Consider the source.
Stranger
I am a Canadian citizen.
I’m officially advising the American electorate (at least the ones on this board) that Donald Trump is an ignorant, incompetent buffoon. Furthermore, he is repugnant and vile person.
So according to LAZombie I guess that means I’m a foreign contributor to the Democrats.
Foreigners, in many cases, and particularly Russians, don’t have the best interests of America at heart. It’s more than just ‘advice.’ It’s quid pro quo, which is about the only way I can describe altering a plank in the Republican Party platform, encouraging election-tampering, public credulousness for blatant lies by their leader, and heel-dragging for eight months on sanctions after Congress passed them over his head. It’s aid to the (or at least an) enemy.
Registration says nothing about their activities, and those usually don’t come out until after the fact, if at all.
LOL classic.
Accepting a bribe in exchange for a political favor is illegal no matter who the bribing party is, and no matter what their nationality is. The difference when it comes to someone acting as a foreign national is that no material assistance of any kind can be received by a candidate whether a quid pro quo is in the mix or not.
The only question I would have is: Is it illegal for the party doing the giving, or is it just illegal for the US candidate who is on the receiving end? I honestly don’t know. And if the party doing the giving is outside US borders, then saying it’s illegal is, to a certain extent, moot as long as that party doesn’t travel to the US.
Yes, that is the question I’m raising.
I don’t see how you posting on SDMB is different from Russians posting on Twitter.
This raises the question of what freedom of speech rights do foreign entities have? Illegal immigrants have due process and privacy rights. Why stop there?
Those are two different things. We can’t make it illegal for Russians to post on Twitter. That would be absurd. But it’s also true that once you are in the US, whether legally or illegally, there are a whole set of rights that you have that you might not otherwise have if you were physically outside the US. That was one of the main reasons Bush set up the detention camp in Guantanamo. Maybe the reason for doing so.
So anyone who says it’s illegal for a foreigner to try and influence a US election is speaking too broadly. We can’t arrest Vladimir Putin if he says he hopes the Republicans don’t lose the House, and we’re not going to stop him from visiting the US just because he said something like that. And if we did, we’d be the biggest hypocrites in the world. See “Radio Free Europe”.
Besides extradition, that “certain extent” has been decreasing with the increasing use of sanctions not only on countries, but on companies and even individual people.
If you and the interests you represent have the resources to interfere in a US election, the US also has the resources to run some significant interference of their own right back at you and your interests, one way or the other.
Isn’t that what Mueller did in his indictment of Russian troll farms?
First of all, of you can’t distinguish between an individual posting their personal opinions and a foreign government creating fictitious American personas in order for the President of Russia to get the American President he wanted, I’m not sure how to explain the difference to you.
Perhaps you also don’t see a difference between a surgeon who loses a patient on the operating table and a hit man putting the bullet in the head of a mob snitch?
Foreign governments do not have a First Amendment right to distribute misinformation and engage in political campaigns. It isn’t even a controversy. But like others, it seems clear that you have chosen your side based on your political views, therefore when your side does something, it’s okay.
It really isn’t. Charges are related to things like identity fraud, wire and bank fraud, and presenting themselves as Americans while violating the types of speech that are covered under campaign financing laws which limit foreign involvement. They didn’t get indicted for the simple act of sending tweets that focused on US politics.
Yep. This is not the easiest read in the world, but if anyone in interested, this is the text of the indictments.
You really honestly cannot figure out the difference between my posting and a foreign government (or agent thereof) offering direct assistance to a campaign?
Really?
Like really really?
Wow. That’s, oh let’s go with, impressive, but not in a good way.
Ultimately, a person (not a “government”) is posting something. In effect you’re saying that person loses First Amendment rights depending on your inference of why it was posted. That seems like a true slippery slope (not all slippery slopes are fallacious).
Please try to explain the difference to the slow witted among us. And the false equivalence analogy isn’t an argument.
I’m also going to ask you to explain that in more detail. How can we make it illegal for a foreign government to create “fictitious personas”? You say “in order for the President of Russia to get the American president he wanted”, but who is saying they have evidence this traces to Putin? And as long as money or “material value” is not involved, how would the activity be illegal? Is it illegal for a foreign government to “distribute misinformation” and who decides if the information is “misinformation”? Is it illegal for foreign governments to “engage in political campaigns”? Can’t they do so under certain circumstances?
There are certainly illegal things that can be attributed to Russian agents, hence the indictments, but you seem to be making overly broad statements rather than pointing to those explicitly illegal activities as put forth in those indictments.
There are quite a few laws that treat protected activity differently based on connections to foreign powers. For example, lobbying for foreign interests requires additional disclosures compared to lobbying for foreign interests. And closer to home, campaign finance laws generally prohibit activities by foreign persons that are perfectly fine for US persons. Further, the use of false American personas may, depending on the actions at stake, could add fraud or conspiracy laws to the mix.
And a big high-five for trying to argue with a straight face that your slippery slope fallacy is fine, but you won’t countenance anyone responding with something that you could cry “fallacy! Fallacy! Invalid argument, lalalalala!” Bold move, dude.
Is this because meddling is not actually a crime? It seems to me that most of these charges are minor process crimes not the stuff of spy novels. It’s curious that they supposedly took the identities of real Americans and yet none of the victims have been presented in the media.
No, “meddling” is how we solve crimes, especially when done by kids.
More seriously, neither “meddling” nor “collusion” are in themselves necessarily crimes, but may simply be laymen’s terms for a whole raft of activities covering a range of criminality. Don’t get too hung up on the broad descriptors; the meat of the matter is in the texts of the indictments.
I wasn’t aware “must be the stuff of spy novels” was a legal requirement to bring charges against someone.
And to the larger point, whether the general activity of “meddling” is a crime is a minor point. Aggression by one nation upon another isn’t something always dealt with by the criminal code. For example, Russia’s annexation of Crimea: it was wrong, but I question whether Ukraine has a specific law that defines it as wrong.
What’s more, the fact that Russia was doing things to help Trump is pretty clear; and even if you want to dismiss this as just international intrigue, having members of the Trump campaign and family appear to welcome this aggression IS a big deal.
IIRC, there were numerous large anti-Trump demonstrations before the Elections, protesting his proposed immigration policies. While I don’t have hard numbers, it is doubtless that a number of people, participating in those demonstrations, were foreign nationals, residing in the US unlawfully (ie, criminals).
This was a clear and blatant interference in the US election process by foreigners and the failure to investigate it by previous administration was close, if not tantamount, to treason.
And, of course, things get even dicier with Trump and Trump’s entourage’s business interests in Russia. You have the makings of some serious campaign law violations plus some serious corruption charges, either of which could be grounds for impeachment and/or grounds for criminal action even if that action doesn’t happen until Trump is no longer in office. As several of us have noted, son-in-law Jared seems to be the person closest to Trump who is especially vulnerable.
Given the whole presidential pardon thing, I think it would be wise for any charges leveled against to Trump to happen after he is out of office. No need to make him the SCOTUS test case on the ability of a president to pardon himself.