On May 7, Chief Justice John Roberts, in a not-so-veiled swipe at Donald Trump, stressed that the U.S. Constitution’s “main innovation” was the creation of an independent judiciary.

Our Constitutional system of government only works, he emphasized, if power shared between the three branches of federal government remains equal, and it is up to the Courts, not Trump, to decide what makes it so.

Roberts’ remarks followed the Trump regime’s astonishing flurry of attacks against the judiciary. On April 25, AG Pam Bondi called judges who refused to legitimize Trump’s power grabs “deranged,” then, with characteristic bombast, warned, “We will come after you and we will prosecute you.” That same day, Kash Patel had a Wisconsin Judge perp walked out of the courthouse in handcuffs. Three days later, Karoline Leavitt intimated that Trump could have Supreme Court justices arrested.

Roberts can well see that Trump’s henchmen are attacking the judiciary as the last line of defense against an authoritarian coup. Perhaps more difficult to see is that Trump’s attacks, in concert with his deliberate weakening of national security, are acts of sabotage. He is wrecking our constitutional form of government in an effort to replace it with something else. From this perspective, it is difficult to see Trump’s strategy as anything short of treasonous.

A president who projects his own criminality

Throughout his first 100 days, Trump engaged in wild and unprecedented acts of retribution against the rule of law and anyone who tried to make him answer to it. Last week, describing Trump’s EO to punish and extort lawyers who represented his political adversaries, a federal judge noted that, “No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue” in an attempt to march the country toward totalitarianism.

Aside from metastasizing power grabs, the most common thread running through Trump’s EOs — announced through a series of White House propaganda papers issued every other day — is Trump’s projection of his own crimes and misdeeds onto others. Anyone trying to map Trump’s elusive plan of governance need only look at what he purports to attack in his orders, because those are his true intentions. On his first day in office, for example, Trump issued an EO “Ending the weaponization of the federal government,” dialing weaponization of government power to levels not seen since King George.

On brand, Trump accuses others of treason

Trump has issued a slew of incongruent declarations and EOs too wide-ranging to list. To squelch dissent and criticism of those orders, he describes critics as “enemies of the state,” and accuses them of treason.

Trump’s presidential memorandum describes as “treasonous” any disclosure of sensitive information for the purposes of undermining foreign policy, national security, or government effectiveness. “Undermining,” of course, is whatever Trump says it is, which means any criticism can be deemed “treason.” While his left hand attempts to silence critics Putin style, Trump’s right hand is actively sabotaging national security, by:

• Exposing secrets of the US intelligence community on easily hacked commercial messaging apps;
• Making threats to NATO that serve and align with Russian interests;
• Purging career civil servants and replacing them with incompetent loyalists to destabilize the government;
• Pausing or ceasing federal enforcement of foreign bribery laws;
• Trashing security alliances by threatening allies; and
• Ending the Justice Department’s task force on covert foreign influence even as threats from foreign influence are rising.

Step by step, agency by federal agency, Trump is systematically disabling institutions that could interfere with his acquisition of domestic power, while at the same time inviting a foreign attack. 

Treason

Treason, a federal crime, is defined by the Constitution as “levying war” against the nation. It also includes “giving aid and comfort” to our enemies. Trump credibly has been accused of treason for aiding Russia’s interests over our own. In 2023, his actions in fomenting the Jan. 6 attack were also deemed treasonous when the Colorado Supreme Court found that he engaged in insurrection, a decision with roots in the Constitution’s definition of treason. 

Treason is defined as the betrayal of one’s country; it is hard to imagine a deeper betrayal than an American president questioning the basic rule of the U.S. Constitution while he actively subverts it.

I have no illusion that the spineless Republican Party is prepared to rein Trump in at this juncture; as one Senator admitted, they are all too “frightened” of retribution to do their Constitutional duty. So for now, thanks to a partisan Supreme Court and cowardly federal legislators, we are a nation held hostage by a lawless president of questionable sanity and his power-drunk sycophants.

As America wonders how bad it will get before he is stopped, at least we are learning a shared civics lesson: we are learning why the Constitution prohibits traitors from being elected into federal office.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.