Special Counsel Robert Mueller laid out the law clearly in his indictment of numerous Russian nationals and groups for their attempts to interfere in the 2016 election.
As the indictment notes, the U.S. Department of Justice administers the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). FARA establishes a reporting protocol for foreign nationals, including non-government individuals “attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and law.” To its credit, the FBI seems to have done a good job tracking Russian individuals and entities that violated FARA even if there was no evidence of collusion with the Trump campaign or Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee emails. If there was a link between any of these groups and the Kremlin, the indictment made no note of it.
Most importantly, perhaps, the Mueller investigation has established that meddling by foreign nationals in a U.S. election is real and problematic. This being so, the DOJ and FBI might want to turn their attention to the role Mexican nationals played in the 2016 election. They will not have to dig deep to find evidence.
A good place to start searching would be the audio the journalists of Project Veritas recorded in their undercover stings of the Hillary Clinton campaign. To make the search easier, James O’Keefe has documented many of these conversations in his new book, American Pravda.
In the course of one sting, Democratic operative Scott Foval explained to Project Veritas’s “Steve Packard” how he paid people to incite violence at Trump rallies. “What I call it is ‘conflict engagement.’ Conflict engagement in the lines at Trump rallies,” Foval told Steve. “We’re starting anarchy here.”
“I’m saying we have mentally ill people that we pay to do [s—],” Foval continued. “Make no mistake. Over the last twenty years, I’ve paid off a few homeless guys to do some crazy stuff, and I’ve also taken them for dinner, and I’ve also made sure they had a hotel and a shower, and I put them in a program.” Foval had a particular affection for union supporters. “They’ll do whatever you want,” he added. “They’re rock ‘n’ roll.”
Foval led the Project Veritas team to a man named Bob Creamer, the head of a firm called Democracy Partners. “I’m the white hat,” Foval told Steve. “Democracy Partners is kind of a dark hat. I will probably end up being a partner there at some point because our philosophy is actually the same.”
For the record, Creamer is a big-time Democratic player. He is married to Chicago-area congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and is close to both the Obamas and the Clintons. According to visitor logs, Creamer made more than 340 trips to the White House during the Obama years, with 45 of those meetings including the president in attendance.
