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Depends on what you mean by "OK". Is it the conduct I would recommend for everybody as highest example of human virtue? Not sure. Is it conduct commonly happening in the midst of political campaign? Most certainly yes, and much worse. In this case, Veselnitskaya told them "Hillary campaign just committed a federal crime, and I have proof. Want to see it?" Of course they did. The mistake was to believe anything Russians say about anything and sending a figure as big as Trump Jr. without several layers of further verification. That definitely was a screw-up, a rookie mistake. For which they paid dearly.



That would make more sense if it was some random individual offering political dirt.

> “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump”

Sounds like something one should report to law enforcement.


> Is it conduct commonly happening in the midst of political campaign? Most certainly yes, and much worse.

Please list some examples of other US politicians accepting election assistance from foreign governments.


Walter Mondale: Democrats actually contacted the KGB and sought help to defeat Reagan in 1984. The organizer of it was Ted Kennedy.

Barack Obama: famously promised to Medvedev to be more flexible after the election, in exchange for Russian not pressing on the missile defense issue when it could hurt Obama's position.

Hillary Clinton: accepted money donations from foreign politicians with US interests many times. The fact that Clinton Foundation and Clinton Campaign were big buddies is an open secret by now. Though of course that happened not only connected to elections, so attributing it specifically to elections would probably be very limiting to the scope.

I would also bring Steele dossier here, but the involvement of specifically foreign government here is unproven - while I'd give more than even chance that many of the allegations there were created by Russian intelligence sources, it may also be a regular "our man in Havana" type affair, so it's not entirely sure.

But I don't see why it specifically must be the government. If it's OK to accept dirt on your opponent (let's limit ourselves to dirt that is true and exclude fraud for now), then why is it not OK to accept it from a foreigner? It doesn't become less true because foreigner touched it. And if it's ok to accept it from a random foreigner, why it's not OK to accept it from a foreigner which is paid by foreign government?

What seems to be less OK is to solicit it in an explicit quid-pro-quo arrangement, either monetary or otherwise. Of which, in Trump's case, there's no indication (though the first example is a classic specimen).




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