Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein said the New York Times (NYT) engaged in treasonous behavior via their innuendo-laden linking of former President Donald Trump’s alleged possession of classified material to the CIA’s claims of the deaths of informants in recent years.

Weinstein’s remarks were made on Saturday during the 139th episode of his Dark Horse podcast alongside his wife, Heather Heying. He addressed a Friday-published article by the New York Times titled “Classified Material on Human Intelligence Sources Helped Trigger Alarm.” The article’s subheadline reads, “Documents related to the work of clandestine sources are some of the most sensitive and protected in the government. F.B.I. agents found some in boxes retrieved from Donald J. Trump’s home.”

Weinstein described the New York Times‘s insinuation that Trump’s actions had led to the killings of U.S. intelligence assets as “tantamount” to “treason.”

Relevant remarks begin at 1:37:12:

“Slandering former presidents who are eligible to be reelected, I believe, is tantamount to [treason], if it is not based on evidence,” Weinstein stated.

Weinstein reflected on the FBI’s raid of Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL. He said the implication that Trump could be engaged in “treason” cannot be taken seriously:

The warrant was apparently in part motivated by [the] claim … that Trump took documents that contained information about confidential informants to our intelligence apparatus, and separately, that confidential informants to our intelligence apparatus have been killed, compromised, or captured at an anomalous rate. … This is a pattern that has been noticed in intelligence circles.

Why are they being compromised at an anomalous rate? The assertion that Trump took documents that contain relevant information — and the connect-the-dots implication — is that he may have handed that information over to people that’s getting these people killed.

Now, I want to point something out about this. Somebody is engaged in treason. Could be Trump, but that seems really unlikely here, right? Because it’s obvious treason to hand over information on confidential informants that are important to the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

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We’ve got two candidates here. One candidate is Trump, and the extraordinary idea that a president would have left office, taken those documents, hand them over to people, knowing that that would result in things happening to those informants in the field, right?

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Even if he had the motive, I do put this past Trump. I would not imagine him leaving office, especially hoping to return to office, compromising American informants abroad. Either he did that, which the New York Times certainly wants us to wonder about, or the New York Times is engaged in treason in alleging so. That’s the point. If you are a journalistic establishment — that on the basis of extremely weak, circumstantial evidence — is going to raise this allegation about a former president, well, you are engaged in a betrayal of the nation and an extreme level.

Columnist Lee Smith recently told Breitbart News that colleagues and peers of his — whose judgment he trusts — speculate that the FBI’s raid of Trump’s home was a search for documents related to its “Russiagate” surveillance operation of the 45th president.