Featured News

One Damning Paragraph Shows How Trump Broke The Law With Wikileaks

It’s against the law to even ask for or receive a “contribution or donation of money or other thing of value” in connection with a U.S. election. One does not have to even receive it to have broken federal law.

This point was made very carefully by Vice President of policy and litigation at Common Cause and government watchdog Paul Seamus Ryan.

This means that: “If indictment allegations are true, it certainly appears Donald Trump or another high official in his campaign illegally solicited a campaign contribution from a foreign national–in the form of requests that Stone obtain damaging information on Clinton for the Trump campaign. This is true even if the Trump campaign never received any hacked emails or other oppo research on Clinton privately and, instead, only saw the hacked emails when Wikileaks released them to the public,” Ryan explained on Twitter.

Former Trump campaign adviser and ally Roger Stone was indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on charges of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements related to the release during the 2016 presidential election of hacked Democratic emails. Stone was charged with seven criminal counts of lying to Congress about his possible advance knowledge of Wikileaks plans to release Clinton’s hacked emails.

Here’s Ryan’s thread on how just asking for the info from a foreign national is a violation of federal law:

The finishing thoughts:

Opposition research (i.e., damaging info about opponent) is of immense value to candidates—they regularly pay research firms big $ for it.

A donation of opposition research to a candidate is clearly a “contribution” under federal campaign finance law.

In this case, the source of the opposition research (i.e., “contribution”) was one or more foreign nationals–Julian Assange and Russian hackers.

If indictment allegations are true, it certainly appears Donald Trump or another high official in his campaign illegally solicited a campaign contribution from a foreign national–in the form of requests that Stone obtain damaging information on Clinton for the Trump campaign.

This is true even if the Trump campaign never received any hacked emails or other oppo research on Clinton privately and, instead, only saw the hacked emails when Wikileaks released them to the public.

If the Trump campaign sought this info, and let’s not forget that Trump himself asked Russia for help finding Clinton’s emails during a public speech, they allowed a foreign national to influence a U.S. election.

It should be obvious why that is against the law, but for the record, that is the opposite of how a person “Makes America Great Again.”

Follow Me
Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here. Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump. Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Connect with Sarah on Post,  Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.

Recent Posts

Trump And House GOP’s Promise To Not Cut Social Security Is Total Nonsense

Trump got House Republicans to not use reconciliation to cut Social Security. The problem is…

2 days ago

Trump And Mike Johnson Agree To Apparently Cut Americans’ Healthcare To Pay For Tax Cuts For The Rich

President-elect Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson have agreed to a deal that would fund the…

2 days ago

Dozens Of Republicans Humiliate Trump/Musk By Voting Down CR

Donald Trump demanded that the debt limit be raised as part of the government funding…

3 days ago

Trump And Vance Blame Biden For Elon Musk Caused Chaos

Donald Trump and JD Vance are blaming President Biden for the havoc caused by Elon…

4 days ago

House Republicans Are Falling Apart And Now Mike Johnson Could Be Toast

The first little bit of pressure involving passing a bill to keep the government open…

4 days ago

Elon Musk Melts Down As House Republicans Show Him That He Has No Power

X boss Elon Musk is throwing a tantrum on his social media platform as House…

4 days ago