> The strength of a democracy should be that its citizens can stand in the battleground of ideas unscathed and our abandonment of that ideal does not bode well
It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90).
It's not illegal for foreign entities to lobby our government (or the American people). It's illegal to do it dishonestly, e.g. by "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas" (¶ 3 of the indictment [1]) or using "without lawful authority, the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons to open accounts at PayPal" (¶ 90).
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380463-Internet-Res... via Axios [a]
[a] https://www.axios.com/mueller-indicts-13-russian-nationals-f...