In bid for Clinton dirt, law may have been broken
WASHINGTON — Emails released Tuesday by President Donald Trump’s eldest son may offer the clearest sign to date of possible criminal violations arising from Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
Several campaign funding experts say the emails strongly suggest that Donald Trump Jr. violated federal election laws by arranging a high-level campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised to reveal damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Federal law makes it a crime for any person to “solicit, accept or receive” a contribution or “anything of value” from a foreign person for a U.S. political campaign or “for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office.”
This includes an “express or implied promise” to give something of value.
Under the law, persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines or imprisonment.
The emails released Tuesday show that Donald Trump Jr. was told that the Russian lawyer could “provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia andwould be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
“If it’s what you say,” he replied, “I love it especially later in the summer.” He then set up a meeting with Paul Manafort, then the campaign manager, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.
The emails “provide the smoking gun confirming that Donald Trump Jr. illegally solicited a contribution from a foreign national. This is very incriminating evidence,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president at Common Cause, an election watchdog group.
He said Manafort and Kushner could be charged withan illegal solicitation as well if they understood the purpose of themeeting.
Trump Jr.’s suggestion that he would prefer to see such damaging information appear “later in the summer” could also be seen as a sign of coordination over the timing of the release of the information.
Trump Jr. and his supporters dismiss such claims, insisting that campaigns routinely seek out and accept opposition research about their rivals.
Some legal experts have questioned whether opposition research would qualify under the law as something “of value.”
“I have a hard time seeing how a meeting is a contribution from a foreign national,” said Jan W. Baran, former general counsel for the Republican National Committee. “It’s not concrete. It doesn’t have a quantifiable value.”
Nevertheless, Common Cause filed a complaint Monday with the Federal Election Commission and Special Counsel Robert Mueller alleging the recent revelations show the Trump campaign had violated the lawby “soliciting a contribution from a foreign national.”
Election law violations are usually pursued as civil matters by the FEC that can lead to fines and penalties, but the Justice Department sometimes prosecutes knowing and willful violations as crimes.
“There is a plenty of evidence this meeting violated the law,” said Brendan Fischer, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center. “It is also the clearest evidence so far of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian agents.”
Since March, when then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed the probe of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, he said there were at least two major questions. Were there “any links” or “any coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russian agents? And second, were any crimes committed?
Critics of the probe have argued there is no federal lawthat clearly forbids “collusion” between a campaign and a foreign government. But election law uses the word “coordination” and makes it illegal for U.S. candidates to coordinate their efforts with foreign persons.
Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor, said that depending on what the investigation reveals, the Trump campaign could be charged with criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. But most lawyers predict Mueller’s investigation will focus on more narrow and targeted charges, including the possible election law violations.
Kushner and former national security adviser Michael Flynn could also be charged with making false statements if they deliberately omitted from their security clearance forms the fact that they had met with Russian officials. Kushner initially failed to mention the June meeting but did so later.
And President Donald Trump could face allegations of obstruction of justice for firing the FBI director because he had refused the president’s suggestion that Comey clear Flynn.
The new reports of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians may also bolster the obstruction charges, said Harvard law professor Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor.
“Despite the old adage that the ‘cover-up is always worse than the crime,’ obstruction charges will be harder to prove if in fact therewere no improprieties to hide,” he wrote Tuesday on the Just Security blog. “That is why the emerging collusion evidence could end up mattering so much to the obstruction inquiry. ... Suddenly, Trump’s actions to stop the FBI’s investigations... sinister. Now it appears that Trump may have in fact had something much larger to hide.”