There are laws against foreign nationals to provide a "thing of value" to a US political campaign. This is obviously a difficult thing to tease out. My source on this is Eugene Volokh, a law professor and First Amendment attorney: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

The fundamental question then is: was this intentional on behalf of the foreign agent to provide a "thing of value" to a US political campaign, and/or did a political candidate or campaign solicit this?

But in this hypothetical scenario they're not donating to a political campaign, they're buying advertising space directly from a private organization.

I suppose you could argue that ads which advocate for a political candidate could count as a "thing of value" for that candidate, but even in that case, there _is_ no foreign national to punish here; the entity that funded the effort is a foreign government, not an individual person.

One doesn't have to donate to a political campaign to contribute a "thing of value" to a campaign, that argument is elaborated on in the link I shared. The law does not define thing of value to be a donation or monetary contribution to a campaign, but something much broader, see 52 U.S.C. § 30121.

Likewise, foreign national is a legal term that includes foreign principals, which includes governments, see 22 U.S.C. § 611.

TFA:

"Under federal law and Federal Election Commission regulations, both foreign nationals and foreign governments are prohibited from making contributions or spending money to influence a federal, state or local election in the United States. The ban includes independent expenditures made in connection with an election.

Those banned from such spending include foreign citizens, foreign governments, foreign political parties, foreign corporations, foreign associations and foreign partnerships, according to the FEC."

> foreign governments, foreign political parties

How is that enforced? A US court can't exactly send the Russian government or the Communist Party of China to prison for breaking the law here, can it?

The Federal Election Commission would have something to say:

"The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment." [0]

The definition of "foreign national" is quite broad.

How this works with regards to PAC contributions is unclear to me.

[0] https://transition.fec.gov/pages/brochures/foreign.shtml

> Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.

Who are these "persons"?

It can't logically be the foreign nationals who are attempting to help a campaign. They're not under the jurisdiction of US federal law.

It also can't logically be the candidates. Otherwise, the obvious tactic would be to provide overt, unrequested aid to the opposition candidate(s) and send them all to jail.

I'm not sure it can be Facebook or other Internet sides. It is true that Facebook is a US company, but the content on their sites is protected under the DMCA safe harbor exemption. And then the law wouldn't handle the case of sites not under US ownership.

FECA dates back to the 70s, and it doesn't seem to do a good job of handling the globalization of the Internet. If someone from overseas looked at the facts themselves and, without talking to a candidate, just plastered Google and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter with endorsement of one candidate and criticism of another, is it reasonable to try to stop them?

> It can't logically be the foreign nationals who are attempting to help a campaign. They're not under the jurisdiction of US federal law.

Criminal violations of US laws whose prohibition is not expressly territorially restricted that occur outside of the US are successfully prosecuted in US courts with some frequency. Bringing people before the court for prosecution may be challenging where extradition isn't an option, but outright kidnapping from a foreign country or even full-scale military military invasion to do so have occurred.

In this this hypothetical scenario though it's not even a "person" providing the funds, but a foreign government organization. A US court can't "fine or imprison" the Communist Party of China, or the Russian GRU, for example.

A US court can fine or imprison any of the individual people who comprise, direct as superiors, or act on the direction of those abstract entities that the US executive branch arranges, by whatever means (which, again, have historically included both foreign kidnapping and outright invasion) to bring before the court. Vladimir Putin is obviously, as a practical matter, much safer from that than Manuel Noriega was, but lower level individuals may not be so much.

There's always a person making the decision and moving the funds. The Russian GRU isn't a sentient entity by itself. In principle those people can be held legally accountable, although it practice it's probably impossible.

Well, it's important to bear in mind that most of these ads supposedly didn't back or attack a particular candidate, and that banning foreign funding of political and social activism of this kind would be a very Russian thing to do. Claiming they're foreign agents is one of the Russian government's favourite tactics for raiding and shutting down inconvenient political NGOs and activists. Frankly, I wouldn't entirely put it past them to fund these ads partly to bait out something they could use to justify their own domestic crackdowns and spin US criticism as hypocrasy.

My understanding is no, this is legal. But this would be illegal if a U.S. political campaign knew about and facilitated these ad buys, as then it would be a contribution. Source: https://transition.fec.gov/pages/brochures/foreign.shtml#Pro...

And, as a related question - should there be? What about a foreign corporation? A foreign corporation with a domestic presence? A domestic corporation? None of these groups are beholden to the public interest.

Or just a foreign individual?

I'm a foreign individual who went around making comments on the US election... what's the difference between me doing it privately and a company doing it?

As much as America would like to think their laws apply across the globe, they don't actually have jurisdiction over you. There's nothing they can do to prevent you from talking about the campaign.

They do have jurisdiction over the candidate and campaign you endorse, though. If you contacted your candidate and offered them money or services in the hope that they could use your help to get elected, and they accepted your offer they would be guilty. You wouldn't be.

Unfortunately, it seems like a fairly impotent law if all you have to do as a foreign national with an interest in the election is to support a candidate without their endorsement.

> As much as America would like to think their laws apply across the globe, they don't actually have jurisdiction over you.

You might want to check with Humberto Álvarez-Machaín (acquitted, sure, but not because the law didn't apply to him) or Manuel Noriega about that.

Or Howard Marks in the book Mr Nice tells a bit about his thinking the US had no power over him and then, oops.

But I could, for instance, buy advertisements in support of my favoured candidate?

I guess not on US TV or US billboards since they're under the control of the US. But if I buy ads on the internet that just happen to be seen by US citizens there's nothing the US can do about it, right?