In Trump-Russia probe, when does collusion become a crime? Here's our explainer:
WASHINGTON - As Special Counsel Robert Mueller has pursued his investigation into Moscow’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, legal experts have debated what sort of contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia may have violated U.S. criminal law.
Mueller, who has sought to determine whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Moscow, is preparing to submit a report on his investigation to U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Trump and Russia have denied collusion and Moscow has denied election interference.IS THERE A U.S. FEDERAL CRIME CALLED COLLUSION?
Because computer hacking is clearly a federal crime, any Trump campaign official who assented to and encouraged the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers in 2016 could be liable for the crime of conspiracy. U.S. officials have said Russia hacked the Democratic computers to steal emails that were later released by the WikiLeaks website to hurt Clinton.
This notion of criminal liability, known as conspiracy to defraud the United States, was raised by Mueller in a February 2018 indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies, including St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, known for its trolling on social media. According to the special counsel, their “information warfare against the United States” impaired the functioning of the U.S. Federal Election Commission and other government agencies.
If Trump campaign officials knowingly solicited valuable information from Russians, they may be liable under campaign finance laws, legal experts said. But Trump campaign officials would have a strong defense if they could show they did not know soliciting such help violated campaign finance laws. While ignorance of the law often is not an excuse, criminal violations of campaign finance law are unusual in that they require a showing of willfulness, or knowledge of the law being broken.
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