Not a pro trump/republican source.
http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/07/unhinged_anti-trumpers_are_russian_to_conclusions.html
'Unhinged' anti-Trumpers are Russian to conclusions | Mulshine
But it's the thought that counts, at least to the left. A consortium of three liberal advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission charging the Trump campaign "violated the ban on knowingly soliciting a contribution from a foreign national by arranging and attending a meeting to request and accept what he understood to be a valuable in-kind contribution to his father's presidential campaign in the form of opposition research on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government."
This is the meme going around in liberal circles. But it is obvious nonsense.
The right to gather information is protected by the First Amendment, regardless of who provides that information. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who is a leading expert on the First Amendment, made that point in his Volokh Conspiracy blog on the Washington Post website:
"If the Hillary Clinton campaign had reason to think that, say, the British government had 'very high level and sensitive information' showing serious misbehavior by Trump, I think it would have had every right to get that information and see if it should be put before the American people as evidence that Trump shouldn't be elected," he wrote. "Limiting candidates' ability to expose their opponents' misbehavior would violate the First Amendment."
...
Volokh went on to note that the statute in question applies not to foreign governments but to all foreigners. Under the interpretation the anti-Trumpers seek, no member of a campaign could seek information from any foreign national, Russian, British, Canadian or Fijian.
Now, that's unhinged. Yet I have had conversations with several of my otherwise sane friends anti-Trumper friends in which they insist that criminal charges and possibly impeachment are just around the corner.
In reality, this is just the latest in a series of non-scandal scandals concerning the Trump administration.
