Bloomberg: Little FEC Consensus on Moves to Combat Foreign Influence

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Following reports of the meeting, new complaints were filed with the FEC and with Mueller by the watchdog group Common Cause. Follow-up complaints were filed July 13 by Common Cause and other nonprofits—Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center. The complaints charged that the agreement to hold a meeting with the Russian lawyer could represent an illegal solicitation of a campaign contribution in the form of promised information supposedly damaging to Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential race.

Trump Jr. said subsequently that the meeting amounted to “nothing.”

Brendan Fischer, director of the Campaign Legal Center’s FEC program, said in a statement: “The evidence is clear that Don Jr. knew that the offer of opposition campaign research came from the Russian government, and the law is clear that giving such valuable research for free would have been a contribution to the Trump campaign.”

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