CAMPAIGN/ROBERT MUELLER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Three watchdog groups on Tuesday [4-30-19] urged federal campaign regulators to pursue civil penalties against President Donald Trump’s campaign, saying special counsel Robert Mueller’s team had created a ‘roadmap’ for action. Mueller’s team did not charge Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign aides with breaking any laws by participating in a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after an email exchange between Trump Jr. and a publicist about potential dirt on Hillary Clinton. The special counsel’s redacted report, released earlier this month, did not find that Trump Jr. and other aides had ‘willfully’ violated a federal law that bars candidates from soliciting and receiving money or in-kind services from foreign interests. The Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and Democracy 21 on Tuesday filed a supplement to an earlier complaint the groups filed in July 2017, asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate the meeting for a possible violation of campaign finance law. Civil penalties under that law, they said, did not require regulators to prove ‘willful’ violations.”
–Fredreka Schouten, “Watchdogs say Mueller report offers ‘roadmap’ for civil penalties against Trump campaign,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, April 30, 2019 7:59 pm
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