.MaddowBlog: Trump lawyer: Foreign intervention in US elections can be OK
In one of the more important interviews of his presidency, Donald Trump spoke with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in June 2019, and fielded some questions about foreign election interference. In the wake of the revelations surrounding the Russia scandal, it stood to reason that the Republican would recognize the importance of rejecting campaign “help” from abroad.
Toward the end of the night, Democrats bridled over comments by [Deputy White House Counsel Patrick Philbin] responding to a question from Sen. Christopher A. Coons about Trump’s apparent public solicitation of Russia and China for compromising materials on his campaign rivals. Philbin argued that Trump’s remarks did not, in fact, represent a violation of campaign finance laws that make it illegal to accept or solicit a “thing of value” from foreign sources.
Yesterday, Philbin sided with his client’s view, saying that a president can accept “credible information” from foreign sources, and it wouldn’t necessarily count as “campaign interference.” The deputy White House counsel added, “I think the idea that any information that happens to come from overseas is necessarily campaign interference is a mistake.”
Sen. Mark Warner , the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described himself as “stunned,” adding that Philbin’s argument “contradicts everything that our committee has said, everything the intelligence community has worked on.” “This idea that you would take information from a foreign government seeking to impact an election and then weaponize that or use that just because it may be credible – I’ve just never heard anything like that. I think it’s absolutely unconscionable,” he added. […]
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