There is a significant difference, to be sure, and so if someone says "Russian intelligence agent," or something of that sort, I'll point out that we can't be sure any of them actually worked for those organizations. But that's not what I said. I simply pointed out they were working as agents for the Russian government.
Conceivably. The Republicans have packed the courts with right-wingers, so even if the DoJ got a conviction in a lower court, there's a pretty good chance that eventually the arch-conservative majority on the Supreme Court would pull a brand-spanking-new legal rule out of its collective ass to overturn that. But, I hope the DoJ has the balls to bring it, anyway. The worst case scenario is if this unwritten "Trump Exception" to campaign finance law remained unwritten, by the DoJ effectively just assuming its existence, rather than the courts actually having their hand forced to write it down. At least if they did, it would be an "Information Exception" that would exist for everyone, not just Trump. Then lawmakers could decide whether to rewrite the law to do more to cut foreigners out of our elections.
I see quotation marks. What, exactly, are you quoting? The law says "thing of value." It does not restrict that to monetary or in-kind like services. Where are you getting that phrase?
Most politicians are smart enough to avoid giving prosecutors a smoking gun like an email exchange establishing definitively that they were meeting with agents of a foreign regime for the purpose of receiving assistance in an American election. Trump's team left exactly such a smoking gun. Although prosecutions are rare, they're hardly unheard of in cases where politicians are that unbelievably stupid. Ask Ernie Newton, Anthony Chiappone, Michael Cohen, Dinesh D'Souza, Mike Easley, Richie Farmer, Carroll Hubbard, Jesse Jackson Jr., or Angelo Marrotta. I understand that Trump partisans want there to be a special exception to the general campaign finance regulations that "if it's for Trump, it's OK," but that's not an official part of the law.
Why not? If the law is reinterpreted contrary to its plain meaning, the way you wish, in order to create a brand new exception for Trump, what's to prevent campaigns from offloading a huge amount of their expenses to foreign-funded information services outsourcers? Why, for example, hire someone with legitimately-sourced campaign funds to run focus groups for you, if instead foreign nationals can run the same focus groups at their own expense and then just tell you the results? Why pay legitimately sourced money for a poll if a foreign national can run the poll at his expense and then just tell you the results? And if the Trump Exception becomes a thing, there's nothing to prevent you from coordinating with those foreign operations, the same way the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian agents in their Trump Tower meeting. It's not like you'd even be limited just to receiving whatever information they happen to have gathered, with no interaction. You can actually sit down with them, in full knowledge that they're working on behalf of a foreign government looking to subvert a US election, and discuss how best to do that. It's not like the Trump team just received an email from the Russian agents giving them information and then they decided to use it. They agreed to sit down and talk. Whether that was to set up a quid pro quo exchange (we'll give you the info if you commit to removing sanctions), or whether it was merely to coordinate campaign activities, it was clearly illegal.
The reason for that part was to prevent foreign interference in our elections. To prevent exactly the kind of bullshit word games you're trying, they even expressly added a "or thing of value" catch-all, so nobody could honestly think they only meant a particular variety of assistance. Now, if you have some legislative history saying otherwise, just link to it. But a flat assertion isn't going to cut it. Just because the Republican talking-points factories have told you something is no reason to believe it.
The top people in Trump's campaign colluded with Russian agents for the EXPRESS purpose of the Russian government getting Trump elected. That's fact. If you can hear that and NOT be "out for blood," you are suffering from a serious lack of patriotism.
There's always a risk of prosecutorial abuse, but in this case, the risk appears to be very small for a few reasons.
First, remember that Mueller has been EXTRAORDINARILY ethical so far. This isn't like the bad old days of Ken Starr standing on his front lawn feeding the tabloid press damaging innuendo about Clinton. Mueller has kept out of the limelight as much as he can and focused on his job. Nor is he "Pulling a Starr" and wandering from topic to topic hoping to find something, anything, to embarrass his political enemies.... going from a old Arkansas land deal to details of the president's current consensual sex life. In fact, when Mueller finds possible evidence of potential lawbreaking unrelated to Russia, he simply refers it to other authorities and leaves it to their discretion whether to follow up on it, while he stays laser focused on issues involving improper relations between top people around Trump and the Russian government.
Nor is this a Starr-like situation where opposition-party partisans appointed an opposition-party operative to use a trivial accusation as the foot in the door for frustrating the president. In this case, we are talking about very serious accusations that go right to the heart of the integrity of our system of government, and the man put in charge of looking into it is a highly respected fellow member of Trump's own party, not an opposition hack.
I think those fretting about prosecutorial misconduct, in the face of a mountain of evidence that nothing of the sort is happening, are more concerned about prosecutorial effectiveness. Deep down, they suspect that the Trump/Russia corruption goes right to the top, and they want to discredit their fellow Republican before he proves it.
