Fucking Trump has become so bad that yeah, I would welcome Pence as a replacement.
It is amazing that I have to say this. How far we have fallen.
Right, but that would apply to the Russians, not the Americans in the Trump Administration.
I did see today, however, that the FBI is investigating payments from Russia to various election campaign efforts worldwide - that could be interesting.
Who would the FBI / DOJ prosecute? Julian Assange? He’s already wanted by the feds. Again, providing information of value…that’s not airtight. I’m not a lawyer but I’ve worked with campaigns, PACS, etc (to a limited degree). I’m at least generally familiar with what something of value means.
They pay for some of that information, but not all of it. Prove that the Trump campaign knowingly provided something of value in return for the information they received and then you have a case. Prove that they received information for nothing of value provided to the Russia and you might have a case. Big difference between absolutely have a case and might have one.
My understanding is that the likely explanation here is that the Russian foreign ministry sent payments to their embassies and consulates in several countries to fund expat polling stations for the 2016 Duma election.
Of course, it could all be part of a nefarious plot, as well. You never know with those wily Ruskies.
Yeah, I wonder seriously if this is really damaging stuff. It could be intended to knock intel agencies off balance, or there may be no intent at all and might be just intended to fund Russian consulates abroad. The Russians aren’t as dumb as Trump or the rest of us are – they know they’re monitored and they know the US watches money trails and that we have more tools to do that than any country on the planet.
If we bust Russia, it’ll be because they trusted the wrong morons and we got on their money trail.
Trumps list of failures is yuge, but one of the first was lifting the sanctions against Russia.
I would think that was “something of value”. Probably the first time Putin realized he backed a loser.
No, the law is bi-directional. Receipt is also illegal.
Foreign nationals | FEC (Starts about halfway down)
Section g in the law I posted earlier.
Right, but what did Trump receive – information? The question is how to define something of value, which isn’t easy. People can pay for opposition research, but they’re paying for someone to get dirt more than the dirt itself. Wikileaks normally doesn’t charge fees for its hacks. It gets informants or hackers to gather data and then it gets dumped out in the open. It’s certainly possible that some aspects of “collusion” may have violated laws in the realm of foreign policy or national security, but I think getting a jury to agree that campaign finance laws were broken isn’t going to be easy.
I’ve wondered if Donnie Jr might have violated the Logan Act, but I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know if the campaign’s conduct undermined US foreign policy in the legal sense. Manafort and Flynn probably did, but it’s less clear beyond those individuals.
If anyone gets indicted for violating the Logan Act, I will be flabbergasted. It’s not the most useful law, to put it mildly.
Exhibit A- the changes to the Republican 2016 platform that removed language that Russia might object to.
Exhibit B- promises to ease sanctions on Russia should Donald win the election
Yeah, but maybe he wanted to do that anyway.
“Your honor, it is true the defendant was seen walking out of the room with a smoking pistol immediately after the victim was shot. However, can you prove that the victim wasn’t actually shot by an unknown third party and this is just a big coincidence?”
I’m not feeling like the argument really works that because Wikileaks works for free, opposition research and website passwords would consequently be worthless. Just because Santa Claus gives me a Ferrari doesn’t mean that Ferraris are now worthless.
The purpose of the law, it can be safely assumed, is to prevent campaigns from becoming beholden to outside influences. Is that something which could potentially happen in this case? I think it’s safe to say ‘yes’. Unless you disagree that my statement about the purpose of the law is incorrect, I’m not seeing how, beyond simple denialism, you could argue that opposition research and website passwords are worthless to a campaign that is running for the presidency.
ISTM that this is something which should already be known in terms of practice. Has information been traditionally understood to be something of value in the context of that specific law? Because ISTM that getting information from foreign sources is pretty routine. The Steele dossier would be Exhibit #1. And if in fact the common practice is to do this and to treat information from foreign sources as being consistent with that law, then it would be pretty difficult to suddenly turn around and prosecute Trump people over that same thing.
[The same also applies though to a lesser extent to FARA violations. Apparently, who is required to register as a foreign agent is somewhat ambiguous, and there’s very little case history about it. Lobbying firms are reluctant to register due to PR considerations, and the law is widely honored in the breach. Not sure if that stands up in court, though.]
I should also note that if Junior did in fact log in to the indicated website, I’m pretty sure that he would be guilty of some form of hacking/encryption charge. (Though, whether the site had sufficient logs to prove that one way or the other would remain to be seen.)
By not reporting the known cyberintrusion into the one website, he is also - undeniably - guilty of failing to report the same hacking/encryption related crime to the authorities (unless he did report it - which I think we can all safely assume that he did not).
No idea. I believe that the law was enacted because of Bill Clinton’s receipts from China. The deed was already done by the time the law existed, so they couldn’t go back to prosecute the campaign.
Campaigns since then probably haven’t committed the crime (or at least, not been prosecuted for it). I suspect that it is a crime with no court history. Google can’t find an example, to be certain.
But I think it is fair to say that a campaign is fundamentally an undertaking of “information”. You’re not trying to make cars or toasters, you don’t need physical things. You just want to put your information against your opponents and to spread it as wide as possible. The only things of value to a campaign, in practical terms, are 1) money - because it helps to spread your information, 2) people, because it helps to spread your information, 3) new information to spread that would turn people towards you or away from your opponent.
If I was a guy making self-sucking straws, information about Hillary Clinton and the DNC might not be worth anything at all. But if you give him a little gizmo that is like a miniature impeller, that’s pretty damn core to the exact undertaking that he is engaged in. It would be laughable to say that a miniature impeller is not a thing of value for him.
To a campaign that is in the throes of demolishing Clinton and the DNC, I’d be hard pressed to explain why dirt on the opposition would not be of value? It is core to the exact undertaking.
Can you actually give some rationale why it would not be?
To be fair, how much direct input do presidential candidates have over their party’s platform? In my (small party) experience the delegates debate the platform planks and select the candidate they feel would best present that platform and carry them out; we were not bound by primary voting as the Ds and Rs are. Even so, their presidential candidate has limited influence over the platform. If the changes exist (I can’t be bothered to to a compare and contrast analysis on my own) I guess we’re back to condemning the whole Republican party, then.
In defense of my Pence snark, I think he would be much more effective than Donny Two-scoops in implementing the reprehensible domestic policy and I’m unconvinced that the his foreign-dealing prowess would ease the allies’ fears nor that he would trample the Constitution any less. The flouting political norms is a ship that sailed long ago; he’ll not be turning back for port on that one. The brink of war I’ll give you.
I gave you an example. The dossier.
Leaving aside whether anyone should be investigated for the “crime” of procuring that information, the fact is that when that dossier became known the “information from foreign sources” angle was not even raised, and no one batted an eyelash. This suggests that this type of op-research is routine, and the reason you can’t come up with prosecutions over it is for precisely this reason - because it’s not thought to be a crime.
It’s documented that people in the Trump campaign strong-armed the platform writers to change the language in it to make it easier on Russia.
And after the election. Story from July.