Trump Administration/Executive Ethics

Roger Stone’s indictment implicates the Trump campaign in campaign finance violations during the 2016 election related to WikiLeaks documents provided by Russian Intelligence officials. The indictment makes clear that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has uncovered evidence that a “senior Trump campaign official was directed” by someone else within the campaign, perhaps Donald Trump himself, to contact Stone and request that Stone obtain “damaging information” on Clinton from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was in possession DNC emails that had been hacked by Russian intelligence officers.

However, building a case against Cohen for these potential campaign finance violations would have been much more difficult than the case made over hush payments Cohen facilitated to women who alleged affairs with Trump, Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at the watchdog group Common Cause, tweeted.

According to a court filing earlier this week, former 2016 Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared presidential campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian citizen with ties to Russian intelligence. If the data Manafort shared with Kilimnik was used to materially guide spending by Russian nationals to influence the 2016 presidential election, then the Trump campaign seemingly received an “in-kind contribution” from the Russian nationals in the form of “coordinated expenditures” in violation of multiple federal campaign finance laws. A key link in the “coordination” here is the revelation of Manafort’s actions.

Mueller's investigation of those attacks must be allowed to continue, following the evidence wherever it leads. The American people are entitled to answers and accountability. A bipartisan group of senators is reintroducing legislation to protect the Mueller investigation — legislation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked last year. Americans are closely watching how Congress will respond to the pending threats to the Mueller investigation with Barr's nomination and Rosenstein's departure. With the 2020 presidential election on the horizon, we must put country before party to hold accountable those who undermined the 2016 election and to protect the integrity of our future elections. No less than our democracy is at stake.

“If the president follows through on the threat to declare a state of emergency simply to circumvent the legislative branch and build a wall on the Mexican border,” says Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn, “then Congress must act swiftly and decisively to check the abuse utilizing the National Emergencies Act, which was enacted in 1976 as a post-Watergate reform to reassert Congress’s constitutional role in checking and safeguarding against authoritarian abuses of power.”

Americans expect and deserve a President who respects the law and the office he holds. Donald Trump’s outrageous threats to abuse his office and his emergency powers to bypass congress and build a wall on the Mexican border are a transparent effort to get himself out of the government shutdown impasse that he created himself. Moreover, Trump’s proposed wall would do nothing to address the actual humanitarian crisis on the border.