“Conspiracy against the United States”
We now know enough about the whistleblower report against Donald Trump to know that he committed what the average person would consider to be treasonous. What we don’t know is whether Trump’s behavior in this instance, including reportedly making an inappropriate promise to a foreign leader, meets the legal definition of a crime. Even as more information continues to leak out, a distinct yet similar Trump scandal has very much ventured into criminal territory.
Donald Trump has been caught doing what we’ve all suspected for awhile: he essentially told the new president of Ukraine that he would get favorable treatment from the Trump regime if he helped promote a phony Joe Biden scandal that had been cooked up by Rudy Giuliani. This is according to a new report from major British newspaper The Independent. So where does this get us?
Based on this report, Donald Trump actively tried to conspire with a foreign leader to sabotage the U.S. election process. There’s a legal name for this: conspiracy against the United States. That crime most often consists of conspiring to cheat the U.S. government out of money. But as long ago laid down by the Supreme Court nearly a century ago, it can also be applied to those who are conspiring to interfere with the normal government function of the United States. Conspiring to sabotage an election would seemingly qualify.
We’ve already seen Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort plead guilty on charges of conspiracy against the United States, so this is very much a criminal charge that’s still in play in the modern era. Trump has already committed too many felonies to count since taking office. Now we can add one of the ugliest crimes on the books. Trump is facing a nearly endless list of criminal charges once he’s no longer in office.
