NYT : "Trump Jr. Was Told in Email of Russian Effort to Aid Campaign"

[Final-Fan]

Aeolus451 said:

Final-Fan said:

Thank you.  That's a fair caveat.  Here is the context.  Do you still agree that the aforementioned definition of solicit is applicable?  If not, why not? 

(a) Prohibition
It shall be unlawful for—
  (2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.

And here is paragraph (1):  (It shall be unlawful for)
  (1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—
    (A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;
    (B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or
    (C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or

In that context, no in my opinion. He didn't receive a donation or a contribution to the campaign nor was he solicited for a donation or contribution to the campaign in exchange for unspecified favors. The meeting was for evidence of something unlawful Hillary did with Russia. It would decimate Hillary's campaign if the evidence was shown to the world but that wouldn't be a direct contribution to the campaign of trump.

They won't be able to get the son of a president with this. Also, this sort of stuff is silly because Hillary (and likely many other candidates liketly including trump) received alot of campaign donations from individuals or companies from other countries except that they weren't "foreign nationals" at the time. Politicans don't adhere to the spirit of this law in any sense except to the letter of it.  Was this law created before the internet became a thing or before you could wire money? 

1.  When you agreed that "going to a meeting for the agreed-upon purpose of obtaining a thing would count as "soliciting" that thing", did you not understand that going to a meeting for the purpose of obtaining a thing is a fact that doesn't change based on whether or not you were successful in obtaining that thing? 

2.  Isn't it contradictory to (a) assert that such information would not be "money or other thing of value", yet (b) admit that the information would be devastating to Mr. Trump's political opponent?  (In other words, why wouldn't that information be of immense value to Mr. Trump, and therefore forbidden for him to receive or seek to receive from foreign nationals?)

3.  Let's keep separate the question of whether Mr. Trump has broken the law and the question of whether others have broken the law—these are different questions.  Right now we are working on the first of these questions; if you want to admit that he has done so in your honest opinion (not simply for the sake of agrument), we can move on to whether that fact is unusual among politicians (especially, whether Mrs. Clinton has also done comparable or worse law-breaking).