To be perfectly clear this article was copy and paste from DailyKos. Because the South Korean papers or Guardian are kinda slow on their reporting or scared or something. Maybe too cumbersome ... regardless
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There’s a law both against foreign nationals making a contribution.
A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.
And against US nationals accepting that contribution.
No person shall knowingly solicit, accept, or receive from a foreign national any contribution or donation prohibited by paragraphs (b) through (d) of this section.
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Donald Trump Jr. told Russians that Trump would review the Magnitsky Act 'If we come to power'
By Mark Sumner
Monday Nov 06, 2017 · 9:22 AM EST
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The final gaps in the conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign are being filled in, and the resulting pictures looks much as many suspected from the outset—stolen information on offer in exchange for promises of removing sanctions.
Over the weekend, Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya reiterated that she came to the June 9 Trump Tower both with an offer and a price.
Veselnitskaya said she went to New York to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes and to lobby against the so-called Magnitsky law that punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.
And she found that the Trump campaign was amenable to the deal.
“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Trump Jr. said of the 2012 law, she recalled. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it,” he added, according to her.
And that’s all there is to it: Russia offered material to help Trump in the election. In exchange the Trump campaign offered to see what they could do to help with sanctions. That’s illegal on the face of it. Then multiple members of the Trump campaign worked together in an effort to hide information about this agreement—including a direct effort from Donald Trump to obscure the nature of the meeting between Veselnitskaya and his campaign team.
Done. Game over. Conspiracy complete. Which is why Trump’s team is working hard to move the goalposts.
The Trump team has retreated from “no one on the campaign” to “the president while he was a candidate” didn’t directly meet with a Russian. Because every possible step of motive, means, and execution has been filled in.
The Trump campaign was made aware that the Russians had stolen emails from Democratic sources months before anyone else knew, via George Papadopoulos.
The Trump campaign was offered this material, and told that it was part of a Russian government plan to assist Trump, in an email exchange between Rob Goldstone and Donald Trump Jr.
The Trump campaign was given details on what Russia wanted in exchange for their stolen goods in a meeting between Trump Jr., Manafort, Kushner and representatives of the Russian government with Natalia Veselnitskaya acting as the spokesperson.
The Trump campaign agreed to Russia’s terms, and was rewarded with the release of the stolen information through Wikileaks—which Donald Trump personally used to gain advantage in the campaign.
Everything else—from the many instances of money laundering to whatever Jefferson Sessions was discussing in his multiple meetings with the Russian ambassador—is strictly for the “other charges” section of the inevitable indictments.
For those who are rushing forward to say that “collusion” is not a crime … wrong. There may be no crime named “collusion,” but accepting something of value from a foreign government in the course of a campaign is definitely a violation of US law.
There’s a law both against foreign nationals making a contribution.
A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.
And against US nationals accepting that contribution.
No person shall knowingly solicit, accept, or receive from a foreign national any contribution or donation prohibited by paragraphs (b) through (d) of this section.
There’s a word in the last section that’s been the crux of the matter all along: knowingly. The Trump campaign clearly benefited from material that would be prohibited under the law, but the issue was whether they did so knowingly. The statement of offense against George Papadopoulos was clearly designed to help nail down the definitive evidence that the Trump campaign, no matter how many times they denied it, not only knew, but knew only days after Russians stole the information.
Veselnitskaya’s statement only puts another stake in the idea that the Trump campaign blundered into a bounty without knowing its source. And while Veselnitskaya still says the meeting “fell apart” over disinterest in the memo she brought with her about potential illegal campaign funding, that means little in the face of Trump Jr. expressing to Rob Goldstone that he would “love” to see the material Russia had to help Trump and his offer to review the Magnitsky sanctions “if we come to power.”
All of this might not have been enough to indict twenty years ago, but Republicans actually led the charge to tighten up the laws against foreign contributions after, what else, an investigation they launched into Bill Clinton.
Following the 1996 elections, the Republican Party concluded that the victorious Bill Clinton had benefited from foreign intervention in his election. Its Senate majority organized hearings, chaired by the late Senator Fred Thompson, who opened then with the declaration that high-level Chinese officials had committed substantial sums of money to influence the presidential election. The ensuing investigation, which included a parallel criminal inquiry, did not live up to Senator Thompson’s most dramatic claims, but Congress later amended the law to tighten the long- standing prohibition against foreign national spending in federal elections.
The result might not be poetic justice … but there certainly seems to be a rhyme in there
