Critics savage Trump

'Treason'? Critics savage Trump over Russia hack comments

By Nahal Toosi and Seung Min Kim

Donald Trump's call on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails has shocked, flabbergasted and appalled lawmakers and national security experts across the political spectrum, with one saying it was "tantamount to treason."

Few would argue Wednesday that what the Republican presidential nominee said will directly cause Russia to conduct more cyber-espionage against the U.S. than it already is doing. But several described Trump's statements as dangerous for America's global standing. Some echoed the Clinton campaign in calling the comments a threat to national security.

"It’s just one more example of the reckless and dangerous comments that Donald Trump makes that compromises American foreign policy objectives," said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Leon Panetta, a former CIA director, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that Trump's comments were "beyond the pale" because he was "in fact asking the Russians to engage in American politics." Later during a panel at the University of Pennsylvania, Panetta ramped up his rebuke, calling Trump’s remarks a “threat to our national security.”

An aide to House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who has endorsed Trump, added, meanwhile, that "Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug" and that it should stay out of the U.S. election.

“The United States should not tolerate Russian meddling in November’s election,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.). “Period.”

Philip Reiner, a former National Security Council official in the Obama administration, called Trump a "scumbag animal."

"Hacking email is a criminal activity. And he's asked a foreign government — a murderous, repressive regime — to attack not just one of our citizens but the Democratic presidential candidate? Of course it's a national security threat," he added.

And William Inboden, who served on the NSC during the George W. Bush administration, said Trump's comments were "tantamount to treason."

"Trump's appeal for a foreign government hostile to the United States to manipulate our electoral process is not an assault on Hillary Clinton, it is an assault on the Constitution," said Inboden, who now teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.

Whether Trump's comments actually would meet the high legal bar that defines a case of treason is a question unlikely to be explored by any federal agency anytime soon. But just the fact that people were using the word was an indication of how worried the national security establishment, including on the Republican side, is about a potential Trump presidency. (According to the gurus at Merriam-Webster, online look ups for the definition of the word "treason" spiked by 76 percent after Trump's comments.)

For Senate Democrats trying to oust GOP incumbents this fall, Trump’s latest stunning remarks on foreign policy gave them fresh ammunition to squeeze Republicans who've endorsed the real estate mogul.

A stream of Senate Democratic hopefuls nationwide — from Ohio to New Hampshire to Florida — quickly issued releases tying GOP senators to their standard-bearer and daring them to rebuke Trump’s latest provocative comments.

Few Senate Republicans took the bait as of Wednesday afternoon, with the exception of three GOP senators in competitive reelection bids who also lead powerful national security committees on Capitol Hill and another who sits on the Armed Services Committee. Still, the Republicans refrained from chastising Trump directly – a task that was left for their Democratic opponents.

"For years John McCain has been recognized as the leading opponent of Vladimir Putin in the United States - that's why Putin went so far as to officially bar McCain from visiting Russia,” said Lorna Romero, a spokeswoman for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain’s reelection campaign. “John McCain will never stop his efforts on behalf of the freedom of the Russian people.”

William Allison, a spokesman for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), noted that Johnson — who also chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — agreed with Ryan, a fellow Wisconsinite: “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug, and they should stay out of our elections."

And a spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina mostly focused on the FBI investigation of the recent hacking attack on the Democratic National Committee's email servers, while noting that Burr has said for “some time that foreign adversaries are intent on gaining unauthorized access into our country’s government and private networks to access sensitive data.”

“As Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Burr has an obligation to wait for the FBI and the broader intelligence community to complete their investigation on the source of this cyberattack,” said the spokeswoman, Rebecca Watkins. “Public discussion about attribution and possible responses are premature, at best.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said through a spokeswoman that “it’s critical that all our political leaders focus on keeping our country's communications systems safe from hackers,” particularly in light of Clinton’s use of a personal server.

Trump, who formally accepted his party's nomination for president last week, made the comments Wednesday during a wide-ranging press conference in Florida, amid increasing signs that it was Russian-backed hackers who pilfered and released thousands of emails from the DNC's servers.

The real estate mogul has been under scrutiny for his perceived closeness to Russia and his apparent fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was speaking generally about the roughly 30,000 emails from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, during which she used a private email server, that were deemed personal by her lawyers and destroyed, rather than turned over to the State Department.

“It would be interesting to see, I will tell you this, Russia, if you're listening I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

He later added in a tweet: "If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!"

Even as some Trump supporters insisted he was just joking, several national security experts said they could not recall another instance of a major party candidate calling on a foreign power to spy on a U.S. citizen, much less on a political opponent.

"Leaders who are serious about national security do not, even in jest, encourage foreign powers to spy on us," said Timothy Naftali, co-director of New York University's Center for the United States and the Cold War. "What Putin would take seriously, I suspect, is that Trump seems so eager to hurt Hillary Clinton that he doesn't care getting a little Russian help. On the other hand if there is some behind the scenes collusion between the Kremlin and Trump Tower, Putin must think Trump, at best, brazen or a fool for playing it all this way."

Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama administration official with expertise on Russia, added, "It's a pretty outrageous thing to do to anyone, and it feels somewhat treasonous."

And Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who traveled on a CODEL to Afghanistan last week, said at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that U.S. troops abroad told him they were concerned that Trump’s national security comments on the campaign trail would put their lives in danger.

The Clinton campaign was quick to use Trump's statement to bolster its case that electing him would be dangerous. "This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue," Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan said.

But as to whether Putin will be emboldened to try to seek Clinton's missing emails because of Trump — analysts and lawmakers said the Russians probably were already doing that anyway, and probably would regardless of whether Trump encouraged them or not.

"I very much doubt that there is as much to learn from Hillary Clinton's emails as Donald Trump seems to believe," said Ian Wallace, co-director of the Cybersecurity Initiative at New America. He asserted, nonetheless, that Trump's stance "beggars belief."

Meanwhile, other Republicans backing Trump took the opening to slam Clinton for using a private server as secretary of state in the first place – while carefully distancing themselves from the GOP nominee’s suggestion that Russia hack into Clinton’s e-mails.

“Hillary Clinton housed highly classified materials on a personal server and then deleted work-related emails despite receiving a subpoena. Apparently, she believes she is above the law,” Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) said in a statement. “And while I do not condone foreign nations hacking into American systems, I do believe recovering the emails illegally deleted by Mrs. Clinton would play a major role in restoring faith in our justice system.”