Donald Trump’s Pursuit Of Illegal Foreign Campaign Donations ‘Unprecedented’
Donald Trump’s campaign is still soliciting for illegal foreign campaign donations from the U.K. and Australia, despite warnings from the FEC. Although much of U.S. campaign finance law is murky, taking money from foreign individuals, especially ones employed in foreign governments, is not. Many of the recipients are wondering how they even got on Trump’s email lists to begin with.
Members of the parliament in both the U.K. and Australian governments have confirmed to The Hill that they have received emails from Donald Trump’s campaign asking for a “generous contribution.” The FEC sent a complaint to Trump about the illegal solicitation on June 29, but it appears to have failed to have an effect. Terri Butler, a Parliament member in Australia, shared the Trump campaign emails with The Hill, including one from July 12.
Butler insists that she has never signed up for a Trump mailing list and has no idea how her government email ended up with the campaign.
Fred Wertheimer, president of the campaign finance watchdog Democracy 21, says that Donald Trump’s brazen solicitation from foreign elected officials is unprecedented in his four decades scrutinizing campaigns.
“This is kind of absurd. I don’t know of anyone else in this situation who would just go on keeping on soliciting money from foreign interests. I think the fact circumstances here are unprecedented. If they are put on notice that their fundraising solicitations of potential foreign donors are illegal and they keep doing it, then you potentially have knowing and willful violations of the law which moves this from civil violations to criminal violations.”
He added that, “there’s a kind of arrogance about this.”
Democracy 21, along with the Campaign Legal Center, publicized the original FEC complaint, which claimed that Donald Trump’s campaign was seeking illegal donations from, at least, Iceland, Scotland, Australia, and Britain. Democracy 21 is now mulling over a criminal complaint to the FEC.
Dear @nytimes, could you pass a message to @realDonaldTrump for me? Please stop sending campaign begging letters to MPs. It’s pathetic!
— Stuart McDonald MP (@Stuart_McDonald) June 27, 2016
Of course, there are still ways that foreign entities, especially foreign corporations, can give donations to candidates or otherwise influence U.S. elections, as Democracy 21 points out in their press release. What makes Donald Trump’s campaign special is that he has directly asked for money from foreign politicians, using their government email addresses.
It’s even frustrated some of the recipients, including U.K. parliamentarian Peter Bottomley
“Neither [Trump’s] sons nor anyone else has answered my questions about how they acquired my email nor why they were asking for financial support that I suppose to be illegal for [Trump] to accept.”
Donald Trump has had a difficult relationship with the U.K. during his campaign. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the British parliament even debated whether or not to ban the GOP candidate from entering the country. Although widely believed to be an act of political theater, the session showed the contempt many of the foreign politicians have for the real estate mogul.
In the meantime, Trump’s recent surge in the polls appears to be tapering off. According to Real Clear Politics aggregated polling, Donald Trump is 3.2 percent behind Clinton. Whether soliciting illegal foreign donations will have any effect remains to be seen.
[Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]
