Senate bill targets campaigns’ unreported foreigner contacts

WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee is filing legislation to impose criminal penalties on campaign officials who fail to disclose contacts with foreigners, aiming to make the type of unreported meetings members of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign held with Russians illegal in the future.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., pointed to the “at least 140 contacts between Trump associates and Russians or WikiLeaks” identified by special counsel Robert Mueller as his inspiration for the legislation, which would impose fines of up to $500,000 and sentences of up to five years in prison on future campaign officials who don’t report outreach from foreigners within one week of such contact.

“Most Americans already know that if a foreign adversary reaches out about interfering in our elections, you should report that contact,” Warner said in a statement. “It’s clear that some Americans haven’t taken that responsibility seriously — in fact, the Trump campaign welcomed the help.”

Warner is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which for more than two years has conducted Congress’ only bipartisan investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet his legislation does not have Republican co-sponsors.

Warner characterized his bill as an effort to expose when foreigners attempt “to coordinate or collaborate” during a political campaign — something Trump and his allies have denied the president engaged in.

Despite those denials, certain contacts between the Trump campaign and foreign citizens — such as Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s ties to a Russian oligarch and the campaign’s 2016 meeting in Trump Tower — have drawn scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans, perplexed by the nature of those contacts.

Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Warner have publicly disagreed over whether they have seen evidence of collusion. In a recent interview, Burr also stressed that if the panel was going to scrutinize questionable foreign contacts on the part of the Trump campaign, it would have to do so in equal measure for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“If you’re going to be critical of the willingness of the Trump campaign to sit with a Russian who probably said ‘Hey, we got dirt on Hillary Clinton’ … you gotta be critical of the Clinton campaign hiring a lawyer to pay Glenn Simpson to hire a retired British agent to create a dossier from Russian contacts,” he said, referring to the figures behind a dossier alleging the president had personal and financial ties to Russian officials.

Warner’s foreign-contacts bill would institute a requirement that campaigns set up a compliance system certified by the candidate, in addition to imposing foreign penalties. It also requires that all incoming workers be trained about their obligation to report foreign attempts to donate information, services, funds or “otherwise coordinate with the candidate.”

The campaign would be required to report such contacts to the Federal Election Commission, which would in turn notify the FBI. Campaigns would be required to keep records of all such contacts for three years.