5/15/2023 0 Comments Collude vs conspire8 election would not violate FEC regulations. The exchange of publicly available information before the Nov. Photo by REUTERS/Jonathan Ernstīut even then, proving coordination, or collusion, under campaign finance law would hinge on the type of information that was potentially shared between Russia and Trump’s campaign. Comey’s firing led to the appointment of a special counsel. The coordination standard would apply regardless of whether Trump campaign officials shared the information unprompted with Russia, or Russian officials reached out to the campaign to request information they could use to meddle in the election on Trump’s behalf.įormer FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017. It would not matter who initiated the dialogue, Noble said. But if the campaign believed Russia was interfering in the race, and went one step further by sharing information with Russian officials that campaign advisers knew could be helpful for Trump, that would constitute illegal coordination. That exchange would not violate FEC law if the Trump campaign was unaware that Russia was trying to meddle in the election. “Let’s say you meet a Russian diplomat at a party and you say, ‘We have a great campaign and a shot of winning if we can win the Midwest,’” Noble said, describing in hypothetical terms the type of conversation that might have occurred during documented meetings that took place last year between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials. In cases that don’t involve a direct transfer of money, there must be proof that a campaign understood the information it exchanged with a foreign entity would be used for the illegal purpose of influencing an election, said Noble, one of the nation’s leading experts on campaign finance law. If the Trump campaign or a pro-Trump political group accepted funds from a Russian source, that would represent an obvious case of illegal “coordination,” the official term under Federal Election Commission law that most closely resembles collusion, according to Larry Noble, who served as the agency’s general counsel from 1987 to 2000.īut the guidelines against coordination cover a wide spectrum of activities that go well beyond a clear-cut transfer of money from a foreign bank account to a campaign’s coffers in the U.S.įoreign entities are barred from providing a campaign with any “thing of value,” such as useful information on a political opponent. citizens or permanent residents, or from any foreign entities, including companies and governments. The law works both ways: it’s also illegal for campaigns to accept financial contributions from individuals who are not U.S. could prove to be the best starting point, he said.Īcts of collusion span the legal gamut, and include campaign finance violations, conspiracy, bribery, and fraud.įederal Election Commission rules prohibit foreigners and foreign governments from spending money to influence American elections. But the rules governing campaign finance in the U.S. “People have been analyzing this as a national security issue, with the relevant laws being ones that deal with treason, espionage, or other related crimes,” Persily said. In searching for evidence of collusion, investigators will need to decide which areas of the law to focus on, said Nate Persily, a constitutional law expert at Stanford University. “It’s just a very broad, ambiguous term.” attorney who served as the lead prosecutor for the Enron trial. Acts of collusion span the legal gamut, and include campaign finance violations, conspiracy, bribery, and fraud.įor investigators in the Trump-Russia probe, “the initial problem is, what’s collusion?” said John Hueston, a former assistant U.S. To the contrary, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, has assembled a legal “dream team” whose members have expertise investigating a broad range of illegal acts that fall under the general rubric of collusion.īut unlike obstruction of justice - which is clearly defined in the United States Code - there is no specific statute for collusion. There is no sign, however, that the inquiry into collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign is off the table. “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. President Donald Trump lashed out this week in response to news that the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election had widened to include an inquiry into his possible attempt to obstruct justice.
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