The Trump Campaign Says Exploiting Hacked Emails Is Free Speech

Source: The Atlantic

While there is no evidence yet that the Trump campaign knew about or aided in the hacking itself, campaign-finance laws prohibit candidates from accepting “anything of value” from a foreign national. The Trump campaign could face legal exposure, then, if a prosecutor could prove that Trump or his campaign associates made an agreement with Russia to publish the stolen emails—which were clearly valuable to the campaign, given how often Trump quoted from them during rallies—via a third party such as WikiLeaks, as Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, has written.

The campaign’s lawyers argued that the plaintiffs hadn’t made a “plausible” case that the campaign and the Russians engaged in a “collaborative” effort to release the plaintiffs’ emails to influence the election. But they seemed to acknowledge the emails’ value: “The DNC emails clearly deal with matters of significant public concern.”

Their argument is timely, and troubling: The midterm elections, less than 30 days away, are as vulnerable to hackers who steal information and then dump it onto the web to influence voters as the presidential election was two years ago. Both parties face high stakes: Democrats hope to take back the House and the Senate, whereas Republicans are clinging to their majorities as a wave of GOP lawmakers chooses not to run for reelection. So far, however, only House Democrats have pledged not to use stolen or hacked materials in their campaigns this fall. As I reported last month, their Republican counterparts declined to match that commitment—and “one of the major sticking points” was how to address the press coverage of hacked materials.

“Speech deals with matters of public concern when it can be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community, or when it is a subject of legitimate news interest,” the Trump campaign’s lawyers wrote in their brief. They went on to justify the disclosure of the hacked materials by arguing that they were in the public interest. “Every disclosed email was (1) a work email (2) sent or received by a political operative (3) during a presidential campaign,” they wrote. “Indeed, the disclosed emails dealt pervasively with important public issues. They revealed the Democratic Party’s conduct during its presidential primaries—which are public processes ‘structur[ed] and monitor[ed]’ by the state. They revealed the DNC’s interactions with rich donors—educating citizens about the influence of ‘moneyed interests.’ And they revealed the closeness of the party’s ties to the media.” (Here, again, the lawyers seem to be emphasizing the value of the emails, which could prove problematic with regard to campaign-finance laws.)

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/trump-campaign-defends-wikileaks-use-hacked-dnc-emails/572587/