Robert Mueller just opened the door for treason charges against Donald Trump and his people

| 6:02 pm EST February 16, 2018
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The moment came and went in an instant. It’ll get lost in the shock and awe of today’s announcement that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained grand jury indictments against thirteen Russian nationals for conspiring to rig the election in Donald Trump’s favor. But in the end, we may look back at two words from today as having been key in all this: cyber war. Why does that matter? Because in legal terms, they translate to another word: treason.

Today’s grand jury indictments against the Russians establish that Russian hacking was in fact an act of cyber war, according to an on-air MSNBC legal expert. Treason charges require that an act of war be involved. Up to now, the federal government has not attempted to clearly define what counts as an act of cyber war, meaning there’s little legal precedent on the matter. Today firmly establishes that the Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential election was indeed an act of cyber war against the United States.

This means that people involved with the Trump-Russia scandal can be charged with treason. We’ve already seen Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates be charged with Conspiracy Against the United States, the peacetime equivalent to treason charges. But if it can be demonstrated that Manafort and Gates knew the Russians were hacking the election even as they were committing their own related crimes with Russia, they can be charged with conspiracy to commit treason.

More importantly, if it can be demonstrated that Donald Trump knew about the Russian election hacking even as he played his own role in the Trump-Russia conspiracy, this means that Trump can be charged with treason. Today was yet another reminder that Robert Mueller has always been several steps ahead of us, and that we don’t know for sure what he’ll do next, or even what else he’s secretly done. But he does everything for a reason. Today he established that Trump-Russia was an act of cyber war against the United States. There’s only one reason for him to have done that.