Fed Law: “Illegal to solicit or accept anything of value to campaign from foreigners”

Dynamic duo: Trump Jr. — Natalia Veselnitskaya

(Okay, Natasha — nobody will ever know)

This hot story today from the Washington Post here in part:

BRIDGEWATER, NJ — President Trump on Sunday (August 5, 2018) offered his most definitive and clear public acknowledgment that his oldest son (Donald Jr.) met with a Kremlin-aligned lawyer at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign to “get information on an opponent,” by defending the meeting as “totally legal and done all the time in politics.”

It is, however, against the law for U.S. campaigns to receive donations or items of value from foreigners, and that June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya is now a subject of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe.

While “collusion” is not mentioned in U.S. criminal statutes, Mueller is investigating whether anyone associated with Trump coordinated with the Russians, which could result in criminal charges if they entered into a conspiracy to break the law, including through cyber-hacking or interfering with the election.

A lot more on this follows in today’s post below:

Now put that aside for a moment: Being offered and/or trying to get information from any foreign government, let alone Russia an adversary is totally insane and illegal (cite: anything of value from a foreign government related to a campaign) is illegal says Jens David Ohlin, a law professor at Cornell University, who is even blunter: “It’s a shocking admission of a criminal conspiracy.”

Or from Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel who says: “The text of the emails provide very clear evidence of participation in a scheme to involve the Russian government in federal election interference, in a form that is prohibited by federal criminal law.”

The official Federal law citation: “The law states that no person shall knowingly solicit or accept from a foreign national any contribution to a campaign of an item of value.”  Goodman concludes: “There is now a clear case that Donald J. Trump Jr. meets all the elements of the law, which is a criminally enforced federal statute.”

Note: The statute in question here is: 52 USC 30121, 36 USC 510 — that is the law governing foreign contributions to U.S. campaigns.

Source for that is from Vox.com

The solicitation bit is why it doesn’t matter if Trump Jr. actually got useful information or not. The part that’s illegal is that that he tried or wanted to acquire the dirt on Clinton from a foreign source, but not successfully acquiring it.

However, it is still a crime to solicit this kind of information from any foreign government under these conditions.

Some Trump loyalists will cling to the word “try to solicit” saying “it was offered NOT solicited.”

But, Trump Jr. was clearly soliciting information that he knew was coming from a foreign source. Given that political campaigns regularly pay thousands of dollars to opposition researchers to dig up dirt (that we all know happens), it seems like damaging information on Clinton would constitute something “of value” to the Trump campaign.

My best example: Take B&E (a serious crime – breaking and entering a home or other place to steal money or jewels) but not finding to the robber dashes out only to be caught by the cops while leaving the scene. Then the suspect pleads not guilty to robbery saying to the cops “I got nothing,” but somehow the idiot forgets that B&E is a crime… oops again, Jr.

My 2 cents: President Trump is 100% weak and wrong to even try and justify this with a statement like: “It happens all the time.” 

Note: True on one point only: Getting dirt on an opponent in any campaign (called oppo) is common and not necessarily illegal unless a crime were connected to obtaining/receiving the oppo information (in any form); like stealing it, hacking from computers and databases and taking it, or B&E (e.g., Watergate DNC HQ break in), or say getting stolen info from WikiLeaks (Recall that Trump said publicly: “I love WikiLeaks.”

You may not think it was illegal, unlawful, or that it “happens all the time” – but the truth of the matter is that you can bet the Russians knew exactly what they were doing, legal or not. That was to cause or potentially cause as much election chaos and turmoil as possible. That has been and always will be the Russian goal in such matters.

It might, but getting caught like this with Russian hands all over it – well, Mr. President, even a Rick Perry oops moment won’t work.

Some Trump loyalists will cling to the word “try to solicit” saying “it was offered NOT solicited.”

However, Trump Jr. was clearly soliciting information that he thought was coming from the Russian lawyer. Given that political campaigns regularly pay thousands of dollars to opposition researchers to dig up dirt (that we all know happens), it seems like damaging information on Clinton would constitute something “of value” to the Trump campaign.

Thanks for stopping by.