Houlahan bill to limit foreign campaign finance

U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan has friends who hail from the United Kingdom. But as much as she might treasure their company, one thing she does not want is their assistance.

That is, mind you, their financial assistance with her congressional campaign. Houlahan, the freshman Democrat from the 6th Congressional District covering Chester County, believes that foreign nationals have no role in funding campaigns fr national office in the United States.

“Elections are domestic affairs, regardless of what country you are from,” Houlahan said Friday in an interview explaining the reasoning behind legislation she plans on introducing soon to penalize those who aid foreign nationals in providing campaign funds to candidates. “The people participating in our elections should be u.s. citizens.

“I have friends that are British, but they should not be allowed to contribute to my campaign,” she said.

Houlahan’s bill, which would codify in federal law what is now provided for in Federal Election Commission regulations, is part of a set of legislative proposals put

together by a bi-partisan group of freshman legislators in the House of Representatives designed to provide security for U.S. elections.

The six Democrats and one Republican call themselves Task Force Sentry, a title meant to highlight the specific backgrounds they bring to the table, including some with experience in the CIA, military and the technology field. Houlahan is a former U.S. Air Force officer with degrees in engineering.

“We’re drawing a line in the sand,” said U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat from Virginia and a former Central Intelligence Agency operations officer. “We’re standing watch, we’ve been attacked, and a sentry stands watch to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailed how Russian operatives used information warfare to attack the 2016 U.S. election process. But those details have been largely overshadowed by the highly partisan debate over the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia and whether President Donald

Trump tried to obstruct the investigation.

That prompted the freshman lawmakers — traditionally the lowest people in the congressional power structure — to take on the issue themselves, meeting once a week for the past two months to discuss and craft the legislative package that Houlahan’s bill will be one piece of.

The group includes Republican U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, (a former Indianapolis Colt), and Democrats Houlahan, Spanberger, Rebecca Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Lauren Underwood of Illinois and Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico.

According to Houlahan, through her bill, the Task Force is working to “remove any ambiguity about what it means for an American to help a foreign national violate U.S. campaign finance law.

“FEC regulations provides more detail than the law, and we want to get rid of the daylight between the two,” she wrote. “My bill makes it easier for the government to determine whether or not a U.S. citizen violated campaign finance law by facilitating an illegal foreign contribution.”

For example, it is illegal for an American campaign

fundraiser to accept or solicit a contribution from a foreign national, she said. “Under existing law, this type of activity is already prohibited, but my bill makes it easier for a court of law to prove that an American’s conduct in supporting such activities is illegal. It codifies it.”

Interference in U.S. elections has been well documented beyond the Mueller report. The Task Force members have their own stories about examples.

Gonzalez recalled driving into work recently and hearing an “incendiary” story about a hate crime in the South playing on a District of Columbia radio station. When they cut to commercial, he realized it was Sputnik radio, which is funded by the Russian government.

Houlahan remembers a different “scary” moment at a Best Western hotel in Indiana a couple years ago when she saw the Russian state-funded TV channel “RT” playing while “everybody is just eating their breakfast, you know, thinking they’re getting news.”

Both RT and Sputnik have been singled out by U.S. intelligence for their involvement in the Kremlin’s “influence campaign” to increase support for Trump in the lead up to the 2016 election. They have

denied it.

The lawmakers say leadership is aware and supportive of their efforts and they are cautiously hopeful that their new ideas paired with a lack of ego and baggage will help ensure their efforts aren’t for naught.

“I don’t think anybody in

this room cares if we have our names on this thing or own it, we care about protecting the country,” Slotkin said. “That was the mission, and many of us have worked in environments like that our entire lives.”

As freshman lawmakers

“we don’t have years and years of history built up to make it more difficult than it needs to be.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story. To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.