, yes, he wanted Trump to win the 2016 presidential election, led some people to use the T-word: Treason. Putin said he was pulling for Trump because he wanted a better relationship with Russia. That ignores the widely publicized effort of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "reset" relations with Russia to a more peaceful, cooperative relationship. Putin's government immediately rejected that overture. Both 2016 candidates claimed to want better relations with Russia.

Is "treason" or "treasonous" justified? The 115th chapter of 18 U.S. Code defines treason this way: "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States." It would be up to a court (or Congress, in the case of impeachment) to decide whether Trump's obsequious cozying up to Putin amounts to adhering to enemies or giving aid and comfort to enemies. (Note that actress Jane Fonda was accused of treason during the Vietnam War for her siding with North Vietnam, but nothing ever came of it.)

In Trump's case, the issue is not so much whether he was guilty of treason but whether anything can be done about it. The candidate who bragged that he could shoot someone dead in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support will be difficult to impeach or convict of treason. Most pollsters find Trump has a pretty solid base of 40% or so unflinching supporters. An impeachment trial would send that base into hysterics.

Here's a worst-case scenario of how an impeachment effort might unfold: An impeachment resolution is introduced in the House of Representatives. Committee hearings reveal numerous lies told by the president, numerous contacts between his campaign and Russians, money laundering schemes involving Trump and Russian oligarchs, secret deals in Syria and Crimea to leave Russia in charge, continued Russian efforts, through Trump, to break up NATO and the European Union. The committee passes the impeachment resolution, based on the president giving "aid and comfort" to enemies, but it fails on the House floor as Trump goes on tirade after tirade complaining about conspiracies against him, the "deep state" influence, the FBI, CIA and other institutions that have accused him of wrongdoing.

The mostly party-line vote in the House ends impeachment proceedings, but Trump is not through. Most members of Congress are afraid of crossing him. In retaliation for the impeachment hearings, he lends his heavy weight and unsettled anger to the effort for a Constitutional Convention. Such a convention (never held since the Constitution was adopted in 1787) has been a darling of right-wing groups for years, with an aim of banning abortion, requiring a balanced federal budget, or limiting federal powers.

The Constitution (Article V) provides that two-thirds of the states may call for a convention to adopt amendments. There is no limit on the topic of amendments, which could, conceivably, rewrite the entire Constitution. Such a convention could, for example, abolish Congress, eliminate federal courts, including the Supreme Court, and give the president absolute power to pass laws, interpret laws, enforce laws and eliminate elections at the president's will.

Treason is a "high crime," but its invocation will be meaningless unless a substantial majority of Americans agree that the offense has been committed.