DO GOVERNMENT POLICIES AIMED AT WEAKENING THE SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES AND DISARMING THE CITIZENRY RISE TO THE LEVEL OF “TREASON?”

MULTI-SERIES ON THE ISSUE OF POSSIBLE TREASON AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT

PART THREE

As we stated in our first article posted on Ammoland, “Does the Biden Administration’s Assault on the Second Amendment Amount to TREASON,” one must be circumspect in application of a TREASON hypothesis. For, if we are careless in our understanding of the import of it, we risk diluting its significance, mistakenly attaching the duo labels of ‘TREASON’ and ‘TRAITOR’ to those who never warranted it but happened nonetheless to be branded with it and then crucified for it.

And we know whereof we speak: Recall the branding of “TRAITOR” to our 45^th President, Donald Trump, and recall the crucifying of him and those closest to him: Those individuals who assisted him in his run for U.S. Presidency; Cabinet-level Officers; close friends and associates; even members of his own immediate family. All of them have been incessantly, rapaciously, relentlessly, viciously attacked and hounded because of service to, or mere association with, the purported traitor, Donald Trump.

Trump was called a TRAITOR because of his alleged collusion with Russia—false as it turned out; a complete fabrication, and a pretext to get him out of Office; a well-orchestrated sham for his impeachment. The Neo-Marxist Democrats spent our precious tax dollars to launch an extensive investigation of Trump in launching and conducting it, hoping to find evidence of it; but found nothing, nothing at all for their trouble. 

A backup plan to destroy the Trump Presidency was then initiated as a pretext to impeach Trump, grounded on the flimsiest of notions: a telephone call to the President of Ukraine. Trump’s call to Volodymyr Zelensky was perfectly lawful, but it was nonetheless blown up to monstrous proportions by the legacy Press in league with the Neo-Marxist Democrats, led by the notorious, power-mad Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. But that time-consuming, wasteful, taxpayer-funded enterprise, too, fell flat.

But what was Donald Trump’s worst “crime” for which he was presumed by the Neo-Marxist Internationalists and mega-billionaire Neoliberal Globalists to be a traitor—calling him an autocrat and a threat to democracy and constantly blaring out that he damaged democracy? It was this: support for the right of the people to keep and bear arms. 

The Heritage Society, on September 9, 2020, reproducing an article by the Federalist Society, said this about Trump’s record on the Second Amendment after four years in Office:

“In his most recent State of the Union address President Donald Trump promised the American people, “So long as I am President, I will always protect your Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.” This was certainly a welcome statement from any elected official, particularly from the nation’s chief executive during a time of unprecedented attacks on the Second Amendment by many local, state, and federal lawmakers.

But how has the President’s first term stacked up against his grand promise? When we step back from the hype and honestly assess Trump’s performance with respect to the Second Amendment, what do we actually find? Fortunately, when we take a hard look at the bad and the good in three important categories—the President’s rhetoric, policy, and judicial nominations—it is evident that Trump has gotten the Second Amendment right more often than he has gotten it wrong.

Actions speak louder than words, particularly when it comes to national policy. But words, especially when they come from a President, are important. A President’s policy agenda often carries great weight with Congress, signaling to federal lawmakers what types of bills they might pursue without risk of a Presidential veto. President Trump’s Second Amendment rhetoric has occasionally been lacking. Yet more often than not, and principally when it has been most important, the President has said the right things.

As with Trump’s rhetoric, most of his administration’s policy efforts have been consistent with his promise to protect the right to keep and bear arms.

Early in his first term, federal agencies reversed course on several Obama-era policies that would have jeopardized Americans’ Second Amendment rights. For example, under the Trump Administration, the State Department settled a previous Obama Administration lawsuit with Defense Distributed and permitted that organization to publish its blueprints for 3D-printed guns online. This was a win for both the First and Second Amendments. Americans clearly have a right to discuss and disseminate information about how to conduct lawful activities—including how to smith a firearm for personal use.

Similarly, the Trump Administration rescinded (before it could go into effect) an Obama-era regulation that would have effectively stripped the Second Amendment rights of any person who checked a particular box on a form submitted to the Social Security Administration. Normally, before the government can prohibit a person from keeping and bearing arms, it must first prove at some sort of hearing or trial that the person is a criminal, seriously mentally ill, or otherwise poses a serious danger to the community. The new Obama rule, however, would have summarily declared tens of thousands of Americans ineligible to exercise a constitutional right without first providing them any semblance of due process.

In March 2018, the President signed into law the Fix NICS Act, an effort to strengthen enforcement of existing federal gun laws without expanding them or imposing new restrictions on law-abiding citizens. The federal background check system has long suffered from the failures of states and federal agencies to submit the criminal and mental health records of individuals disqualified from gun ownership. The Act increased federal oversight over federal agencies responsible for submitting records, increased funding to assist states in reporting disqualifying records, and prioritized funding for those states that established plans for increased reporting.

Most recently, the Trump Administration lived up to its Second Amendment promise by fighting back against state closures of gun stores, shooting ranges, and government permitting offices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several states and counties ordered these places shut down or refused to exempt them as “essential businesses.” In some places, this meant that residents who did not already own guns were de facto prohibited from exercising their constitutional rights for the duration of the epidemic.

While the federal government could not override state definitions of “essential business,” the Trump Administration issued federal guidelines that deemed gun stores and gun ranges, as well as firearms and ammunitions manufacturers, as “critical components of the nation’s workforce.” The guidelines recommended that states allow those businesses to continue operating during the pandemic.

Officially, this federal guidance applied only to the enforcement of federal laws or regulations. Nonetheless, it helped strengthen legal challenges to state closures and suggested that the federal government might intervene in such lawsuits on behalf of gun owners. As a result, several jurisdictions—including New Jersey and Los Angeles County—walked back their original orders to close gun stores.

Despite all of these actions, President Trump’s first term saw one clear Second Amendment policy failure. Under his administration, the ATF arbitrarily reinterpreted the federal definition of “machine gun” to include bump stocks, banning their civilian possession and requiring owners to turn in these devices. It did so even though bump stocks do not modify the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, and the agency has no authority to change the meaning of federal law.

Regardless of one’s perspective on the desirability, constitutionality, or practical effectiveness of banning the civilian possession of bump stocks, the way in which the ATF went about doing so is troubling. When a largely unaccountable federal agency feels empowered to effectively rewrite statutes in order to create new gun control laws, it poses a danger to the entire Constitution, including the Second Amendment.

Thus far, the President’s most enduring legacy with respect to the Second Amendment will likely be his federal judicial nominees, who are primed to stand as a bulwark against future attempts by lawmakers to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. While not all of these nominees have had the opportunity to rule on Second Amendment cases, several high-profile picks have shown they are willing to come to the Amendment’s defense. Most importantly, by nominating judges who properly understand the role of the judiciary—to say what the law is, and not what they wish it to be—Trump has helped decrease the risk that federal judges will undermine the right to keep and bear arms based on their own policy preferences.

Many Second Amendment advocates were disappointed when the Supreme Court this term continued its decade-long refusal to take up a meaningful challenge to restrictive gun control laws. The Supreme Court’s reluctance to do its duty with respect to the Second Amendment has been despite—not because of—Trump’s two nominees to the nation’s highest bench. Both Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh have signed on to dissents from denials of certiorari in important Second Amendment cases, expressing their disappointment that the Court has so long declined to adequately protect this right from clear infringement. Moreover, in one of these dissents from denial, Justice Gorsuch did not refrain from attacking the Trump Administration itself over its agency-propagated bump stock ban.

The President’s two Supreme Court picks are far from his only judicial nominees to prove themselves stalwarts of Second Amendment jurisprudence. Several of Trump’s lower court picks have made waves for their staunch defenses of the right to keep and bear arms.

For example, Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a strong dissent in a case where two of her colleagues voted to uphold a Wisconsin law imposing a lifetime ban on gun ownership for non-violent felons. The plaintiff in the case was hardly a violent menace. He had been convicted of a single count of federal mail fraud after submitting sham requests for Medicare to reimburse non-compliant shoe inserts. Nevertheless, under the interaction of federal and Wisconsin law, this rendered the plaintiff ineligible to ever again exercise his Second Amendment rights.

Judge Barrett analyzed the case through an originalist lens, noting that “Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to keep and bear arms simply because of their status as felons . . . but only when they judged that doing so was necessary to protect the public safety.”

Similarly, Judge Stephanos Bibas of the Third Circuit wrote a scathing dissent when the other two judges on his panel upheld New Jersey’s ban on so-called “high-capacity magazines” as “reasonably fit[ting] the State’s interest in promoting public safety.” Judge Bibas excoriated the majority for failing to take the Second Amendment and Supreme Court precedent seriously. He reminded them that their job as judges is not to “water [the Second Amendment] down and balance it away based on our own sense of wise policy.” Rather, “the Framers made that choice for us. We must treat the Second Amendment the same as the rest of the Bill of Rights.”

Finally, four Trump-nominated Fifth Circuit judges—James Ho, Don Willett, Kyle Duncan, and Kurt Engelhardt—joined together in a notable opinion dissenting from the Circuit’s denial of a request to rehear an important Second Amendment case before all of the Circuit judges. This case involved the federal prohibition on interstate handgun sales, requiring all handgun sales to out-of-state buyers first be transferred to an in-state dealer.

As the dissenting judges noted, this law effectively imposes an additional waiting period and tax on certain handgun buyers, without really furthering a compelling government interest. Moreover, as they wrote, the Government “turns the Second Amendment on its head” by arguing that “to protect against the violations of the few, we must burden the constitutional rights of the many.” Importantly, “[o]ur Founders crafted a Constitution to promote the liberty of the individual, not the convenience of the Government.”

In his first term, President Trump largely lived up to his promise to protect Americans’ Second Amendment rights. There have been a few missteps along the way, but on the whole, the Trump Administration has kept its word when it comes to our right to keep and bear arms.”

You can read the entire article, a commentary on firearms, titled, “Second Amendment Grade for President Trump So Far,” by Amy Swearer, Legal Fellow at the Messe Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, at the Heritage Foundation website. 

But the words, “So Far,” in the above commentary on Trump’s Presidency must, unfortunately, read, “At the End Of” Trump’s Presidency. There would be no Second Term in Office. The unlawful machinations of Neo-Marxist Internationalists and Mega-Billionaire Neoliberal Globalists would see to that.

Trump is now out-of-office. And it matters little at this point whether the failure to secure losing a Second Term was due to a fair and disappointing election outcome, or chicanery of the highest order, even as the latter inference is the sound one to draw from the evidence.

Now, as Trump’s legacy is being shredded by the Neo-Marxists and Neoliberal Globalists, Americans face a more pressing and vexing problem: protecting the U.S. Constitution from being shredded and preserving a free Republic that is being systematically dismantled.

Americans now have a National embarrassment in the Oval Office: a corrupt, placid, flaccid, and senile shell of a man, Joseph Biden.

Economically, Militarily, Geopolitically, Constitutionally, Culturally—this Country faces disasters on multiple fronts. There are three possible albeit mutually exclusive explanations for this. Americans must infer that this sad situation is due to:

ONE, A SET OF UNFORTUNATE, PUZZLING CIRCUMSTANCES TO BE ATTRIBUTED TO CONDITIONS NO ONE COULD REASONABLY FORESEE, THAT PROPER ALLOWANCES AND CONTINGENCY PLANS COULD HAVE BEEN MADE APROPOS OF POLICY POLICIES EXECUTED; OR TO

TWO, A CASCADING SERIES OF MISSTEPS TO BE ATTRIBUTED TO DELIBERATE INEPT AND INCOMPETENT POLICY CHOICES THAT BIDEN’S POLICY PLANNERS CONCEIVED, FORMULATED, AND EXECUTED, EVEN IF THE RESULTS OF THESE POLICY CHOICES WERE UNANTICIPATED AND UNWANTED; OR TO

THREE, A CAREFULLY DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED SET OF POLICY CHOICES, THE OUTCOMES OF WHICH HAVE BEEN CONTEMPLATED, MODELLED, ANTICIPATED, HOPED FOR: THE DESTRUCTION OF A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, OF A POWERFUL INDEPENDENT NATION-STATE, AND OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Any one of these three explanatory scenarios mark the impending doom of the United States engulfing, convulsing, and ripping the Nation apart, and that of the rest of the world. But, only the third explanation bespeaks possible TREASON. That explanation also seems the most plausible to us and, as well, the most disturbing for what it entails: the INTENTION TO PROMOTE OR CAUSE A SPECIFIC OUTCOME.

Americans are witness to it all: a meticulously contrived, calculated, calibrated, and executed series of scenes and acts unfolding as if from a monstrous Shakespearian Play, played out on the Nation and the world as STAGE.

Be this play comedy or tragedy depends on one’s perspective. But it is a play meticulously preplanned and prearranged; carefully rehearsed and choreographed and assiduously implemented in sequential order.

It began with a flurry of executive orders and actions designed to unravel the stability Trump had brought both to and for our Nation and its people, and, by extension, to and for the rest of the world. And it is proceeding apace through deliberate, brazen, scurrilous evasion of and de facto abrogation of our Constitution and federal law.

Trump had redressed a multitude of disasters deliberately inflicted on our Country by Bush and Obama. Such disasters were to continue under Clinton, consistent with the orders of a cabal of shadowy puppet masters. For nothing happens but for the “say so” of these puppet masters, whom Trump refused to answer to and obsequiously obey. And so, they had to push him out of the way. And with a last “Hail Mary Pass” they banked it all on the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. With a dementia plagued President Joe Biden and the insufferable Kamala Harris safely ensconced in the Executive Branch of Government, all the wrongs of Bush and Obama that Trump had redressed, and all the safeguards Trump had instituted to protect the Nation and its people, were thenceforth cast aside.

Once again, Americans witness a Nation and world returning to a state of volatility and chaos, and all of it deliberately created, deliberately ordained.

The goal of this elaborate, extravagant, carefully orchestrated policy agenda now unfolding in the Nation, is to dismantle the underpinnings of the most powerful, successful, and prosperous Nation on Earth.

This involves:

• DISSOLVING THE CAREFULLY CONSTRUCTED DEMARCATION OF POWERS AND AUTHORITY EXISTENT BETWEEN THE THREE BRANCHES;

• UNDERCUTTING THE DOCTRINE OF FEDERALISM THAT HAS TO THIS POINT OPERATED EFFICIENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY TO CARVE OUT AND DELINEATE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S AUTHORITY AND THAT OF THE STATES; AND,

• UNDERMINING THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, IN WHOM RESTS ULTIMATE SOVEREIGNTY OVER GOVERNMENT, BOTH FEDERAL AND STATE, AS GOVERNMENT OF ANY KIND IS ULTIMATELY AND ANSWERABLE TO THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY.

As for the last,

the attack on the right of the people to keep and bear arms as the final fail-safe mechanism to prevent tyranny is the most disturbing and alarming. For only by force of arms can the American people truthfully be able to successfully repel attempts to dismantle a free Republic and thrust America into a new Governmental construct: a transnational world order scheme that does not merely diminish the citizen’s sacrosanct and inviolate right of selfhood and personal autonomy but destroys that supreme unalienable Right.

Through usurpation of the sovereign authority of the American people over Government and through the destruction of the United States as a free Constitutional Republic, preeminent military and economic world power, and predominant stabilizing influence in the world, a tornado is spawned. That tornado is destined to wipe away the fabric of western civilization—the Nation-State. In its place, comes the inchoate inkling of an “INTERNATIONAL WORLD ORDER,”—a harbinger of pain, misery, penury, and grief to the Nation and the rest of the world.

Powerful functionaries of Government both here and abroad have intimated this new world order for some time.

The late U.S. Senator John McCain mentioned this back in 2017 (see article in the Independent Sentinel) and that illustrious statesman and regular Bilderberg Group attendee, Henry Kissinger worked tirelessly for its creation, even writing a book about it. That book comes with the hardly inscrutable and singularly uninspiring if, for some, wistful title, “World Order,” published, on September 9, 2014, during Barack Obama’s reign.

After defeating Trump, by chicanery on a massive scale, these same forces that crushed Trump, now focus attention on one-third to one-half or more of the American population that continues to support the “MAKE AMERICA GREAT” agenda.

In the end, it was always the American people, who, all along, were the true target of the Neo-Marxist Internationalists and the mega-billionaire Neoliberal Globalists. Trump merely represented the wishes and desires of Americans who saw their Nation stolen from them. Most Americans saw their sacred rights shredded: the right of free speech; the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of their property by the Government; freedom from unlawful detention; and the right of the people to keep and bear arms, necessary to secure their freedom from tyranny and maintain their sovereignty over Government.

Most Americans sought to set the Nation’s course back toward the direction set by the founders of the Republic. We have diverged so far from the founders’ vision for us.

Under the Harris-Biden Administration, Americans have inexorably moved away from the vision of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, grounded on the tenets, precepts, and principles of Individualism, and back toward the vision of the Neo-Marxists and Neoliberal Globalists who envision a world grounded on the precepts, tenets, and principles of Collectivism. Collectivism in such Countries as China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and those under the domination of Brussels, and in the Commonwealth Countries are in store for Americans.

Through an orchestrated program of DEFLECTION, DISTRACTION, DIVERSION, and DIVAGATION, the Nation’s OBSTRUCTORS and DESTRUCTORS who control the legacy Press and social media draw the public’s attention away from Federal Government policies designed to dismantle the Republic in clear violation of and defiance to the U.S. Constitution and to Federal Statute and channel the public’s reasonable, rational concern to the Nation’s DISSENTERS—those Americans who seek to preserve the Nation as a free Constitutional Republic—treating true PATRIOTS as improbable TRAITORS and possible TRAITORS as improbable PATRIOTS. And this topsy-turvy elaborate propaganda campaign reflects the FOUNDERS gravest concerns, their most deep-seated fears.

Under the Harris-Biden Administration and Neo-Marxist-led Congress, Americans are witnessing the entire collapse of a free Constitutional Republic, brought about NOT by mere ineptitude and incompetence, awful as those failings are, but by cold, calculated, callous, caustic, and cruel design which is even more disturbing.

The American public must hold high officials of the Harris-Biden Administration to account. And this must include Joe Biden himself, along with his secret handlers of whom the American public is not presently privy.

Biden claims to take responsibility for debacles plaguing his regime, but does not. His words are obviously contrived; meaningless scripted utterances; ridiculous clichés. His addresses to the Nation, few as they are, fool no one.

High-placed functionaries in Biden’s regime routinely blatantly lie to the public. They exude empty apologies when caught; and further seeming blunders are on the way. They always arise, concomitant with policies meant NOT to provide for the public welfare, the public good, but to bring about the demise of the Republic; to usher in the rise of a new international order; one sans independent, sovereign nation-states. And so, the Administration continues along its merry way.

Biden and the policymakers and policy deciders DID what they intended TO DO. The nature of events that unfold are the consequence of options considered; the result of policy decisions made.

Even if, sometimes, consequences of poor decisions backfire on them, like the drone attack that destroyed the lives of an innocent man and innocent children in Afghanistan—even as results seem unintentional to some—many other horrific events ARE intentional, the direct result of cold, callous planning, and cannot be reasonably denied. And they cannot be reasonably explained away.

Consider the recurrence of COVID and other dangerous infectious diseases on the horizon in our Country this Fall. This is due to the Administration’s deliberate release of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into a Country, unvetted and unexamined by medical personnel.

The Harris-Biden Administration has thrust a dagger into the heart of our Country. Many of the illegal aliens have COVID or other noxious, disgusting diseases. Others belong to murderous international criminal cartels. The Administration has invited all this horror upon us. It wants this. That is plain.

The Administration evidently wants instability—social, economic, and health-related upheaval and unrest to occur in the Country. If that isn’t the case, then why deliberately weaken the security of the Nation by opening the geographical borders of the Country? See articles in NY Post article;  National Review; Border Report; and Geller Report.

Americans will likely see in the coming weeks and months ahead, horrible diseases coursing through the Nation, along with continued social unrest and terrorist attacks against the citizenry. And there will be no respite from this. Americans will see an onslaught of hundreds of thousands more illegal aliens and purported “refugees” flowing into and throughout the Country before the end of the year, bringing with them the plague, crime, and terror attacks.

Do Governmental policy decisions to date support a legal finding of TREASON by Biden and those serving in the Administration? To answer this question it is necessary to understand the law of TREASON—TREASON IN THE LEGAL SENSE, NOT MERELY IN A COMMON OR RHETORICAL OR THEATRICAL SENSE.

It is only through a keen understanding of the law of TREASON, that one can establish the elements of treason, applying those elements to the actions of Biden and others, and therefrom know whether those actions amount to TREASON. If so, the American people have a sound and solid basis to bring Biden and others to account for their Treason against the Nation, against its Constitution, and against its people.

Through all that we do in our articles on Treason, please etch in your mind the definition for it as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.

Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1 

“Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

And, “18 U.S. Code § 2381 – Treason,”

“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.”

In the next article we undertake an examination of the elements of treason in the U.S. so that we can apply those elements to the actions of Biden and others in his Administration.

Our end goal is to ascertain whether specific policy choices of Biden and others amount to treason, namely, those policies directed to——

• STABILITY BY FOMENTING DISSENSION AMONG THE AMERICAN PEOPLE; AND,

• INDOCTRINATING AMERICA’S CHILDREN, INTRODUCING MILLIONS OF UNASSIMILABLE ILLEGAL ALIENS INTO THE COUNTRY ALONG WITH MURDEROUS INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL CARTELS AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISTS, AMONG OTHER THINGS; AND,

• SUBJECTING THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY TO UNLAWFUL HARASSMENT; AND,

• TREATING LAW-ABIDING AMERICANS AS “DOMESTIC TERRORISTS” THROUGH DISTORTION OF LAWS DESIGNED TO COMBAT “INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS,” AND OTHER “INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST” GROUPS; AND,

• ERODING THE SEPARATION OF POWERS DOCTRINE AND THE DOCTRINE OF FEDERALISM; AND,

• DISARMING THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY, LEAVING THEM DEFENSELESS AGAINST INCREASING CRIMINAL PREDATION, AND THREATEN THE CITIZENRY’S SOVEREIGNTY OVER GOVERNMENT.

The question is whether any one or more of these policies directed against the Nation, its Constitution, and its people, amount to “levying war against them” and/or encompass “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

We shall see.

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Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.