It is often said that treason is the rarest of political crimes in modern democracies, not because it doesn't occur, but because no one in power dares to call it by its name. Yet the newly declassified documents, long-suspected collusion between intelligence officials and partisan actors, and the emerging picture of coordinated internal sabotage suggest something far more grave than political dirty tricks. If Tulsi Gabbard's claims about the Obama administration are even partly correct, then the nation must confront a chilling possibility: that a sitting U.S. president and his top advisors knowingly abetted foreign disinformation in order to sabotage his successor. If true, that is not merely abuse of power. It is treason in all but name.
Under U.S. law, treason is defined narrowly: levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. But definitions cannot obscure reality. When senior officials exploit known disinformation from a hostile foreign power to undermine the peaceful transfer of power, destabilise the incoming government, and sow chaos across the republic, the spirit, if not the letter of treason has been met. In fact, the actions of the Obama administration's intelligence apparatus may have done more to erode American stability and institutional trust than any foreign adversary could have dreamed.
At the heart of the scandal lies the Steele dossier, a document now discredited and publicly revealed to have been sourced through Igor Danchenko, a suspected Russian asset. This dossier, paid for by political operatives connected to Hillary Clinton, was knowingly used by Obama-era intelligence and justice officials as the foundation for FISA surveillance of Trump campaign figures. It was weaponised by those in the highest levels of government who understood its dubious origins, but pressed ahead regardless because it served a greater purpose: to disable the legitimacy of Donald Trump before he had even taken the oath of office.
This wasn't a rogue episode. It was coordinated. Declassified notes from CIA Director John Brennan show that he briefed President Obama about Clinton's plan to tie Trump to Russia as early as July 2016. James Comey, John Clapper, Susan Rice, and others worked in concert to push this narrative into an intelligence community assessment after the election, despite the fact that career analysts and the FBI's own records had serious reservations about the underlying evidence. Rice's now-infamous memo to herself on Inauguration Day suggests the kind of after-the-fact damage control typical of a cover-up.
The political effect was devastating. The Trump presidency was immediately engulfed in scandal, not by accident, but by design. Intelligence officials leaked selectively to media allies, painting Trump as compromised by Moscow. Calls for impeachment began before his first hundred days were complete. And all of it stemmed from an origin the Obama administration knew was poisoned: foreign disinformation, laundered through domestic institutions, then detonated like a political IED in the middle of the U.S. government.
This is the definition of institutional betrayal. Whether or not the courts will ever call it treason, the consequences were indistinguishable from it. The Russian government, whose strategy has always been to divide and destabilise the United States, saw its goals advanced not by Trump, but by his enemies. They achieved this not through hacking or espionage, but through the gullibility, arrogance, and duplicity of U.S. officials who, blinded by political hatred, became unwitting agents of chaos.
Some will argue that absent a formal declaration of war, or without overt coordination with Moscow, the legal bar for treason isn't met. But this misses the deeper point. Treason is not merely a matter of legal technicalities. It is a betrayal of the nation's core processes, elections, transfers of power, constitutional balance, in a way that empowers foreign adversaries and disarms the citizenry's faith in the republic. By that standard, what the Obama administration facilitated in its final months was not just unethical. It was a soft coup, executed in suits and briefings, not uniforms and rifles.
America may be too timid to prosecute such treachery, but history should not be so forgiving. When future generations look back at the collapse of trust in American governance, they may find that the match was lit not in the Kremlin, but in the West Wing.