I gotta go with former US Attorney Chris Christie on this one:
IIRC, the law in question says that one cannot solicit anything of value from foreigners (IIRC it doesn’t even specify reps of foreign governments – just non-Americans) in political campaigns, and that Don Jr.'s “I love it!” email and subsequent meetings might constitute intent to solicit something of value (damaging political information on the opponent).
But IANAL.
If that’s the legal theory behind BigT’s “That is illegal” claim, he would seem to be on more solid (but still, from my IANAL perspective, quite shaky) legal ground to claim that Trump’s “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” That’s a hell of a lot closer to ‘soliciting something of value’ than “I love it!”, don’t you think?
And you’ve generally trusted Christie’s legal opinions for approximately how long? “I think there’s a law” is powerful stuff though, so I could see how this statement alone could have won your admiration.
I don’t know, and I’m not making any conclusions until Mueller (or other legal authority) brings forth their findings.
Fair enough. That’s a prudent position.
Maybe I’ll get an answer from BigT or Thing Fish or BobLibDem and then we can have a discussion on why the Obama administration did not prosecute such a public apparent violation of this ‘solicit something of value from foreigners’ law a year ago.
I expect Obama didn’t try to prosecute for a few reasons – firstly, they probably knew a lot less than they/we know now, and secondly, he didn’t want to be accused of interfering in the election. Such a prosecution very obviously is incredibly politically fraught, especially if it’s in the midst of a political campaign.
Oh, no no. I’m very confident that if a year ago, Obama had started a public enquiry into the Trump campaign working with the Russians to interfere in the election, that the Republicans (and all those who support them on this board) would have been completely in favor of such an investigation, and into prosecutions if warranted. There was always great bipartisan respect for the office of the president in the past 8 years coming from Republicans in general.
<dissolves into gales of laughter>
**Hurricane: **Trump’s public statement amounted only to “I sure hope someone else chooses to commit a crime, and I bet another third party would be happy to pay them to do so”. It’s a pretty scummy thing for someone who’s ostensibly a patriotic American to say, but he didn’t personally promise to pay for any stolen information. If he had said “Russia, I hope you’re able to find those emails, and when you do, please call my son and arrange for a top secret meeting to pass them off!”, it would be a somewhat different situation. Still, there would be a vast difference between making such a general, plausibly hyperbolic, statement in public and secretly responding to a specific offer to receive information from a foreign agent. Hope that helps.
It doesn’t violate any espionage laws.
Oh, well, if you say so. Guess Trump has nothing to worry about, then. :rolleyes:
Do you generally hold Christie’s opinion on the law to be authoritative?
He says, and you quote with approval:
So at best, according to this, he thinks it is “probably,” against the law.
He doesn’t mention weighing the law against the protections of the First Amendment, I note, and he does not explain the process for such analysis.
Or I might be misreading you, and what you’re endorsing is “This is why you have the Department of Justice. . .” and the idea that he (Christie) is saying that the DoJ will do the requisite analysis.
Which, indeed, I hope they would.
But I think it’s a relatively easy call.
Again, think of prior illustrations I’ve made here in this thread. Imagine that during the Clinton campaign, the opposition researchers discovered that Trump’s DC hotel was hiring undocumented immigrants, non-citizens, and they interviewed several on-camera for a devastating ad about how they are paid below minimum wage, under the table, by Trump’s company.
That assistance would have been a “thing of value.” But I cannot bring myself to believe that anyone posting in this thread would have seen that ad and demanded that Clinton be brought to justice for accepting something of value from a non-citizen.
The reason is not hypocrisy: it’s the fact that we are very used to the idea that the First Amendment protects that kind of speech: political speech is at the very core, the very essence of the First Amendment.
When a law restricts First Amendment activity, it’s generally void, either completely (“overbreadth”) or “as-applied.” Here, any attempt to read “thing of value,” as “political information” runs into that problem.
He has plenty to worry about. Apart from being hopelessly unqualified for the office he holds and apparently baffled by the legislative process, he faces a heavy political price for the idiocy of the decision.
But he doesn’t face criminal liability. (Yet. He may well transform this into a criminal case by lying to investigators, or under oath. Because that’s the special kind of genius he is).
Wouldn’t a closer analogy be that the someone the Clinton campaign believes to represent the Mexican government says, “We really want you to win against Donald Trump. We have some info we can give you from deported Mexican citizens that will crater his campaign. Can we meet?”
Would that be a problem?
I agree that the meeting between Trump jr. et al and the Russians will not lead to any criminal charges, but I do think it gives Mueller some more space to dig a little deeper.
Given that, what would be the strictly legal answer to this hypothetical:
Let’s say that one of Trump’s inner circle (Don Jr. or Kushner, say), had ANOTHER meeting with some Russians. We have quite conclusive proof. In this meeting, the Russians say that they have “discovered” some websites that have some very terrible accusations against Ms. Clinton. They propose that they know some people who would be happy to use social media, just for fun, to point segments of the population to these Clinton-hating websites. Trouble is, they just don’t know which segments of the population to target. Basically, they are just fun-loving practical jokers.
Also, it becomes known that somehow, somebody was lax in security, and some unknown Russians managed to hack into Republican servers and get ahold of sensitive information about targeted voter groups in areas of the country that were seen as susceptible to flipping from Clinton to Trump.
It is determined that these websites did indeed exist, and that social media was indeed used by “anonymous” posters to point people to these websites.
The Trump team claims that these meetings were “a big nothing”, and they did not take the Russians up on this offer. And furthermore, their own servers were hacked, and the unnamed person who did not take security seriously has been disciplined. (they have been punished enough, no need to reveal their name)
Has a crime been committed?
Likely not a criminal one, because the FEC regulation at issue does not distinguish between a foreign government and a foreign national:
And:
I have a low opinion of Christie, but I think as a former prosecutor he has a better grasp of legal matters than I do. Moreover, as a guy who has spent the better part of the year kissing the Donald Rump, his opinion carries more weight in my view precisely because it goes against his political preferences. I have infinitely more respect for Hillary than I do Christie, but an opinion by Christie against Donnie Jr. is more consequential than Hillary’s because it goes against the political current.
Treason is a word bandied about by conservatives regarding everything from Benghazi to the Iran nuclear deal. But when a hostile foreign power expresses interest in helping a particular campaign and says as much in an email to the son of that candidate, then in my opinion his seeking such help is more treasonous than anything they’ve accused Hillary of.
Is the better word “espionage”?
*
“Whoever, in aid of any foreign government, knowingly and willfully possesses or controls any property or papers used or designed or intended for use in violating any penal statute, or any of the rights or obligations of the United States under any treaty or the law of nations, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”*
Perhaps. I think the difference between committing espionage against the US, compensating others for having done so, and committing treason is just a matter of wordsmithing.
Once you guys figure out le mot juste make sure you let the rest of the Democrat collective know. Lol.