Treason examples in the United States are strikingly few: of roughly 40 federal treason cases in American history, only about 13 produced convictions.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2381 – Treason The Constitution confines the charge to two kinds of conduct: levying war against the United States, or adhering to its enemies by giving them aid and comfort. A conviction demands either a confession in open court or testimony from two witnesses to the same overt act.2Constitution Annotated. Article III Judicial Branch – Section 3 Every well-known case in American history has fallen into one of those two buckets, and the pattern of who was charged, who was convicted, and who was pardoned reveals a lot about how the law actually works.
Levying War: The Whiskey Rebellion and Fries’ Rebellion
Levying war does not require a formal army. The standard Chief Justice John Marshall set in Ex parte Bollman (1807) is that there must be an actual assembling of people for a treasonable purpose. Once that happens, anyone who takes part in the conspiracy, however minor, can be treated as a participant.3Congress.gov. ArtIII.S3.C1.2 Levying War as Treason The dividing line from ordinary rioting is intent to forcibly resist federal law.
The first real test came during the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, when western Pennsylvania farmers violently opposed a federal excise tax on distilled spirits. Tax collectors were tarred and feathered, and at one point about 500 local militiamen marched on a federal officer’s home.4Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. The Whiskey Rebellion President Washington sent 13,000 troops to suppress the uprising and later issued a broad pardon covering most participants.
A few years later, John Fries led several hundred armed farmers in eastern Pennsylvania against federal assessors trying to collect a direct property tax. Fries was convicted of treason twice. The first conviction was thrown out on procedural grounds. President John Adams eventually pardoned him. Taken together, these cases established that organized armed resistance to a specific federal law can qualify as levying war, while also showing an early government preference for reconciliation over execution.
The Aaron Burr Trial
Aaron Burr’s 1807 trial remains the most important case for defining what levying war does not include. Burr was accused of recruiting men and raising money to seize parts of the Louisiana Territory and perhaps establish an independent nation.5Federal Judicial Center. The Burr Treason Trial The problem for prosecutors was that Burr himself was not present when his followers gathered at Blennerhassett’s Island. Chief Justice Marshall, presiding, ruled that the government had produced “no testimony whatever” showing the accused was actually or constructively present at the assembly.
Burr was acquitted, though the jury’s unusual verdict of “not guilty by the evidence presented” suggested less than full confidence in his innocence. The lasting lesson is that planning and financing a rebellion, without a proven physical overt act witnessed by two people, cannot satisfy the constitutional standard.
Aid and Comfort: Haupt and Kawakita
The first treason conviction the Supreme Court ever upheld came in Haupt v. United States (1947). Hans Max Haupt was convicted for sheltering his son Herbert, a Nazi saboteur who had secretly entered the country. The father also helped his son buy a car and find a job at a defense plant. Those might look like ordinary acts of parenting, but the Court held that everyday conduct can carry treasonable intent when performed with knowledge of the recipient’s hostile mission.6Legal Information Institute. Haupt v United States, 330 US 631 Evidence that Haupt had voiced loyalty to Germany and hostility toward the United States helped the jury conclude his motives went beyond fatherly concern.
A few years later, Kawakita v. United States (1952) extended the reach of treason law overseas. Tomoya Kawakita was born in the United States and held dual citizenship with Japan. During World War II, while living in Japan, he worked as a civilian interpreter at a company producing war materials and brutally abused American prisoners of war forced to labor there. The Supreme Court ruled that because the Constitution’s treason definition contains no territorial limitation, an American citizen living abroad can be convicted of treason just as readily as one at home.7Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Kawakita v United States, 343 US 717 Kawakita was sentenced to death. President Eisenhower later commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Wartime Broadcasters: Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally
World War II produced the clearest examples of words themselves counting as the overt act. Iva Toguri D’Aquino, an American citizen stranded in Japan, became a broadcaster on Radio Tokyo’s Zero Hour, a program designed to demoralize American troops in the Pacific. She was convicted of treason in 1949, sentenced to ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine, and served more than six years before her release. President Gerald Ford pardoned her on January 19, 1977.8Federal Bureau of Investigation. Iva Toguri D’Aquino and Tokyo Rose The case has been widely criticized; later evidence suggested key witnesses were coached and that D’Aquino may have been coerced into broadcasting.
Mildred Gillars, known as “Axis Sally,” followed a similar path from the other side of the war. An American living in Berlin, she took a job as a broadcaster with Radio Berlin and signed an oath of allegiance to Nazi Germany.9The United States Army. Counter Intelligence Corps Arrests Axis Sally, 14 March 1946 Her broadcasts aimed to frighten and demoralize Allied soldiers. Gillars was convicted of treason in 1949, sentenced to ten to thirty years, and released after serving twelve. Together, the two broadcaster prosecutions established that spoken words transmitted to aid an enemy’s psychological warfare can meet the overt-act requirement.
The Last Treason Indictment: Adam Gadahn
No one has been charged with treason in the United States since 2006, when a federal grand jury indicted Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert who became a prominent al-Qaeda propagandist. The indictment alleged that Gadahn gave aid and comfort to al-Qaeda by appearing in a series of propaganda videos between 2004 and 2006, including footage in which he praised the September 11 attacks as “the blessed raids on New York and Washington” and threatened that “the streets of America shall run red with blood.”10Department of Justice. US Citizen Indicted on Treason, Material Support Charges for Providing Aid and Comfort to al Qaeda He also appeared alongside Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and urged American soldiers to desert.
Gadahn was never brought to trial. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in January 2015, leaving open the question of whether aiding a non-state terrorist organization counts as adhering to an “enemy” within the meaning of the Treason Clause. His case remains the last federal treason indictment in American history.
Benedict Arnold: The Archetype Never Tried
Benedict Arnold is the name most Americans associate with treason, yet he was never prosecuted. In 1780, Arnold negotiated a secret agreement to surrender West Point, the most strategically important fortification on the Hudson River, to the British in exchange for a large sum of money. The plot was discovered when Arnold’s British contact, Major John André, was captured carrying the plans. Arnold escaped to British lines before he could be arrested and spent the rest of the war fighting for the other side.
Because Arnold fled before the Constitution existed, no legal proceeding ever tested his conduct against the Treason Clause. His actions became the archetype of what Americans mean by the word, and every treason case since has been measured, consciously or not, against the betrayal he came to represent.
Why There Are So Few Examples
The scarcity of modern treason prosecutions is not a sign that disloyalty has disappeared. Prosecutors simply have better options. Seditious conspiracy, under 18 U.S.C. § 2384, criminalizes any agreement between two or more people to overthrow the government by force, oppose federal authority by force, or forcibly prevent the execution of federal law, with up to twenty years in prison.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2384 – Seditious Conspiracy The charge saw high-profile use after January 6, 2021, when Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted and sentenced to 18 years. Rebellion or insurrection, under 18 U.S.C. § 2383, covers anyone who incites or engages in armed resistance to federal authority, carrying up to ten years and a permanent bar on holding federal office.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2383 – Rebellion or Insurrection
The practical difference matters. Seditious conspiracy requires only proof of an agreement, with no two-witness rule and no constitutional overt-act standard. Espionage charges cover much of the same ground as aid-and-comfort treason without the procedural gauntlet. The Supreme Court itself acknowledged in Cramer v. United States that treason “is not the only nor can it well serve as the principal legal weapon to vindicate our national cohesion and security.”13Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Cramer v United States, 325 US 1 (1945) That is why the list of American treason examples is short, mostly historical, and unlikely to grow quickly.