WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump's son appears to have violated federal election laws by meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised to reveal damaging information about Hillary Clinton, several experts in campaign funding say.
Federal law makes it a crime for any person to "solicit, accept or receive" a foreign gift or "anything of value" from a foreign person for a U.S. political campaign or "for the purpose of influencing any election for federal office."
This includes an "express or implied promise" to give something of value. So in that sense it may not matter whether the thing of value was ever actually provided.
The emails released Tuesday show that Donald Trump Jr. was told that the Russian lawyer could "provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."
"If it's what you say," he replied, "I love it especially later in the summer." He then arranged a meeting at Trump Tower with Paul Manafort, then the campaign manager, and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law.
The emails "provide the smoking gun confirming that Donald Trump Jr. illegally solicited a contribution from a foreign national. This is very incriminating evidence," said Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer and vice president at Common Cause, an election watchdog group.
He said giving a campaign opposition research that would damage the rival candidate clearly qualifies as something of value. He said Manafort and Kushner could be charged with an illegal solicitation as well, if they understood the purpose of the meeting.
Trump supporters dismiss such claims, insisting that campaigns routinely seek out and accept opposition research about their rivals.
And some legal experts have questioned whether opposition research would qualify under the law as something "of value," since traditionally the law has been applied to money or gifts rather than information or speech.
"I have a hard time seeing how a meeting is a contribution from a foreign national," said Jan W. Baran, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel for the Republican National Committee. "It's not concrete, it doesn't have a quantifiable value."
Nevertheless, Common Cause filed a complaint Monday with the Federal Election Commission and special counsel Robert Mueller alleging that the recent revelations show the Trump campaign had violated the law by "soliciting a contribution from a foreign national."
Election law violations are usually pursued as civil matters by the FEC that can lead to fines and penalties, but the Justice Department sometimes prosecutes knowing and willful violations as crimes.
"There is a plenty of evidence this meeting violated the law. He set up the meeting with the Russian lawyer because he thought he would receive something of value for the campaign," said Brendan Fischer, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center. "It is also the clearest evidence so far of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian agents."
Since March, when then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed the probe of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, he said there were at least two major questions. Were there "any links" or "any coordination" between the Trump campaign and Russian agents? And second, were any crimes committed?
Critics of the probe have argued there is no federal law that clearly forbids "collusion" between a campaign and a foreign government. But election law uses the word "coordination" and makes it illegal for U.S. candidates to coordinate their efforts with foreign persons.
Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor, said that depending on what the investigation reveals, the Trump campaign could be charged with criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.
"If Trump officials conspired to help Russians interfere with the election, they could be liable for conspiracy, even if only the Russians did the actual interfering," he wrote last week on the Sidebarsblog. "Similarly, if Trump officials conspired to help Russians violate bans on foreign involvement in U.S. campaigns, they could be liable for that conspiracy even though they were not foreign nationals and could not have committed the crimes."
But most lawyers predict Mueller's investigation will focus on more narrow and targeted charges, such as the possible election law violations.
Kushner and former national security adviser Michael Flynn could also be charged with making false statements if they deliberately omitted from their security clearance forms the fact that they had met with Russian officials. Kushner initially failed to mention the June meeting, but did so later.
And President Trump could face allegations of obstruction of justice for firing the FBI director because Comey had refused the president's suggestion that he clear Flynn.
