Donald Trump has accused Ukraine whistleblower of treason, but who was the last person to be formally charged with treason in the US?
Accusing political opponents of treason is a common phenomenon in American politics nowadays. Whether it is President Donald Trump or his opponents, “treason” has become a widely used term even if the act in question is not always qualifiable under it.
On September 26, President Trump uttered the term yet one more time while reacting strongly to the whistleblower complaint against him alleging that he tried to influence the government of Ukraine to investigate his electoral rival Joe Biden to derail his campaign ahead of the 2020 presidential elections. Raging about the complaint at a fundraising event, Trump compared the whistleblower’s sources to spies and suggested that they committed “treason."
The complaint came under the scanner a day after the transcript of Trump’s talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky was declassified. The twin documents strengthened the opponents’ charges that Trump misused his powers for political gains and that his administration tried to conceal the evidence, only to invite the president’s wrath.
“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistle-blower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said at a private breakfast for staff from the United States Mission in New York, Los Angeles Times reported.
Trump even suggested something sinister while saying how spies should be handled. He said: “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now,” according to the report.
According to another report in the New York Times, the president’s remark stunned the audience that included diplomats. Last year, when some Democrats accused that Donald Trump Junior’s secret meeting with a Russian lawyer along with some other key members of Team Trump during the president’s 2016 campaign smelled of treason, Trump said it was nothing but a “witch hunt” by the opponents. He mocked the Democrats for calling the alleged collusion as “treason” saying they didn’t know the actual meaning of the word. “That’s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving atom bomb, OK?” he said.
Rosenbergs electrocuted for espionage in 1953
This brings us to the question: When did the US last see a case of treason? Were it the Rosenbergs who were executed in June 1953 for passing on America’s atomic secrets to the then Soviet Union at the Sing Sing Prison in New York by means of electrocution?
Technically, the Rosenberg couple was not convicted of treason, an act punishable by death, but charged with espionage conspiracy under Title 50, US Code, Section 34 - which is better known as Espionage Act. Both of them refused to admit any wrongdoing and claimed that they were innocent till the last moment. As per the American Constitution, a person can be convicted of treason either by confession in an open court or if he/she committed an overt act of treason that had at least two witnesses. The concerned provision in the constitution - Article 3, Section 3 - also defined treason against the US to be consisting of levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. These provisions did not qualify the Rosenbergs’ case as one of treason and were meant to safeguard a person from Trump’s favorite term today: “witch hunt." Rosenbergs, nevertheless were the last people in the US till now who were involved in a treason-like trial and convicted and executed (to give another example, in 1862, William Bruce Mumford was hanged for having torn the American flag).
The history of the US is replete with tales of treachery but it was not always that they found a logical conclusion as an act of treason. In fact, the US hasn't seen too many cases of treason charges in history. Poet Ezra Pound, for example, carried out anti-Semitic propaganda during World War II before getting indicted for treason in 1943. But he was considered mentally unfit to stand trial by then and ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Tomoya Kawakita conviction
Tomoya Kawakita, an American-Japanese citizen, was technically the last person from the country to be convicted of treason in the late 1940s after World War II got over. He was mainly charged for his actions committed against the US in Japan, like mistreating American prisoners of war. He was initially handed a death sentence but it was later commuted to life. But, Kawakita is no more the last one now as in 2006, the Californian-born spokesperson for terrorist group Al Qaeda Adam Yahiye Gadahn was charged with the same offense. He was convicted on grounds of giving material support to Al Qaeda. The man, however, was killed in a CIA drone attack in Pakistan in January 2015. Another American-born Al Qaeda extremist Anwar Al-Awlaki was never formally charged of treason and died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.