This something that you can today inspires your presents an idea that you want to go back and share with your community, please share it with the rest of the folks here as well. There are inspiration cards outside that backdoor. The folks in the blue shirts will hand you want. Dont forget to give feedback about the session. I am your moderator today. We are looking for Sustainable Solutions for problems. The 2016 election made very clear that our elections are vulnerable to foreign influence. The u. S. Intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the russian government interfered with the 2016 president ial election. According to the office of National Director of intelligence, they were trying to undermine faith in the american electoral process. This was not the first time we have seen foreign influence in u. S. Elections. There is every reason to think that the loopholes that were exploited still present for abilities for us in 2018 and beyond. There has never been a more important time to talk about this issue and come together to find solutions. I am going to introduce our terrific panel. They will get us started with some opening remarks. Coupleask a follow followup questions for them. Is ellen left weintraub of the federal election commission. Before that she worked in the political law group. She served on the legal team that advise the Senate Rules Committee during the election contest that aroused in the 1996 election. Her is professor anthony johnston. Writes federal and state constitutional law, election law, and related suspects. Subject. He served as solicitor in the state of montana. The historicalon and constitutional perspectives on my foreign influences such concern for our democracy. Left is the fellow with the brown and center for justice. She worked as counsel on the Democracy Program and is the author of the forthcoming article on how dark money could be hiding a legal for money and how it threatens our national, political sovereignty. [inaudible] yes, i can. I would love to. To her left is the senior director of trial litigation and the chief of staff in the Campaign Legal center. Coordinates, implements, and manages broader trial court strategy. He worked in the federal election commission. We have a senior fellow at the institute for free speech. He is a political law attorney whose work focuses on regulation under federal and late state state Campaign Finance. Counsel for the federal election commissioner. If you would, start us off. Thank you all for coming. It is great to see you. We know because our intelligence agencies told us, that a Foreign Government took steps to try to intervene in our election. Our intelligence agencies have warned of that they will do it again. Pompeo said that just last week. This is not of the a radical concern anymore. Did foreigners also take advantage of our Campaign Finance system . That is a funny thing about loopholes. We do not entirely now. We do not have all the information. Given what we already know, that of Foreign Government use rubles to buy facebook as to try to influence our elections, we naive to think theyre not exploring other avenues. It is a remarkable Cost Effective technique. They pointed out that if you added up all the money that they thet to try to influence u. S. , but thus, the french, and the players elections, it would not cost as much as one fighter jet. We have to think very hard when we think about money and politics and the influence it can have on how cheap some of this is. Mechanismsvarious that a foreigner could use to try to intervene in our election , they can try to give a direct donation. This has happened. They could use dark money vehicles, llcs, c4s, other entities that can spend money in our elections but do not tell us who is behind them to try and influence our elections. If you look good how much foreigners own of our corporations, about 25 percent of stocks that are u. S. Corporations are actually owned by a foreigner. So when corporations are spending in our elections, think about whose interests they are representing. Then there was the hacking of the infrastructure, which also cost money to pay the hackers. I know the department and the state governments are working hard on hardening the resources against that. That one is a little out of my jurisdiction. And then there were those internet ads, and we know that they had an effect. They organized events with people on different sides of the issue. People showed up and actually got into fights with each other, all of this organized by a foreign country. That is pretty scary. When we look at Digital Democracy and how much of our political advertising is moving , we have to feel a more attention to this. In 2016, 1. 4 billion was spent on digital political advertising, an eightfold increase from 2012. This is skyrocketing and is the wave of the future. We have to do something about it. One small step were trying to take at the fec is to make sure are adequate disclaimers on the advertising you see on the internet. Believe it or not, this has not been clear up until now, and we put it out for comment a couple years ago just youve we should do something about this, and we got six comments. But a couple of months ago i said maybe we should take another look at this, and we put it out for comment again, and 150,000 of you commented on this. 98. 5 percent of you said to please do something. If you were among those 150,000, thank you. We need to hear from you. We will be having more opportunities for public comment. I will be tweeting on this, so follow me on twitter. There are states and localities that have been active in these issues. What we do at the fec is just a small slice of what needs to be done. There are acts in congress that take aim at trying to keep foreign money out of our elections, and all of those proposals need your support. Moderator well, i want to start with the words of someone who could not be on the penalty. It is perfect for being in new orleans this time of year on a campus. The way that the professor puts it, getting foreign money in u. S. Political campaigns is about as easy as getting illegal alcohol into the freshman guard of a typical college campus. [laughter] i want to draw some context around this and particularly think about the cross partisan concern that this represents. One way to look at it is to say, you know, it is russia. They are interested in disruption of the dnc last year. Who knows what it will be. 0 years ago, the dnc was actually known for going after four and campaign contributions. After Foreign Campaign contributions. I worry a little about the suspicion about outsiders. I think when we talk about citizenship and think about this issue of outside influence, it is not about drawing lines against bigotry against outsiders. It is about selfgovernance and our choice about who we want to participate. We should be able to make that choice how we want. We have avenues to bring outside voices in, and they are welcome. We can draw the circle of citizenship and belonging to the american Political Community broader if we want, but that is our choice. It is not a red dawn moment of being scared of these russians. It is just that it should be up us to make that decision in the first place. One common vocabulary for thinking about these questions and what i think about in my job is the constitution. We will hear about the First Amendment, but it turns out there is a lot more in the document beyond the First Amendment. And if you read the constitution, the whole thing, there are all sorts of concern expressed in there about foreign influence here and we want house members to be citizens for seven years. The father, in some ways, to the bill of rights, george mason, argued for seven years here they wanted to say three. George mason was for opening a wideopen door for immigrants, and if you are following that issue, it is worth looking at what the Founding Fathers had to say about immigration. They were quite proimmigration. But what he said was, wide open for immigrants but not choosing to let foreigners and adventurers make laws for us and govern us. It might happen that a rich foreign nation might send over her tools that will bribe the legislature for insidious purposes. So we will express concern about outsiders. The president being an natural born citizen, which im sure if professor painter were here, he would mention. More generally, this idea of a republican form of government that James Madison talked about. The concern once you open government to represent us, to represent the people, is to make sure that it is the right us, that we have some say in that. I will in end and what i think is maybe the best argument for getting a hold of this issue for empowering both state and federal governments, is a madison said the rights enforcing rights are not necessarily on the same side in republican governments. The Party Without the majority possess such a superiority of military talent and experience does not have to be jet fighters, can be actors, for an powers foreign powers will render it superior the party with less political power in the country, through foreign help, can gain control and power through our democracy. That is the reason we should care. Good evening. I will try that again. Good evening. Good evening. We are all in the same room together. My time is short so let me get to the crux of the matter. The constant lying out of d. C. Is giving me a headache and is breaking my heart. One of the biggest lies that is troubling me today is one that has been told by the president s lawyers, and that line is that there is no crime that the special counsel is investigating. That drives me nuts as both a citizen and as a law professor. So if you will forgive me, here are some possible crimes of the special counsel could credibly be investigating. Bribery is a crime. Moneylaundering is a crime. Violating the foreign corrupt practices act is a crime. Lying to the fbi is a crime. Lying to the special counsel is a crime. Making false statements to the fcc is a crime. Failing to register as a Foreign Agent is a crime. Violating the logan act is a crime. Breaking into a Computer System is a crime. The receipt of stolen goods is a crime. Soliciting money as an american president ial candidate from a Foreign National is a crime. Accepting money from or receiving value from a Foreign National as a president ial candidate is a crime. Aiding and abetting the foregoing is a crime. Being part of a criminal conspiracy is a crime. Obstruction of justice is a crime. Last but not least, treason is a crime. [applause] and, fortunately for all of us, many of those that i just listed i listed the federal crimes. There are also state analogs to most of what i just mentioned, and the reason why it is important that there are state analogs to what i just mentioned is president ial pardoning power only extends to the federal crime. So, i am hopeful that there will be serious prosecutions, whether it comes out of the special counsels office or out of our state attorneys general. And i will leave it there, but i will just ask you to banish the word collusion from your vocabulary. It is not useful, because that is actually not a crime. [laughter] thanks. I want to thank those from represent. Us for inviting me to speak here today. I have one legal point at a point more about messaging than about the law. The legal point i would like to make is that the issue of stopping foreign interference in our elections is fundamentally different, constitutionally different, statutorily different, different in terms of enforcement than pretty much Everything Else we usually talk about in terms of Campaign Finance a debate. In every other area, you have our side, the prodemocracy side, trying to enhance the First Amendment right of the citizenry as a whole to meaningfully participate in the democratic process. And you have the other side, the sort of procorruption site, seeking to enhance the First Amendment rights of all of darks oligarchs and corporations to overwhelm the First Amendment rights of the citizenry. So you have this balancing of First Amendment interests. In the context of stopping foreign interference in our election, that is not the framework. Foreign actors outside the United States have no First Amendment rights. I am going to let that sink in for a second. There is no First Amendment interests on that side. The russian actor whos posting things on facebook from a troll farm in kiev or moscow is not protected by the First Amendment. On the other side of the equation, the interest the government is furthering by stopping that activity is not just the First Amendment interests of the citizenry, but it is the fundamental core obligation of the federal government to keep the country safe from Foreign Agents who are seeking to harm it. In the regular campaignfinance context, you have the First Amendment rights, and we balance of them. It is a balancing act. In this context, there is no balance to be had. And the second and final point i want to raise, the one i call messaging, is that i think despite what i just said, there is a tendency when talking about this issue to go into the same terminology that we use for the regular campaignfinance debate. You talk about transparency and responsiveness and burden. I think that is unhelpful. This is a National Security issue just as much as what the department of defense does. We would not let russian soldiers enter this country and station themselves outside polling places, so we should not be letting russian agents enter this country electronically or otherwise to interfere with our process. That is the framework within which we should be having this debate. [applause] thanks for that. I agree with a lot of what he just said. For those of you who know me and the institute of free speech, you will recognize that i am sort of the odd man out on the panel. I have an alternative viewpoint. I relish the role of rebel, so i will discuss action items first and then policy. I think you will see why. So when we tap into foreign interference in the election, what are some things you can do to achieve that . In certain states, you can bypass the elected officials by getting a Voter Initiative on the ballot, but you will need to form a ballot measure committee, which i will refer to as a pac. They involve donor disclosure, even urging your neighbors and social Media Contacts to support a ballot measure initiative. It requires you to form a pac. It is not uncommon for the act of one to get tens of dollars in legal compliance. That is the tax on free speech, but proceeds go to the Campaign Finance bar. Last year, my colleagues and i looked at the campaignfinance laws and found that 15 states report to regulate you as a pac even if you spent so much as a penny. And that more than half of the states, tax status may be triggered by spending less than 1000. Of those states, 20 report to regulate you as a pac even if your major purpose is not political campaigns. Changing the laws of our system often requires action by an alleged official. Certain action by an elected official. If they do not align with your agenda, you might need to remove them. With the same pac analysis to apply, in many states, even if you disseminate messages urging your fellow citizens to contact their elected officials about legislation, what Campaign Finance attorneys call issue advocacy, that might trigger pac status. Lobbying laws might get you. More than a quarter of the states regulate socalled grassroots lobbying. The campaignfinance regime, there is complex registration and reporting requirements. You might wonder what the big deal is requiring disclosure. It is just disclosure when someone else is being gored. Democrats here, i ask, do you want the Trump White House keeping tabs on all your Political Activities . To republicans, in an alternative universe, would you want the Hillary ClintonAdministration Monitoring everything you are doing . We heard from katniss everdeen. Do you want them looking over the shoulder of her all the time . That is basically the hunger games. And they did not just stop at disclosure. More legal opportunities are created for opponents to file politically motivated complaints or for government officials to undertake politically motivated investigations. Why do i raise these issues . It is because they inform and affect the policies we are discussing on how to address foreign interference in our elections. Many of the proposals being bandied about today come straight out of Rahm Emanuels playbook of let no crisis go to waste. The foreign interference problem is being used as a pretext to enact the reform agenda, longstanding goal of more regulation of political speech. The socalled honest ads act, which is not very honest, that was introduced last year in congress is a perfect example. 99. 99 of regulatory effects would fall on american political speakers and not foreigners. What would more focused policy would like . A bipartisan duo of u. S. Senators has introduced a bill that would cause an array of sanctions to be triggered against any foreign country that is found to have interfered with our election. It has also been suggested that the