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Question for those of the lawyer persuasion: is this traitorous?

Cardinal

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In another thread, somebody said, "If I were splitting the state, I'd damn well take the Russian money. What ever it takes to delete southern California would be a good thing." I told him such an act would be traitorous. I can already look up "traitor" or "treason" using wikipedia or a dictionary myself, so I'm interested in a legal-nerd take on the subject.

1)If that poster were to follow through on an attempt to break up the United States in return for Russian money, would that be traitorous?
2)Would it be treasonous?
3)Is there any legal difference between a traitor or treason, or is a traitor simply the person who engages in treason?
4)I also made the claim that if he were applying for a security clearance, a job at the FBI or in Intelligence that he could expect his application to be disqualified as a result of that statement. Was my claim accurate?
 
The legal definition of treason, codifying the Constitutional mandate (Art. III Sec. 3) that it can consist only of this:

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.
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https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381

There's no legal classification of "traitor" or "traitorous."

Very few people have ever been convicted of treason, and almost no one has been convicted of treason outside of activities during wartime, nor would anyone likely be.

Eligibility for security clearances are defined by agency rules, not federal law, and often on a case-by-case basis, so it depends, but one would hope.
 
Harshaw said:
The legal definition of treason, codifying the Constitutional mandate (Art. III Sec. 3) that it can consist only of this:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381

There's no legal classification of "traitor" or "traitorous."

Very few people have ever been convicted of treason, and almost no one has been convicted of treason outside of activities during wartime, nor would anyone likely be.

Eligibility for security clearances are defined by agency rules, not federal law, and often on a case-by-case basis, so it depends, but one would hope.
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Yep...outside of wartime it's not really a thing.
 
Interesting. Indeed, there hasn't been a single conviction for treason since WWII. Plenty of people convicted for espionage during, say, the cold war (an example of a situation not involving actual war which would involve the legal definition of treason), but not for treason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_convicted_of_treason#United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_people_convicted_of_spying_for_the_Soviet_Union

Just spitballing here, but perhaps "Conspiracy against the United States would be more applicable.

So let’s be clear: “Conspiracy against the United States” isn’t what it sounds like. It has nothing to do with foreign actors influencing an election. It certainly has nothing to do with treason, which would require the US and Russia to be actively at war with each other.

The statute, rather, is an extension of the ordinary crime of conspiracy. Basically, the charge accuses Manafort and Gates of conspiring to commit offenses against, and to defraud the US government. For them, those offenses involve false statements or misrepresentations of financial and lobbying activity.

“The statute defines separate and additional offenses if two or more people enter into an illegal agreement with the intent to engage in criminal conduct, and commit an overt act in furtherance of that agreement,” Lisa Kern Griffin, a professor of law at Duke who specializes in criminal law and criminal procedure, says.
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...ged-with-conspiracy-against-the-united-states
 
If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 701; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
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https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371

Not a lawyer myself (obviously) but this does sound relevant.
 
It's actually conspiracy to commit offense or defraud the United States, 18 U.S.C. 371.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371

It would require the naming of an actual offense that the conspiracy exists to commit. Conspiracy alone is not an offense that exists in and of itself. It has to be a conspiracy to commit a codified crime.
 
That's true.

My mind is rebelling against the notion that it's legal to take money from a hostile foreign government for the purpose of breaking up the Union.
 
Seditious conspiracy:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
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Though that requires two people domestically.

Advocating overthrow of government:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385

Though doing it through violence is an element, or recruiting other people.

Probably the closest is rebellion or insurrection:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2383

But that requires taking actual steps.

Conspiracy to do any of these things may stick. You don't have to have followed through on the offense to be guilty of conspiracy -- though you can escape a conspiracy charge if you unambiguously repudiate any involvement before the offense is committed.
 
Sedition sounds iffy since it deals specifically with the overthrow of the United States government.

Rebellion or insurrection looks like it requires violence.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/i/insurrection/

I put this to quora because this is too specific a question for google and none of my friends are Federal prosecutors.


Me: "Would it be against the law to take money from a hostile foreign government that we're not at war with for the purpose of dissolving the United States? If so, which law would that be, exactly?"

Answer (Scott Korba, MBA, Academic Fellow, from University of North Carolina): "Not really. Just as long as the efforts to 'dissolve' weren't illegal and no other crimes were committed. For example, you could work as an American employee for the Russian embassy, start an Anarchist's Basketball League or ask RT for speaking fees and lobbyist contracts, disclose that you're an agent of a foreign govt and ask Congressmen to sponsor an amendment to the Constitution allowing states to exit the Union."

Me: "So to be clear, you would need to identify as an agent for a foreign power and/or be transparent about the fees you were taking from that foreign power?"

Answer: "If you were operating as a lobbyist, running a PAC, etc that didn't cross the line into actual subversion, espionage and easily researched/avoidable (illegal) activities, you have to do what I'll call a “Flynn-Manafort disclosure”.

Russia still has US employees here, as does China. Advocating dissolving the US peacefully - as might appear on a California initiative to submit a Constitutional amendment allowing secession - is not necessarily illegal or something needing to be covert. There's plenty of divide the nation voices already and strong protections for free speech. The foreign power creates disclosure issues in many scenarios though."


If Mr. Korba is correct, then that would imply that our DP friend would need to register as a foreign agent in order to lobby for the breakup of various states from the Union, else he could be "fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/951

However, if we were to take the DP poster literally when he says "...whatever it takes..." then that would open him up to a good deal of criminal liability since we could then include duch concepts as sedition, rebellion and insurrection.
 
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Well, yeah; all of that depends on what he does. I seriously doubt just taking money would be illegal. It could be evidence of a conspiracy, but they'd have to agree to commit one of the actual offenses such as the listed ones.
 
The scope of activities one would need to register for is broader than I imagined:

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is a United States law passed in 1938 requiring that agents representing the interests of foreign powers in a "political or quasi-political capacity" disclose their relationship with the foreign government and information about related activities and finances. The purpose is to facilitate "evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons." The law is administered by the FARA Registration Unit of the Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) of the United States Department of Justice.[1] As of 2007 the Justice Department reported there were approximately 1,700 lobbyists representing more than 100 countries before Congress, the White House and the federal government.[2]
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Scope

The Act requires periodic disclosure of all activities and finances by:

1)people and organizations that are under control of
a) foreign government, or
b)of organizations or of persons outside of the United States ("foreign principal"),
2)if they act "at the order, request, or under the direction or control" (i.e. as "agents")
a)of this principal or
b)of persons who are "controlled or subsidized in major part" by this principal.[6]

Organizations under such foreign control can include political agents, public relations counsel, publicity agents, information-service employees, political consultants, fundraisers or those who represent the foreign power before any agency or official of the United States government.[6]

The law does not include news or press services not owned by the foreign principal.[6] It also provides explicit exemptions for organizations engaged in "religious, scholastic, academic, or scientific pursuits or of the fine arts," as well as for those "not serving predominantly a foreign interest."[11]

Examples of organizations lobbying on behalf of foreign governments are DMP International,[12] Flynn Intel Group,[13][14] DLA Piper, Dickens & Madson Canada, Invest Northern Ireland, Japan National Tourism Organization and Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions,[15] Ketchum Inc.[16]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act#Scope

If he doesn't want to register as a foreign agent then the DP poster should be fine so long as he restricts his activities to blogging, posting on social media, writing letters to the newspaper and giving lectures at schools and churches. That may be somewhat lackluster though if he had originally imagined doing "whatever it takes" but doesn't want to end up fined or in prison.
 
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