Timing of these subpoenas is interesting. It was in mid October. After they had Popadopolus but before that news was public. Wonder if any of the twelve “forgot” to supply any documents that Mueller already knew about.
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The issue of receiving something of value is relevant to campaign finance law, not necessarily Logan Act. I suppose someone could consider the information as something of value, but really, when you’re paying for oppo research, you’re paying someone to do the research, usually a research firm or professional who does this sort of thing for money. It’s not clear if the law applies.
With regard to Logan Act, I’ve no doubt that Trump’s campaign promised better treatment of Russia through foreign policy once elected, but then again, if elected, he has the power to do that legally. It’s what he does before and in spite of congress that matters. I agree that the Logan Act could apply but I’ve yet to see definite, absolute proof that it does. It’s murky.
So following your argument to its absurd extreme, let’s lay out a scenario and you tell me if it’s a violation or not:
- Candidate Moore schedules an event at Trump Hotel in DC.
- As part of the contract, Moore for Senate, Inc. agrees to pay sufficient money to ensure that the ballroom walls are covered in murals composed of naked teenage girls.
- Trump International obtains the services of a foreign-born artist in the country without a visa (and thus unable/unwilling to sue) to paint the murals, but then stiffs him on the bill, on the grounds that none of the teenage girls look like Ivanka and are thus unacceptable.
- But it’s too late and the MfS event is held with the murals (per the campaign’s instructions) still on the wall.
Is Moore for Senate liable for a violation of the campaign finance laws you mention? What if the painter was paid, but stiffed his Mexican assistant? How deep is the campaign obligated to go?
The law doesn’t mention subcontracting, so it certainly didn’t violate the letter of the law. Fusion GPS is an American company.
Whether it violated the spirit would require a court.
While I’ll grant that the Supreme Court is still agonizing over textuality vs. spirit, I feel like I have read that it’s a base assumption at the lower levels that laws are generally subsidiary to context. Boxing in a ring is not aggravated assault; the man who shot Brandon Lee isn’t guilty of any form of homicide; and your first DUI doesn’t have the same sentencing as your second.
If I go to National Rent-a-Car, pay them upfront, and they go out and steal a car from Mexico, drive it over the border, and give it to me, and I have no reason to expect that they’d have done any of that then the fact that I’m driving a stolen, illegally imported vehicle is not my fault.
If Clinton knew or can be reasonably assumed to have believed that Steele would go to Russia, gather information from Russians, and that Steele’s methods of gaining that information would potentially make her beholden to foreign persons, then I would call that a crime. But pretty much anything less than that and it would be hard to argue that there would be any realistic reason to expect that she wouldn’t bite the deal as done the instant she handed her money over to a for-profit, American business.
Probably covered under indirect contributions.
If a candidate used a subcontractor to solicit campaign contributions from foreigners - suppose further that those contributions weren’t paid directly to the campaign but were instead given to campaign creditors - is that a contribution?
But I think it’s worse in the case of information (again, assuming you think it’s a contribution). Information is not something that sits in someone’s bank account and either belongs to you or doesn’t. Information given to Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign is effectively the same thing as information given to the Clinton campaign.
Bottom line is that I remain very skeptical as to whether anyone ever considered information to be a “thing of value” for purposes of campaign laws. I’m not any sort of lawyer, though. I guess we’ll see (assuming that Trump actually got any information or that willingness to accept it opens people up to some sort of conspiracy charge).
I would say that it’s almost certain that the person who wrote the law said “money” and the guy standing next to him heard that, thought back to his campaign experiences, and quickly determined that there was a reasonable umbrella of other things (demographics research, opposition research, advertising, etc.) that, if they only banned money, a foreign power would just skip the middle man and go straight to the things that the campaign would use the money on. It seems unlikely that there would be any other purpose to the “things of value” qualification.
Can you think of any alternate reason for the addition? Do you debate the concept that opposition research is the sort of thing that a campaign would spend money on?
There are all sorts of goods and services that a campaign could appreciate without being paid directly in cash.
[FWIW, I would distinguish between “research” and “information”. Research is work, involving collecting and analyzing information. Information is just abstract ideas. I imagine if a campaign got free campaign analysis from foreigners that would qualify. If they were just told information that would not.]
Information is VALUABLE. I provide information to clients, and they pay me for it, because it is A THING OF VALUE.
I honestly can’t wrap my head around the idea of anybody arguing that “information” is somehow valueless. Anything that you would be willing to pay (or barter) for is inherently of value.
I feel like that was my point?
I’m reasonably sure that information doesn’t just float out of the sky like rain, straight into the hands of the people who need it, delivered by the forces of nature. Somewhere in there, someone did research, aggregation, and/or dissemination.
Everyone agrees that information has value. That’s obvious. The question is whether in the context of that law information was commonly understood to be a “thing of value” (or whatever the precise term was).
Language works like that. You can’t always parse it with dictionary meanings.
It seems to undermine your point. You seemed to be suggesting that the only alternative to cash was “demographics research, opposition research, advertising, etc.”, which seemed shaped so as to include information. My point was that there could be any amount of other goods and services that a campaign could, e.g. free office space and hotel stays, airfare etc. etc.
That’s not what’s being paid for when you’re getting info from your sources.
I was lumping those under the heading of “spreading the information”, but it’s fair that I might be overencapsulating there. Though, not relevant to the question of whether information is of value to a campaign.
Do you have an argument, beyond denialism, that information is not of value to a campaign? As of yet, you have not given one, despite many posts.
Dissemination.
Moreover, in this context, there is also the interpretive canon that says you don’t read a statute to be unconstitutional. There would be serious First Amendment problems with criminalizing the sharing of information.
I would think that if you want to see a campaign finance violation (either on the part of the DNC or the Trump campaign), you’d have to argue that the thing of value was not the information but the work that went into creating it. In the Russia case, it seems that work may have happened before any quid pro quo, so it makes that argument harder. I don’t know to what extent that is also true of the Steele dossier.
I’ve not claimed that information has no value to a campaign. You may have skipped my post on the subject.
Happy Thanksgiving. Flynn flipped. Hard to pretend it’s a nothingburger when your National Security Advisor is cooperating against you. Also, can’t imagine that you flip a witness to try to nail someone lower, and there ain’t much higher than Flynn.
*Lawyers for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, notified the president’s legal team in recent days that they could no longer discuss the special counsel’s investigation, according to four people involved in the case, an indication that Mr. Flynn is cooperating with prosecutors or negotiating such a deal.
Mr. Flynn’s lawyers had been sharing information with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining whether anyone around Mr. Trump was involved in Russian efforts to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
That agreement has been terminated, the four people said. Defense lawyers frequently share information during investigations, but they must stop when doing so would pose a conflict of interest. It is unethical for lawyers to work together when one client is cooperating with prosecutors and another is still under investigation.*
I’m surprised it took this long, but I don’t care – this news made my holiday!! Thanks for sharing it, FiveYearLurker!! I guess the Flynns got tired of waiting for those pardons. :dubious:
Time to go bust open the wine. 
Dinner ready in about an hour.
Re the Logan Act, sounding more and more like Jared Kushner has quite a lot to worry about too. From what I’ve been reading and hearing, Mueller is all over that, and from the Logan Act angle specifically.
i hope the Howling Yam’s t-Day is completely ruined with the timing of this.
I hope the timing was intentional. 
Its different at his house, he sits around and everybody thanks him.
I’d make a joke about Trump before Thanksgiving dinner telling his family to go around the table and say thanks for his greatness, but he actually made his CABINET do that, so actually it’s not a joke at all.
Trump announces one more turkey to pardon. Flynn shows up covered in feathers.
With a little tar mixed in?