The anonymous “senior administration official” who wrote the anti-Trump tirade published by The New York Times as an op-ed Wednesday is a seditious traitor who must be identified and prosecuted for illegal conduct.

The writer has broken the law by blatantly violating his or her oath of office with a level of arrogance and criminality that is outrageous and should face decades in prison for his or her despicable actions.

President Trump was justified in asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday to launch an investigation to identify the writer of the op-ed, which was headlined online: “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” Sessions should begin this important investigation immediately.

“It’s treason, you could call it a lot of things,” the president said in an interview on “Fox & Friends.” He’s right.

Judicial Watch, the conservative nonpartisan organization where I work, is investigating the publication of this op-ed by a writer too cowardly to reveal his or her identity and too unprincipled to resign from federal employment.

The anonymous op-ed writer – let’s call him or her “the resister” – claims to be “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his (President Trump’s) agenda and his worst inclinations.”

When President Trump identifies the resister (and he will) the president has good cause to fire him or her.

But larger questions loom for the resister, his or her allies and the Democratic and Republican political operatives who populate and manipulate the federal departments and agencies in a conspiracy to attempt to thwart President Trump at every turn.

The framework for the questions can be found in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 115 – “Treason, Sedition and Subversive Activities.”

While purportedly a “senior official in the Trump administration,” the resister’s understanding of his or her duty is fatally flawed from the start. The resister writes: “But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.”

Wrong.

The resister’s duty is not “to this country.” That sort of thinking and language is usually reserved for the well-intentioned but ill-informed. In the context of an anonymous New York Times op-ed, the resister is naïvely arrogant and self-righteous as well as cowardly.

The oath that senior government officials and commissioned officers in the military take it to the Constitution. This is an important point. The oath includes specific language, swearing: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

The resister does not understand his or her duty. He or she does not want to do so. The resister is leveraging his or her office for power, while collecting a salary paid by U.S. taxpayers – and selfishly granting himself or herself authority to thwart the Constitution and duly elected president of the United States, with an arrogance and hubris fueled by the desperate, publicity stunt mentality of The New York Times.

The resister explicitly brags about deliberately undermining and defying the president on foreign policy decisions concerning hostile foreign powers (“giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere” – 18 USC §2381 – “Treason”) and attempts to reframe Deep State subversion against the president as the work of virtuous officials from the “steady state.”

The resister did not, apparently, take the time to learn there are the duties and responsibilities inherent in the oath he or she violated. Before deciding to “save the country,” the resister should have examined 18 USC § 2384 – “Seditious Conspiracy,” containing specific language about people who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” and “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

The resister arguably faces 20 years imprisonment for each count of his or her malicious campaign against the Constitution and the Chief Executive, as defined under Article II.

The greater problem for the Constitution is that the current administration is loaded with these sorts of self-serving operators. President Trump’s greatest single administrative challenge has been personnel.

The resister exemplifies this fact. Washington Post articles detail the dysfunction of the Presidential Personnel Office that seems not to have been corrected. The threat to the Constitution comes from the people that President Trump is forced to rely upon due to the scale and scope of the federal government.

If there was ever a time for President Trump to clean house of the phonies, the self-righteous, the political operators, the leakers and seditious conspirators – while simultaneously reinvigorating public servants’ sense of duty to the supreme law of the land – the time is now.

Crimes have been committed against the Constitution by the resister and his or her ilk. They must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Not doing so would be a further betrayal of the sacred oath our government officials take to the Constitution that serves as the foundation of our constitutional republic.