aid and abet

aid and abet (third-person singular simple present aids and abets, present participle aiding and abetting, simple past and past participle aided and abetted)

1. (law) To be accomplice to someone in an illegal act.

   A bank employee was accused of aiding and abetting the gang of robbers.

   • 1881 November, Frederick Douglass, “My Escape from Slavery”, in The Century Illustrated Magazine‎, pages 125–131:

     Murder itself was not more sternly and certainly punished in the State of Maryland than that of aiding and abetting the escape of a slave.

   • 1894 December – 1895 November, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, publishers, […], published 1896, OCLC 3807889:

     What oppressed Jude was the thought that, having done a wrong thing of this sort himself, he was aiding and abetting the woman he loved in doing a like wrong thing, instead of imploring and warning her against it.

   • 1899, John Davidson (translator), Montesquieu (original), Persian Letters, Letter 116:

     In my future letters I shall perhaps take the opportunity to prove to you that the more men there are in a state, the more prosperous its commerce; I shall prove as easily, that as commerce flourishes, men increase; these two things necessarily aid and abet each other.

   • 1905 January 12, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], The Scarlet Pimpernel, popular edition, London: Greening & Co., published 20 March 1912, OCLC 235822313:

     Caught, red-handed, on the spot, in the very act of aiding and abetting the traitors against the Republic of France, the Englishman could claim no protection from his own country.