Will it stick?

The interpretation of the law according to which hush money is a campaign contribution and so may exceed legal limits is not new to the Cohen case.

But Edwards' lawyers argued against that interpretation of the law and it appears never to have actually been the basis of a conviction.

Democrats keep citing the charges against Edwards as support for that theory of the law.

(Did Democrats accept that theory of the law, back in the day? Did Republicans who now reject it accept it when it was Democrat Edwards on the hook?)

The grand jury bought it but apparently not the petit.

A lot of people will think this is bullshit, so it better not be the only charge in a bill of impeachment.

Edwards trial

The Justice Department has dropped its prosecution of former Sen. John Edwards over nearly $1 million in payments his backers made to support his pregnant mistress during the 2008 presidential campaign.

The formal dismissal of charges was filed in federal court in Greensboro, N.C., on Wednesday. 

The decision came less than two weeks after Edwards’s trial on the campaign finance-related charges ended when a jury deadlocked on five felony counts and voted to acquit him on one charge.

. . . .

“We knew that this case — like all campaign finance cases — would be challenging. But it is our duty to bring hard cases when we believe that the facts and the law support charging a candidate for high office with a crime,” Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer said in a statement.

Breuer did not elaborate on prosecutors’ reasons for abandoning the case. 

He simply noted the jury’s division on most counts and said: “In the interest of justice, we have decided not to retry Mr. Edwards on those counts.”

Edwards’s defense team welcomed the decision to drop the case.

“While John has repeatedly admitted to his sins, he has also consistently asserted, as we demonstrated at the trial, that he did not violate any campaign law nor even imagined that any campaign laws could apply,” defense lawyers Abbe Lowell, Allison Van Laningham and Alan Duncan said in a joint statement. 

“We are confident that the outcome of any new trial would have been the same. We are very glad that, after living under this cloud for over three years, John and his family can have their lives back and enjoy the peace they deserve.”

A grand jury indicted the Democrat and two-time presidential candidate last year on charges that he illegally received campaign donations from his 2008 finance chairman Fred Baron and wealthy heiress Rachel “Bunny” Mellon. 

The funds, spent on private jet travel, luxury hotels and housing for Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter, never passed through campaign accounts. 

However, prosecutors said they amounted to donations to Edwards’s campaign because they were intended to prevent damage to his presidential bid by hiding the extramarital affair from the media.

Too, Russiagate charges will work only if whatever the Russians did that Trump knew of in advance was actually illegal.

And that will work best if the crime is the hacking rather than mere pseudonymous use of social media that would have been perfectly legal if done by Americans.

It is really absurd and not a good idea to urge that blogging, tweeting, or other uses of social media can themselves be counted as either campaigning or making some sort of in-kind campaign contribution.

Or that it is when the Russians do it, but somehow not when you or I do it.

And is it "conspiracy" if Trump or his campaign did nothing to advance or aid in any illegal activity, perhaps even the hacking, but only knew of it before and when it happened?

Too, nothing he did really amounts to treason, however annoying to some globalists or to some Democrats.

Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 reads in pertinent part:

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

Not even in those remote and nearly inaccessible possible worlds in which Trump actually and in just so many explicit words did sell certain aspects of US foreign policy to Russia in return for help in the campaign or other inducements.

I hope and believe that doing that would be criminal and impeachable.

But it would not be treason, even if we go with plain English and insist a foreign country can be an enemy even when we are not actually at war with it, so that giving such a power aid or comfort can be counted as treason.

The US is not and has never been at war with Russia.

And Trump and all his supporters and even some of his opponents, both on the left and on the right, will argue that the premise of Trump's Buchananist foreign policy is that Russia is not and need not be an actual outright enemy of the US, despite conflicts between us over this or that.

Whether or not it is or becomes an actual enemy of, say, Latvia or Ukraine.

Too, if Trump's policies or preferences respecting NATO, Russia, or anything else in foreign affairs contain or amount to treason then Buchananist foreign policy, neo-isolationist policy, Rand Paul's foreign policy, and any foreign policy that is less confrontational vis-a-vis Russia than Hillary Clinton's would be treason, also.

And anyone who implements such policies, or perhaps even advocates them, is a traitor.

Russian participation on Trump's behalf in the campaign, or any other alleged quid pro quo, though possibly accounting for motive, would be irrelevant to the substance of that charge against him.

And Trump's moves would have been treason even if the Russians had never lifted a finger to help him.

But all of that is absurd on its face.

Do we really want to say it can be treason for an American politician - or indeed anyone else - to advocate changes in America policy?

Even ending a war already underway?

Can it be treason for an American politician to run on ending a war, or reversing an alliance, or on undoing an alliance, and then keep his promise once elected?

That's not a view any of us ought to be supporting.

And ironically it well deserves to be called McCarthyism.