I don't see how you could view it otherwise. While I think majority of the mob were just reacting and didn't have a plan, i don't view that as a valid excuse.

This is not about whether you agree with the election being stolen or not, this is purely about whether or not they were just another mob and should be prosecuted as such or if they should be charged as if they genuinely meant to topple the government.

LOL Topple the government. Are you serious?

A bunch of unarmed idiots wandering around taking selfies are going to topple the government. LMAO

"Selfies" I too like to take selfies in front of gallows while chanting "Hang Mike Pence"

I too want to see congress and the VP violate the constitution because I'm a big ass whiny *****.

I'd say violently forcing your way into the Capitol in order to disrupt the process of certifying a Presidential election certainly qualifies as treason.

Please read the OP one more time. Then hopefully you see why your response makes no sense.

No.

Sedition, maybe.

Treason in the legal sense and specific to the US is a fairly narrow definition (for historic reasons) that refers to aiding an enemy or waging war against the government. Under that perspective, you're probably not looking at treason.

In a broader sense, where we define treason as attempting to topple the government, you could probably make a good case for why the term should be used. Of course, in modern democracies this definition is rarely used, because democracy is based on periodically toppling the government (at least its political component). And yes, of course it is based on doing it with votes, not by physically attacking people or trying to forcefully subvert elections. But it doesn't take a historic genius to see why you are in some very risky territory once such laws are thrown around.

The "slippery slope" argument is often used too lightly in politics, but anti-democratic ideologies salivate at the idea of gaining power and abusing such laws. One of the most effective ways to kill a democracy to die a painful death is for government to start clamping down on political opposition. Thus most democracies have developed a tradition for letting the bar for "treason" be very, very high. Often we'll use terms such as "sedition" instead, but even such laws pose problems.

So treason is a high bar.

The question is, did the congresspeople and law enforcement people who coordinated with the rebels commit treason ?

Could that legally be argued with any rational basis ?

It's probably easier to charge sedition but I wouldn't mind seeing some of the higher ups and elected officials have to sweat a death sentence. Especially since the GOP likes to execute people. Seems fitting.

The goal of Trump and Co was to use the same tactic Roger Stone used to stop the count in Bush V Gore.

Have a bunch of derps burst in and force the proceedings to shut down and then make the House and Senate miss the Constitutional time frame to confirm the new POTUS Biden.

It worked in Florida. A count was stopped that would have seen Gore the winner and then the Supreme Court ruled, in part due to the derps busting in that the ballots were now insecure and the election had to be decided without the extra count.


In this case if Biden could not be confirmed by Pence and the House and Senate in time, the Constitution has no measure stated to rectify it. It would have to go to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile Trump would remain as POTUS until it was decided and work to throw out all the swing district votes.

So yes, a bunch of unarmed idiots, just as happened in Florida, were key to that plan. Stopping the vote was the first crucial key and they were the only body who could force that. And they did.


It was only the determination of Pence and the House and Senate members to go back that got it done.

Flip the script. If this was a Dem plot and Trump had won, I think there is no question Barr would already have every Dem involved up on charges including Treason.

I think it was a big mistake for the Dems to not empower a Mueller like Special Prosecutor with full Prosecuting powers to investigate this instead of the House Committee.

When Mueller was empowered the entire GOP was trembling, ducking to avoid notice and complying instantly with any of his demands hoping to avoid him prosecuting him.

The minute Barr stopped it and the Dem House Committee picked it up the GOP Politicians literally starting laughing on tv interviews about the Powers and nothing burger they saw a Dem Committee investigation being. It would just be their political spin versus the GOP counter spin.


A Mueller like SP starting at the bottom and charging and convicting people up the channel who then got to Congress would see so many of them sing to protect themselves that I think they would have had a real chance at Trump.

Sadly the Dem's never really want a fight nor to put fellow Politicians in jail. They just want to use it just enough to tip elections to them and nothing more. Once they have that then they want to 'look forward and not back'.

Yup. Between the poor slobs who think the right wing media outlets are protecting them from the 'liberals' and the Democratic party's utter disinterest in maintaining any sort of democratic system of government the country is doomed. I assume something will crack sooner or later but this game has been played my entire adult life. The elite prefer it this way I suppose but the results aren't really making life better for the average voter. Which is kind of the point of the whole experiment. At least that's what they told us in school.

That's also why I'm coming to terms with the fact that America never really has been the beacon of freedom we like to pretend, we just got lucky and had a good economy after the second World War and people flocked here. It's a shame we never really set ourselves up to succeed in a modern way. The old plantation model is all we know. But it's good if you live in the big house I guess.

The republicans have broken faith with the old game as they can no longer win elections that way.

The Dems still cling to the rules of the old game. Politicians had created a pretty sweet spot where prosecuting one another was just something they would not do outside the most avoidable cases. Make 'election loss' the big bad for any illegality done. You don't prosecute our team and we won't yours was the accepted status quo.

So now you have a Dem party still clinging to the old rules, hoping the GOP turns back towards them, and not wanting to push further into this whole 'true accountability' thing lest it come around to bite them in the future.

I think there is no doubt they were genuinely trying to prevent Joe Biden from becoming President and wanted to reinstall Trump. Whether you can charge them additionally for this motive is another question since it is/was so delusional/irrational with 0 chance of success. Obviously if they had somehow over taken the Capitol for days and there was a period where it wasn’t obvious that Biden would be sworn in people should be looking at decade plus sentences.

only because of the violence and threat of violence -that makes it a very serious offense. Peaceful disruptive protest should always be treated with leniency

Suppose it was a peaceful protest by people who are sure some future trumpian type has stolen the election. That's not treason, it's peaceful protest even if it's illegal and disruptive.

I am not so sure it had no chance.

Word is that Pence had to put his foot down to get his Secret Service detail to take him back towards the mayhem instead of getting in a car. Some reports say his closest detail members said if he gets in that car, Trump has ordered they whisk him away for his safety and they would have held him away from doing his duty saying it was too dangerous to return.

Regardless of that though, if the House and Senate just decided not to re-adjourn that day, the Constitution then proscribes no method to confirm Biden as POTUS after. There is no 'make-up' mechanism.

I think what would have ensued is that some in the House and Senate would have tried to do the procedure the next day while Trump proclaimed himself POTUS until the SC can settle it and say otherwise. Biden not being sworn in and all.

So then what happens? Can the Dems and MIlitary order Trump out despite Biden not sworn in, in accordance with the Constitution?? Would they even try in the face of an obstinate Trump saying 'make me leave?'

I think left leaning citizens hit the streets in mass numbers with ensuing violence around the fringes and Trump tries to seize that to slam police and National Guard and military into them claiming the US has fallen into anarchy and he must declare Martial law to quell it.

Meanwhile we know how slow things are going thru the courts.

Peaceful protest nevers gets near the doors and never threatens to disrupt the confirmation of Biden so it is never an issue. This only had impact because of the use of violence (to get in) and the threats posed

Possible but let's not overrely on what some might think is possible

Eitehr way the key point is the violence not the disruption.

I'm not an attorney so I don't know if it meets the dictionary definition of treason. But I think the severity of the crimes is on par with treason.

Lets be honest security was a joke that day.

Treason is tough one and unsure of the requirements. I feel what Bush did lying to get the USA in a war as bad or not worse.

I think this is a reasonable take. An attempt to disrupt the elective process is a politically motivated attack directly at what makes a country a democracy.

A counter-argument would be something along the lines of "not everyone there was an extremist". That is an misguided argument. What makes countries unstable historically isn't that everyone suddenly becomes a full-blooded radical with extremist ideas, more that extremist ideology becomes widely accepted alongside mainstream ideology (and usually coupled with economic crisis and other sources of unrest).

The 6th of January exemplifies this nicely. You had anti-government groups and Nazis flying full insignia signalling their political stance alongside supporters of the sitting president. Couple this with the sitting president fighting a normal transfer of power and using the power of his office in attempts to make officials discredit the election outcome, and you are honestly in a kind of politics we would normally associate with failed or crumbling states.

Laws and legal definitions regarding treason are purposefully steep, because you generally want to make it very difficult for a government to go after those who politically oppose it. This (rather wise) legal technicality does not mean that what happened on the 6th of January was not bad. It was and still is an extreme political crisis.


Of course, stomping it out with force likely won't resolve this crisis. Not that I have a solution, and there might not even be one.

this is exactly how i feel, i don't understand why we're doing nationwide manhunts to find these people and then charge them with a minor crime

maybe because the belief they have done sometthng very bad doesn't align very well with the law.

Bush is considered a war criminal by many.

No one seems to want to paint the architects of 1-6 in a similar light, although they certainly should.

They don't have as much blood on their hands as Bush, but that's not for lack of trying.

All the modern presidents are likely war criminals to some extent.

I don’t think bush admin was lying about wmd they had bad intel. Why would they lie and spend all that time looking for wmds in Iraq? If they were willing to lie they would have been willing to plant some somewhere just to prove they were right.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't the lying us into war part that makes most of the world view him as a war criminal.
And yes, Obama is probably a war criminal to some extent given his drone policies but Bush really went over the line.
No one cares though so I guess it's all good. Now wee have police that electrocute and use deadly gas against US citizens every day. Fascists gonna be fascists.