Trump Calls For ‘Long Jail Sentences’ For Officials Involved in Russia Probe: ‘This Was TREASON!’

President Donald Trump went from alleging illegal spying on his 2016 presidential campaign to concluding that it occurred, calling for U.S. officials involved to be jailed in an early Friday morning tweet.

My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2019

Trump’s alleging of “TREASON” is a very big deal, and takes the allegations to an entirely new level. He is wrong, however, when he says “TREASON means long jail sentences” as treason is actually punishable by the death penalty. (Update: The Uniform Code for Military Justice allows for many kinds of sentences *up to* life in prison and death.)

At issue is surveillance operation that the Obama administration’s Justice Department approved as evidence came to light that Russian intelligence officials were working to influence the outcome of the 2016 general election (which has since been revealed to benefit the Trump campaign) and if they were actively trying to infiltrate the Trump campaign.

Like so many issues in this highly divided political time, a big challenge in this story is semantics. Some would say that what occurred was surveillance that was part of an appropriately approved investigation into the threat of a foreign power. Trump and his base, however, believe that if the surveillance included Trump campaign officials, then their political operations were illegally spied upon.

[Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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