FEC chair: Accepting foreign assistance on opponent is illegal. Uh, so what's up Mueller?

[triron]

Why was no one in the Trump campaign charged??

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/448507-fec-chair-responds-to-trump-saying-hed-accept-foreign-intel-on

[Blue Owl]

1. Mueller? ...Mueller? ...Mueller?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. As I understand it, the reason was that the law requires you to know that you are violating it.

So they'd have had to prove that Don Jr. knew that by accepting an offer of dirt on Hillary from the Russians he was violating the campaign finance law, and they didn't they think they had that proof. A lot of laws don't require that actual knowledge (hence the adage "ignorance of the law is no excuse" ), but this one does require specific knowledge of the law and that you're violating it.

[abqtommy]

4. I'm 70 years old and

maybe Barr's DOJ can spin their way out of this.

[wishstar]

5. Manafort is a lawyer and experienced in campaign finance, Kushner is a lawyer

These two lawyers and Manafort with decades of campaign experience have no excuse. The fact that they all lied and tried to cover up the intent of the meeting, in particular Don Jr and Sr, shows they knew it was wrong.


My understanding was that Mueller decided his team could not establish a monetary value for whatever help the Trump campaign got from Russian hacking and releasing the Dems emails and the SC needed to be able to establish a monetary value to find a campaign finance violation.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Maybe it was also that they didn't actually get anything of value.

When they got to the meeting they weren't offered any dirt on Hillary so valuing any such information would have been impossible; the Russians just wanted to talk about the Magnitsky law. In any event, Mueller's team probably decided the facts were just too iffy to present to a jury and expect to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

[triron]

8. Somehow I don't buy that's what Mueller found. I think he swept it away or Barr got in his way.

Probably the latter.

[uponit7771]

10. The attempt is still illegal

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. Yes, but it does make the case a little tougher.

[Hoyt]

7. Mueller said he couldn't establish value and Jr, etc., were too stupid

to know they were breaking law.

Mueller went put of his way to let them off the hook in both respects. He certainly could have made an estimate of value, had he wanted to.

He also did something similar on giving polling data to Ruskies.

[emmaverybo]

3. Let's make Trump's corruption about Mueller. That should help us. NT

[pnwmom]

9. We don't know what outstanding cases may be in other jurisdictions. n/t