Bob Bauer at Just Security writes—Not Just a Personal Problem for Trump Jr.–Now Trouble for the Trump Campaign and Trump Sr.:
There is an impression developing in the current reporting that somehow Donald Trump Jr.’s emails and activities may be primarily a personal problem. But he was, of course, an agent of the campaign, acting on its behalf, when he arranged the meeting with the Russian lawyer. He successfully invited to that meeting senior campaign brass, including the campaign manager. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort are included on the entire email chain reflecting in clear terms the Russian government’s support for the Trump campaign and the scheduling of the meeting so that a Russian government lawyer could tender negative information on Secretary Clinton. This is not an individual venture of Trump Jr. that the Trump campaign can somehow disavow.
So while the individuals in question may not escape liability, the serious issue raised by the meeting exposes the campaign as an organization to criminal legal jeopardy. Any illegal “solicitation” of support from Russia is also the campaign’s illegal solicitation. It is for the campaign’s benefit that its leadership expressed interest in what the lawyer had.
Under campaign finance regulations, the meeting could without question be considered a solicitation (at least under the facts so far known). The law defines a solicitation to include any request for a contribution, or “anything of value,” even if the request is implicit in the circumstances rather than expressly communicated. The regulations provide specifically that the solicitation “may be made directly or indirectly,” based on all relevant factors, including the “conduct of the persons involved in the communication.” [...]
Also worth reading is Bauer’s piece written before Junior Trump spun heads around with his tweeted “confession.” It’s titled Open Door to Moscow? New Facts in the Potential Criminal Case of Trump Campaign Coordination with Russia and here are three excerpted grafs to whet your appetite for more. And don’t tell me tl;dr. We’re talking about the making of history here. Compared with breaking into an office to steal files or getting extramarital blowjob don’t even come close:
To coordinate spending is to receive a contribution. It is also illegal to solicit a contribution or expenditure–any “thing of value”–from a foreign national. 52 U.S.C. 30121(a)(2); 11 C.F.R. § 110.20 (g). A solicitation also need not be express: it can be implied. It is useful to consider the regulatory definition of “solicitation” adopted by the Federal Election Commission. I have put in italics key portions:
To solicit means to ask, request, or recommend, explicitly or implicitly, that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value. A solicitation is an oral or written communication that, construed as reasonably understood in the context in which it is made, contains a clear message asking, requesting, or recommending that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value. A solicitation may be made directly or indirectly. The context includes the conduct of persons involved in the communication.
11 C.F.R. §300.2(m).
In sum a solicitation may be implied as well as express, and it is determined by examining all the relevant circumstances, including the context in which the communication in question is made. The President made an express appeal in public comments for Russian help, and the potential for finding an illegal contribution is reinforced by his repeated refusals to acknowledge or denounce the Russians for what the intelligence community formally found to be their program of interfering in the election. The freshly reported communications with Russian nationals add weight to the question of whether he and his campaign were really “soliciting” or just “joking.”
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
~Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BC in The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—John McCain forgot that he had an affair:
An article in today’s Los Angeles Times about John McCain’s adultery and subsequent divorce chose to focus on how his actions affected his relationship with Ron and Nancy Reagan. But as sad as it is to learn that Nancy treated McCain with "cool correctness" after he left his disabled wife and three children for a 24 year old heiress, why don’t we just stay with this aspect of the story; the part where John McCain either forgot that he had carried on an affair for nine months or he lied about it in interviews and in his memoir, Worth Fighting For. […]
McCain has blamed his actions on his "immaturity" (he was 42), but he still hasn’t explained if he’s been lying about having had an affair with his current wife, or if it’s just one more thing that he’s confused about.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: OK, so, there was some treason, or whatever. But what about the Qatar story everyone who wasn’t talking about treason was talking about? Or that Medicaid repeal bill that will cost millions their insurance? If “moderates” say it’s fixed, can you believe them?
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