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Aeolus451 on 16 July 2017
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Final-Fan said:
Aeolus451 said:

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). 

1. That wasn't the basis of my disagreement with it not being solicitation but it does make it less of a big deal because nothing was exchanged. My basis was that it didn't directly contribute to the campaign therefore it doesn't apply to this.

2. Not really because depending on how the evidence against hillary was used, it would change it's perceived value and if it would be of any contribution to the campaign in a roundabout way. Also, what is considered as "other thing of value" is arguable and the law doesn't specially mention anything about the exchange of something that directly damages the compaign of an opponent rather than being a direct contribution to the campaign. 

3. Well, politicians have been breaking the spirit of this law for a long time so to me, it's silly to use it as a way to get someone who came closer to breaking the letter of the law rather than the spirit.  This should dropped just because it's not gonna fly in court and jury. It's more or less a means to damage trump regardless if it goes anywhere or not. I can undertand why democrats wouldn't let that bone go easily.

The law should be changed to better fit the times. It's built around foreign national (foreigner in your country) attempting to give a contribution or donation in exchange for a favor in the physical world. Politicians are given donations from foreigners in exchange for favors all the time but they just happen to be not on our soil when they do it because of conveniences of modern times.