- Fact : Manafort sends internal polling data to Russian agents which is against the law. Simply sending them breaks the law even if they never used them. FACT
I dunno mate.
https://www.justsecurity.org/62201/...eopardy-manaforts-sharing-data-russian-agent/
This article sums it up nicely. For it to be illegal, the data has to be used to influence ad buys or some other contribution;
or if it wasn't used, Manafort has to have requested that it be used to influence ad buys.
However, since Manafort was a campaign official, it doesn't matter if he did it as a 'private citizen' or whether Trump knew- it is still illegal if one of the above conditions are met.
The other weird thing is that they have to show Manafort was aware of those campaign finance laws, which seems weird because you don't get that ignorance excuse for almost any other crime.
Can any reasonable person admit that what Manafort did was likely illegal based on these laws? Sure, hard to argue it wasn't more likely than not that polling data was shared for some sort of election related activity, and whether Trump knew or Paul did it for personal enrichment doesn't matter. Not to mention he
would rather stay in jail for the rest of his life instead of tell the truth about this exact subject.
That said though, with the evidence we are aware of it doesn't look like it is provably illegal.
The conservatives in this thread (and apologies if there are some that are being intellectually honest) are pretending "no publicly available legal standard evidence of collusion" is the same as "there was no collusion". That's about as disingenuous as saying Al Capone was not a gangster, only a tax evader and carried a gun one time.
However unless you have a source that shows it is illegal just to give polling data without the data being used, it cant be stated as fact that sharing the data was illegal.
I would need good odds to bet on this, because either Russians or Manafort or the witness they were tampering with would have to provide the evidence. They will never get anything out of the Russians, Manafort has already chosen life in prison over telling the truth, so who knows maybe the witness will flip. But I don't think there is a way on paper they could prove the polling data was used to Target ads, unless idk ads with something super super specific were bought that couldn't have been figured out without that data. Unlikely though.
Gates has already informed on the Russian and Manaforts meetings so I guess there's a chance he could provide/could have already provided the rest of the evidence.