Ethics Watchdog Say Trump Jr. Meeting Was Violation Of Campaign Finance Laws
Legal complaints filed against the Trump campaign over Russia meeting.
Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort violated campaign finance laws by accepting a meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised to damage information on Hillary Clinton, according to a complaint filed by three government watchdog groups.
In a series of emails sent during the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump Jr. was promised that a meeting with Russian government lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who would be able to provide “the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful.”
Donadl Trump Jr., along with Kushner and Manafort, took the meeting with Veselnitskaya.
In a complaint filed with both the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Justice Department, three watchdog groups – Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 –
argue that by accepting and attending the meeting the Trump campaign solicited an illegal campaign contribution from a foreign national.
In the emails to Trump Jr. an explicit offer was made on behalf of the Russin government to help the campaign saying it was “part of Russia and its governments’ support for Mr. Trump” and had been proffered by the “Crown prosecutor of Russia.”
Trump Jr. responded by saying, “I love it especially later in the summer,” according to an email chain.
The email chain also revealed that Trump Jr. forwarded the emails to Manafort and Kushner.
The ethics watchdogs say that both the meeting and the email exchange violated the Federal Election Campaign Act.
The email chain published Tuesday revealed the first publicly available concrete evidence of the Trump campaign’s effort to collude with the Russian government in the 2016 election.
[image via Twitter screenshot]
