Could Be Serious Criminal Violation of Law
There’s no question Russia interfered in the U.S. election. And while there’s no evidence they managed to change votes at the ballot box, a generally accepted theory is that through fake news and social media postings, Russian hackers changed minds, which resulted in changed votes at the ballot box.
“In one case last year,” TIME reports, citing senior intelligence officials, “a Russian soldier based in Ukraine successfully infiltrated a U.S. social media group by pretending to be a 42-year-old American housewife and weighing in on political debates with specially tailored messages. In another case, officials say, Russia created a fake Facebook account to spread stories on political issues like refugee resettlement to targeted reporters they believed were susceptible to influence.”
And now, Ellen Weintraub, one of two Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, wants the agency to investigate if Russia illegally paid for pro-Trump or anti-Clinton Facebook ads, according to a report out today in Politico. Doing so would be a criminal violation of law.
But there’s a catch. Actually, several.
First, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is effectively supposed to be comprised of three Republicans and three Democrats, and it takes four votes to pass anything. That includes a decision to investigate a major crime, as this could be. There’s one open spot, so there are three Republicans and just two Democrats. (Sidenote: All five commissioners’ terms have long expired and they are serving until they are replaced. Weintraub’s term expired in 2007.)
“I think there is potential there for finding a violation, but I don’t want to suggest that I have prejudged anything that could potentially come before me,†Weintraub told Politico.
Weintraub apparently was tipped off by a report last week in TIME magazine, (the one with the illustration showing the White House turning into an iconic church in Moscow’s Red Square,) that “revealed intelligence officials had evidence that Russian agents bought Facebook ads to disseminate election-themed stories,” Politico notes. “It also indicated that congressional investigators were examining whether Russian efforts to spread such content were boosted by two U.S. companies with deep ties to Trump — Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica.”
At issue could be money spent on anti-Clinton or pro-Trump ads paid for by Russia, or “news” articles, perhaps from Russia’s propaganda networks or elsewhere, promoted with Russian funds, that would help Trump win the White House. The latter might be harder to prove.
“One Republican campaign finance lawyer said that if it could be proven that Russia bought Facebook ads with the intent of boosting Trump, ‘it would be a serious DOJ criminal issue, and not an FEC administrative issue,'” Politico reports.
“Foreign nationals are prohibited under the law from making expenditures to influence U.S. elections, and campaigns are barred from coordinating with outside entities,” Raw Story explains.
The question now becomes, will the Republicans on the Commission eschew party politics and do the right thing for their country, and if so, will the FEC be able to investigate appropriately without any pushback or obstruction, say, from one White House resident in particular?
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