On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” George Washington Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley argued that the allegations against the Clintons for the Uranium One deal and the Trump dossier are “more recognizable as a criminal allegation” than the allegations of Russian collusion against the Trump camp and possibly could be criminal.
Turley said, “Quite frankly, it’s good to have something that’s more recognizable as a criminal allegation. You know, the — I’ve — as you know, I’ve been very skeptical about the past Russian collusion claims as being a criminal matter, even though I supported the appointment of the special counsel after Comey was fired. I’ve been cautioning, and many others have, that it really isn’t a crime to collude. And in the same sense, it wouldn’t be a crime to receive information on Trump side from a foreign national. But the allegation against the Clintons could potentially be criminal. It doesn’t mean that they are criminal. The $500,000 given to Bill Clinton might have been innocent. The timing just might have been horrible. But that would be a cognizable crime if a linkage was found. In the same way, the allegation over the dossier does involve a potential violation of federal law. The Federal Election Commission Act requires campaigns to state a purpose for any money spent over about $200, to sort of have an item description for each of those amounts. There isn’t an item description for this law firm, for the amount of money that is being alleged to be given to this research firm.”
Turley noted that it is possible that the money could have come from an outside donor and noted that “there is a $66,000 research item that was mentioned, but there’s no reference to it.”
Turley also answered a question about Cambridge Analytica, which worked for President Trump’s campaign, reaching out to WikiLeaks to help release Hillary Clinton’s emails by stating he doesn’t “see the crime there.” He continued that while hacking systems is a crime, and some of the information in Clinton’s emails was found to be classified, it’s not necessarily illegal to see if that sort of information will become “publicly available or available otherwise. But there’s still these allegations that have to be addressed, whether this was an appropriate action to take, given the fact that many people view WikiLeaks as endangering national security.”
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