One day, a foreign adversary might try to help a Democrat get elected to the White House, leading to a bevy of investigations similar to what President Trump faces, and that’s a scenario one Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee wants to avoid.
In a nod to inquiries into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., unveiled a bill Thursday that would make it a crime for political candidates of any party, their family, or members of their campaign to fail to notify the FBI if they are offered or receive assistance from a foreign agent.
Swalwell emphasizes in a piece published in the Atlantic that his Duty to Report Act seeks to avoid the situation President Trump and his inner circle are dealing with as federal government and congressional investigators look into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Multiple members of Donald Trump’s campaign, businesses, and family, I’ve learned, were contacted by individuals linked to the Russian government — but none of them, so far as we know, reported these contacts to law-enforcement agencies,” Swalwell writes.
The GOP-led intelligence panel in which Swalwell sits recently concluded there was no Trump campaign-Russia collusion, though Democratic members accused their Republican counterparts of conducting an incomplete and misleading investigation.
He cited the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as the “most obvious instance” in which his bill would hep protect a campaign from trouble in the future.
“Most of us probably hoped this would be common sense, but unfortunately, it seems we must specify it,” Swalwell writes. “This isn’t meant as a rebuke to President Trump or as an effort to relitigate the 2016 election — it’s a preventative, defensive measure for the future.”
The bill would only require candidates to report to the FBI if the information is about a competitor seeking the same office “both because that seems the likeliest scenario for foreign interference, and to avoid having the law to cover innocuous conversations people may have about contests in which they’re not involved,” Swalwell says.
The bill would also make it criminal for candidates to not reach out the the FBI if they “know or recklessly disregard” that a source of such information is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power.
Swalwell said the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has committed to the principle of his effort and the Republican Campaign Committee has “reportedly been more circumspect, telling The Atlantic that it is ‘open to working with anyone to tackle cybersecurity issues.'”
