Clinton's payments for the Russia dossier were legal, but hiding them was not (TheHill)

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Expert

When a presidential campaign and a national political party intentionally mislead voters about how they are raising or spending money, that is no small matter.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee arranged to pay a company called Fusion GPS to conduct research on Donald Trump. Fusion started researching Trump for The Washington Free Beacon and, reportedly, a Republican candidate whose identity is not yet known. Then, in April 2016, the Clinton campaign and the DNC took over the funding of Fusion’s research.

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The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center has filed a formal complaint with the FEC, asking that agency to investigate these unlawful filings by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Voters have a right to know about the money that political candidates use to get themselves elected. This right is critical to the ability of voters — as well as advocacy groups and journalists — to determine the candidates’ priorities and to understand how they will govern if elected. To vindicate the voters’ right to information, the FEC should find that the law was broken and assess penalties accordingly. The validity of the dossier might be unclear, but the law here is not.

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