Would anyone in Clinton’s campaign have accepted help from someone if it was made manifestly clear that the help was coming via a Russian head prosecutor, and that they were told up front that “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Ms. Clinton.”
Do you think that given this information, no one in Clinton’s campaign would have hesitated to set up a meeting? Because it seems to me that this information about Russian involvement is quite central to whether or not a reasonable person would have accepted “help”.
I think this is probably true in the end (see Bartnicki and even US v. Stevens), but it would certainly be a fact relevant to the analysis of whether the First Amendment forbids criminalizing the solicitation of this particular thing of value, right?
You’re on shaky ground in comparing the ‘mobilizing Dreamers to inspire citizens to vote’ situation to the invitation to the “meeting with you [Don Jr.] and the Russian government lawyer” situation: under US law,
So such volunteer activity is not considered to be a “thing of value”.
In that, it differs from what was offered to Don Jr. during the meeting with the “Russian government lawyer” he agreed to take, when told that he might receive “very high level and sensitive information” that “would incriminate Hillary” and “would be very useful to your father.”
Bricker, as for your questions about § 110.20 (or § 30121 which is what I quoted): it’s true that the US Code with regard to foreign donations makes no explicit reference to the method under which the information that constitutes the donation was acquired. My two points are: the demonstrated intention to receive illegally-obtained information has legal implications (and potentially, associated consequences) beyond § 30121; and the nature of the information being donated might have bearing in the question of the value of the donation. For example, a donation of a list of a state’s counties with numbers of those registered as Republican and Democrat, might have no value because such a list is available for no charge on the Internet. But a donation of a list of election officials, with personally compromising information on each–a document that could only be compiled using hacked data–that donation might have considerable assessed value.
Another thing that is puzzling… If indeed Trump is correct, and “anyone would have taken this meeting”, or posters here are correct and this is not a big deal, anyone on Hillaries team would have done the same…
Then why the lying from Trump Jr. and associated others with Trump’s campaign team? Why the obfuscation about meeting with Russians? Does anyone think they honestly forgot? It seems to me that they deliberately withheld this information until it was impossible to deny anymore.
If there are no problems with meeting with a Russian to discuss things that are " obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.", then why not simply report that they did this months ago?
Well, that’s kind of the point. The claim was made that anything Trump got from a foreign national could be a “thing of value”. We figured that some folks might understand the issue better if it was Clinton getting the help rather than Trump.
Because the Russian government likely has “high level” and “sensitive” material and if the Russian government wants to give that to someone then they presumably can without violating any law.
If we read the offer to suggest that the information is not being willingly supplied by the government, then I agree that it would be a reasonable inference that the information had been illegally obtained. But the offer suggest (even states) that this is being provided at the direction of a senior government official as part of a government operation. That raises a number of issues, but I 'm not sure why one of them would be the assumption that person providing the information had obtained it illegally.
Put it this way: if I met with a government official who was providing me information about government activities at the request of the Attorney General as part of a government program (and I believed these things were true), it would never occur to me that the formation was illegally obtained.
By the way, the MSM keep reporting that the information was supposed to come from “the Crown prosecutor” in Russia. There is no such thing as a “Crown prosecutor” and there has not been a “Crown” in Russia for 100 years or so.
It’s irrelevant and immaterial that such a thing doesn’t exist.
The point is that Don Jr. was told that the “CP” was offering “to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary” and that this “obviously very high level and sensitive information” would be very useful to Trump. And acting on that information, Don Jr. agreed to meet.
You’re far adrift on hypotheticals, here. But I’ll join you on your rickety raft for a moment to ask: what information that “would incriminate Hillary” could the Russian government have obtained legally?
You (and a lot of others) seem to be stuck on the “hacking” angle.
Obviously if they could show money transfers from Russian government (or just Russian non-US citizens) to Hillary’s campaign or to DNC that would “incriminate Hillary” and would be legally obtained information?
I’m kind of taking a MSM break but when they refer to the email have they been noting that there is no Crown prosecutor in Russia? Perhaps owing to the lack of Crowns?