Monthly Archives: July 2017

Don Jr. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

As shoe after shoe after shoe keeps dropping about the Trump Tower meeting Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer and other questionable intermediaries, there has been a quiet but significant effort by prominent legal minds to defend, or at least be skeptical of, the whole affair. The thrust of these counterarguments is that the main characters did nothing wrong because the law simply doesnt penalize anything that happened at the meeting.

The defenses run the gamut: The Trump team couldnt have broken campaign-finance laws because seeking and receiving damning materials on a political adversary is what campaigns do all the time, so federal law doesnt apply. Or, if the law does reach what transpired at the meeting, the promised dirt on Hillary Clinton isnt the type of in-kind contribution or thing of value that federal law forbids foreign nationals from making. Or, if the damaging information does count as an illegal campaign contribution from a foreign national, the penalties would only be civil in nature which means Robert Mueller, the Russia special counsel, cant just prosecute Trump Jr. or his associates over what happened at that fateful June 2016 gathering.

By far the most intriguing of all these defenses is the suggestion, advanced by First Amendment expert and UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, that Trump Jr. and crew were merely exercising their constitutional right to solicit and receive a campaign boost from Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-linked attorney who requested the meeting. And that she may also have been acting within her rights to share the Clinton dirt with Trumps inner circle. As if theres somehow a free-standing, free-speech right to exchange opposition research, no matter the nationality of the source. And the Constitution would suffer if we criminalize these acts.

Volokhs arguments and hypotheticals are thoughtful, compelling even: If the Clinton campaign heard that Mar-a-Lago was employing illegal immigrants in Florida and staffers went down to interview the workers, that would be a crime, he writes as one of his examples. A Slovakian student temporarily in the U.S., he writes in another, would similarly be forbidden from sharing potentially explosive information about Trumps dealings in her home country. These and other scenarios are meant to illustrate how the federal ban on foreign nationals making election-related contributions including anything of value to a campaign, which would encompass the Clinton dirt would sweep far too broadly. And when a ban lends itself to such a substantially broad reading, Volokh explains, that means the ban itself is unconstitutional on its face.

But Adav Noti, an attorney with Campaign Legal Center, isnt convinced. His organization filed a complaint on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice alleging that the Trump campaign effectively solicited an illegal campaign contribution by procuring the incriminating Clinton evidence from Veselnitskaya. Noti told me in an interview that most of the hypos Volokh laid out in his article arent covered by the statute because the law already contains an exception for volunteer services to a campaign information that is offered voluntarily and that you otherwise cant ascribe value to.

But opposition research by a person flying in from Moscow at no cost to the campaign that the campaign actively sought can indeed be very valuable. And, if its part of a larger, coordinated effort by a foreign power to sway an American election, a scheme to obtain it would be largely distinguishable from, say, undocumented workers dishing to the Clinton camp for free on shoddy working conditions at a Trump property.

Bob Bauer, an election-law expert who has written extensively on the campaign-finance implications of Trumps flirtations with Russia, acknowledged in a Friday post on the blog Just Security how the federal ban on foreign-national contributions might run into First Amendment problems if the right facts come along. But were not dealing with those facts right now. In his view, everything that has come out from the Trump campaign vis--vis Russia is an entirely different animal. A court would likely go out of its way to uphold the law in a case where, as alleged against the Trump campaign, a candidate and his organization enters into a systematic understanding with a foreign government to assist its bid to win the presidency, Bauer wrote.

In other words, what weve seen so far in the recent onslaught of revelations about Trump Jr. and his wish to get an assist from Russia is analogous to the kind of conduct that courts have already said falls outside the scope of the First Amendment. In Bluman v. FEC, a case Noti litigated and won, a three-judge district court reaffirmed the principle that prohibiting foreign nationals from spending money in the electoral process is perfectly consistent with our constitutional ideals. The court said:

It is fundamental to the definition of our national political community that foreign citizens do not have a constitutional right to participate in, and thus may be excluded from, activities of democratic self-government. It follows, therefore, that the United States has a compelling interest for purposes of First Amendment analysis in limiting the participation of foreign citizens in activities of American democratic self-government, and in thereby preventing foreign influence over the U.S. political process.

That was written by U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative the Trump administration has been eyeing for a promotion to the Supreme Court. The high court, for its part, didnt even bother hearing an appeal over the case; it just affirmed the ruling summarily with no dissenting opinions. All of which suggests that other judges would follow suit if presented with the Trump Tower scenario: a meeting where no actual money may have changed hands, but where something more nefarious, coordinated, and potentially criminal may have taken place. Theres yet more to come.

Courts have a way of salvaging perfectly constitutional laws if they have to, limiting their analysis to the specific fact patterns before them. Since the documented Russian connections to the Trump campaign is unlike anything this country has seen, its easy to see how the First Amendment wouldnt stand as an obstacle if it were shown that there was a coordinated attempt to strike at the core of American self-government.

Made in America week is already shifting the conversation to the Trump familys fondness for overseas manufacturing.

A scorecard on how Trump has advanced Russian interests (whether knowingly or unknowingly), from easing Russian sanctions to the Syrian cease-fire.

The rise and meaning of an ubiquitous term of abuse.

The Trump administration gets Orwellian in its efforts to repeal Obamacare.

The agency wasnt even protecting the presidents son at the time.

Its unusual for a new president to be this widely disliked.

The courts have already been pretty consistent on this issue of foreign citizens not being able to participate in Americas self-government.

McCain is expected to recover, but the same cant be said for the GOPs haphazard efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.

And, yes, hes going to write about his experience dealing with Trump.

Looks like the Trump campaign thought there was something in that nothingburger.

And yet, it still might pass in the next few days.

The new plan would dramatically expand where and when the government could target immigrants for deportations which bypass immigration courts.

Voters are worried about his voter-fraud commissions attempt to gather information on them.

Shes totally open, the future president clearly says to the young pop singer in 2013. But what else?

Most of Trumps Christian right allies dont bother to take his own slight religious pretensions very seriously. A new book apparently will.

Trump may be pushed by a lawsuit to keep his 2016 promise to kill DACA and deport Dreamers or they could become a pawn for nativists in Congress.

One golfer said his attendance would be a debacle, but Trump doesnt care.

At this point it would take a strange coincidence for hacking not to have been discussed.

He ordered the government not to enforce the seemingly arbitrary restrictions on which relatives can enter the country.

Read more:
Knocking Down the Best Argument in Defense of Trump Jr. - NYMag - New York Magazine

On Tuesday, July 11, the Knight First Amendment Institute filed a lawsuit in federal court against President Donald Trump over blocking individuals on his Twitter account.

The institute, a nonprofit affiliated with Columbia University, argues that Trumps Twitter account is a public forum under the First Amendment because the president and his staff use it to communicate.

According to Bloomberg Politics, the institute requested that the court deem viewpoint-based blocking by the presidents account unconstitutional, unblock the plaintiffs and pay the plaintiffs attorneys fees.

Regardless of your opinions on Trumps online behavior, the Tuesday lawsuit could have many social, corporate and journalistic implications.

Harassment vs. Freedom of Speech

According to a Pew Research Center survey, 41 percent of Americans have been personally subjected to online harassment, with as many as 18 percent of respondents claiming that they have been subject to more severe treatment, like sexual harassment, stalking or physical threats.

At a time when so many Americans claim to be so negatively affected by cyberbullying, it may be counterintuitive to set legal precedents that could take away users abilities to block harassers online in the future.

Although the lawsuit specifies that Trump should be penalized for viewpoint-based blocking as opposed to blocking in general, if these platforms are deemed as public forums, the precedent could easily be interpreted to protect users hateful speech in the future.

On the other hand, trying to curb viewpoint-based blocking may force users to interact with more diverse perspectives than usual, which could cultivate more interesting, productive discourse on the platform. Forcing opposing opinions to coexist in the same place could also help the general public better understand different political ideas.

Preventing people from censoring the opinions they do not want to see on their timeline could break ideological echo chambers that are currently prevalent on all social media platforms.

Impact on Private Companies

The decision could also affect how social media platforms monitor their users behavior and are allowed to conduct business in general.

Currently, social media applications are considered private institutions. Unlike public institutions, private institutions are not expected to uphold First Amendment protections.

However, if courts can treat Twitter as a public forum, social media companies could be forced to overhaul their terms of service to comply with government policy at the expense of their autonomy.

Is Social Media News?

In the lawsuit, the Knight First Amendment Institute considers Trumps personal Twitter account a public forum because of how the administration uses the social media site to spread news directly to followers.

In an interview with Fox and Friends, Trump defended his decision not to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner and said that he used Twitter so frequently because he feels that the media purposefully misrepresents him.

It allows me to give a message without necessarily having to go through people where Im giving them a message and theyre putting it down differently from what I mean, he said.

Despite this defense, Trumps Twitter use at times serves more as an excuse to take jabs at the media establishment rather than the president relaying substantive, unbiased policy accomplishments to the American people.

And although many famous political pundits and networks cited this in their defense of negative Trump coverage, the presidents comments on news networks reflect how many American conservatives feel.

It seems like common knowledge that the publics trust in media is at an all-time low, but according to a new Politico poll, people only marginally trust CNN (54 percent) more than the White House (52 percent) and Trump (46 percent).

The survey claims that significant percentages of voters mostly Republicans think many outlets are either not too credible or not credible at all, whereas left-leaning voters are more skeptical of the Trump administration and Congress.

Because of the tendency for right-leaning Americans to distrust them, many journalists publicly acknowledge that they should be trying to appeal more to conservatives. But reporting patterns speak louder than words.

Many conservatives cite what they perceive as abnormally critical coverage of the current administration when dismissing mainstream media coverage. According to a Shorenstein survey, 80 percent of Trump coverage was negative during his first 100 days of office.

This extreme amount of negative coverage may explain why many Americans are skeptical of the mainstream media, rendering the press intent meaningless. It also provides a rationalization for why many Americans are willing to accept the presidents social media statements as more legitimate than mainstream news coverage.

If a politicians posts on social media can legitimately be considered news, should the platform monitor content for accuracy, just like a news publication would? And if this is the case, it seems that social medias potential responsibility to purge false information falsifies the lawsuits assertion that social media sites ought not to allow viewpoint-based blocking.

No matter your opinions on the validity of the lawsuit, it most certainly brings up important debates central to the journalistic and social media communities in the Trump administration.

View post:
Trump's Twitter vs. The First Amendment - MediaFile

Acosta's reminder: Journalists must advocate for First Amendment San Antonio Express-News (subscription) One of the first lessons journalists learn is that the story any story isn't about us. It shouldn't be. It's ingrained in us, and we carry it in every notebook, on every laptop. The gravest of sins is to put yourself in the story. Except when we ... and more »

Read more here:
Acosta's reminder: Journalists must advocate for First Amendment - San Antonio Express-News (subscription)