Transcripts For CSPAN Unrig The System Summit - Russian Interference In U.S. Elections 20180221

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 Clinton Administration 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 Foreign Agents registration act could be updated to specifically address problems such as russias 2016 social media propaganda campaign. These are the types of laws i hope you all will push for, because these are the types of laws that would specifically target foreign states and Foreign Nationals and do not use foreign interference as pretext to be more onerous on american political speech rights. Thank you very much. [applause] it sounds like one thing we can all agree on is that this is a National Security issue. It sounds like another unfortunate thing we can all agree on is that the federal government is in no position to address it. The honest ads act, any act from congress, the federal election commission, big issues from Ballot Initiatives having money coming from foreign sources to online political ads. There is another ingredient in this, which is what state and local reformers can do when the federal government will not do anything. State and local activists, reformers, what they can do in the name of our National Security. After Citizens United and the little thing of the state of the union between president obama and Justice Alito on whether Citizens United opened up a flood of foreign spending on our campaigns, there was a test case brought to test whether Foreign Nationals could make expenditures into a campaign here it was actually a pretty good test case. An israeli citizen went to kinkos and ran off some things. In that case, the Supreme Court was able to dodge it and not able to justify it self. But it upheld this ban on foreign contributions and expenditures and our elections. The reason that is important is because the lower court on the d c circuit, a quite conservative judge in washington, d. C. , wrote an opinion they came to this commonsense conclusion that we, as a selfgoverning community, get to draw close lines with respect to political participation that was based on earlier Supreme Court precedent that was about foreign activities in the state and what states could do to regulate foreign activities. A long line of cases about when states were able to, not generally discriminate against aliens that is still suspect, but when they could regulate the presence of foreigners in politically sensitive roles. By upholding the federal law and relying on the state law, it left open the field for states to come in and take various measures. Perhaps mimicking the federal ban, but certainly other lesser measures like disclosure, not disclosure for friends and neighbors but the disclosure of 150,000 of purchases. They can do that. They can do lobbying. They can use the public contracting power. States are Major Players in public contracting power. States have a lot of tools and are much more engaged and dynamic at this moment than congress or the fec sorry so theres a lot the states that do. This course has lit that path for them. I am actually not as pessimistic as you are. I think it makes sense for federal government to address the problem of foreigners in elections. The issue of foreign spending in our elections is governed primarily under the federal Election Campaign act, the commissioner weintraub administers. There are a few states that have their own prohibitions against foreign spending. California comes to mind. Those are suspender measures. The federal law is the primary one prohibiting foreign interference in our elections. Where we are running into problems, as amy clover sade admitted, her honest ads act she admitted was not primarily motivated by foreign interference. It was an attempt to use that as a vehicle to enact the disclose act to which the perform community has been pushing before the ink had dried on the Citizens United position. These are being pushed through congress. They do not address foreign interference in our elections. That is what is causing gridlock in congress preventing congress from passing a law that will address this problem. A word of practical advice, as a republican, if you want to address this particular issue, dont use other legislation, ancillary legislation and use this problem as a pretext for enacting other disclosure laws. Lets talk about another state that has protection. I want to talk about california. One of the tangible, proven examples of foreign money being used in the u. S. Election was 2012, in los angeles, they had a ballot measure about business leagues, the use of condoms during pornography. [laughter] wouldnt you know it, a foreign pornographer decided to spend 300,000 in that los angeles race. There was a complaint made to the fec. The fec declined to punish the foreign pornographer. You have to be fair. It was a split vote. [laughter] i would not anyone in this room to think i voted for a pornographer. [laughter] while the foreign pornographer got away with it, he did not get away with it in california. The california regulators held his feet to the fire and levied a stiff fine. [laughter] im going to let that it took a while. [laughter] and we are back. [laughter] is that something every state could do in Ballot Initiatives which is not covered by federal law to protect Ballot Initiatives . Indeed. Of the federal law covers all elections. Federal, state and local. The one thing it does not cover is state or municipal ballot measures. There was uncertainty about that for a while. The fec said federal law did not cover it. There are no federal ballot measures. There is some logic there. Any state or municipality that uses the ballot measure process can enact its own band to cover that. Are states doing things now to address this figure problem . Legislation, ballot measures . Why dont you tell us about st. Pete, my hometown . Ok. St. Petersburg, of florida adopted a local ordinance that says if you are a foreign influence corporation, you have an ownership threshold, one aggregate, it limits the money you can spend in expenditures in a st. Pete election. Are there other efforts going on now to respond to this, whether it is through the guise of corporate spending or the guise of any other way foreign money may be able to infiltrate and affect our elections . It is likely the ballot measures that will be on the ballot later this year are not completely cooked yet but there might be two states that submit to their voters the question to ban Foreign National money from ballot measures, or other mechanisms. Those two particular states are likely to be alaska and north dakota. But, that is not definite yet. There are likely to be more in 2020. With so much of this conversation being occupied by [inaudible] you mentioned the mueller investigation. How can conservative progressives move past the elephant in the room and hunker down for something that is a shared interest . Are there opportunities for reform that dont go beyond certain letters that could be viable . Taking a look there are two companion bills, by Chuck Grassley and then run in the house, they do not specifically target these thumbs likely have talking about like foreigners purchasing ads on facebook. So i think, you know, that is a surgical, legislative approach that perhaps could be accomplished, and i think people ought to be advocating for that. Going to what eric had said, if we want those policies to be effective mother might not be anything wrong with a belt and suspenders approach. Effective, there might not be anything wrong with a belt and suspenders approach. We say that is the federal governments issue. But for most of our countrys history, states had a more active role with respect to foreign affairs, immigration, etc. And particularly at a moment i am sorry,ally the federal cop is asleep on the beat. Empowering states and states attorneys general, and other folks to enforce these laws at other levels can be a good thing to make sure the policy we want actually makes a difference. I am not going to speak so much to the state stuff. My jurisdiction is a most exclusively federal. Except when it comes to spending. I want to circle back to something you said about disclosure. You are smiling because you knew i couldnt resist it. It is part of the reason why we did not find out during the election cycle the russians were buying ads on facebook, because we have such poor disclosure of who is behind Digital Advertising. And the disclose act has been beefed up in the last congress in order to try and address the possibility of foreign money coming in through corporate means. That is a whole new separate section of the disclose act. This is not a rehash of the disclose act. One of the things the honest ad act does is makes sure we have Digital Advertising covered in our disclosure rules. We really need to have beefed up disclosure and disclaimers, which are a subset of disclosure, in order to find out where the information is coming from. Because people were spreading information around the internet that came originally from a russian bot farm. I dont think anyone wants to get their information from there, and if they knew they were getting the information from there it might affect how much they paid attention to it. It is certainly a necessary step that we have to take. Yeah, if i can just respond to that. What are the ads we are talking about, specifically . In order to drive out the problem we have to identify it correctly. I think we all agree on that. Some of these ads would not even meet the issue of issue advocacy. They were just messages about social issues. A lot of these ads were about issues like black lives matter. Do we want the federal government or state governments regulating black lives Matters Movement and their messages . I think that is a dangerous road to go down. Moreover i would point out that washingtono the post, which we all know is fake news, 10 Million People who saw these facebook ads we are talking about sponsored by russians, 5. 6 million of those views were after the election. I dont think even under the broadest definitions of campaignfinance law, we cant regulate ads that are run after the election. I just dont see any disclosure laws that could realistically speaking be enacted that would target these socially divisive but not necessarily political in the legal sense, political ads that were run by Foreign Governments. I just want to be clear about why disclosure and disclaimers matter in this context. Nobody is under the illusion there is going to be an ad one day and the disclaimer on the bottom is going to say paid for by the russian government. That is never going to happen. No one thinks that is going to happen. The reason it matters, giving that information on the face of the ad and in whatever sort of disclosure may be mandated gives Law Enforcement, journalists, and watchdog groups like us and voters as a whole the opportunity to investigate detect illegal activity when it is happening and ideally deterrent deter it from happening in the first place. It is not a cureall but it is a necessary step. Lets talk about solutions that can come outside of the government, quickly. Companies like facebook and twitter, especially twitter, as the threat of regulation started to heat up, once that threat receded a bit we have yet to see any plans go forward, or the public perhaps, and their Media Literacy to be able to identify ads. This is a problem in europe that the public is not unable to respond to, encouraging public watchdogs. What are solutions in the absence of federal action, either the public, media or private companies, especially Internet Companies like facebook and twitter can do . One of the things that i work with with the Corporate Reform Coalition is shareholder resolutions. So, since Citizens United, it started before then, but it picked up after Citizens United, shareholders have been using their powers under the securities laws to bring shareholder resolutions which ask for more transparency. The most popular things they have been asking for is more transparency about lobbying and more transparency about corporate political spending. And because of that tumult from investors, about half of the s p 500 has decided to be voluntarily more transparent about where they are spending their money, including the money that would otherwise be completely not captured by our regulatory system as it stands right now. So the money that would go to 501 c fours, which are social welfare organizations and 501 c sixes, which are trade associations like the chamber. Any thoughts on private companies . On that point, there is this uneasy tension i have noticed, where you have some panels complaining about all of the influence and power large corporations have over our democratic discourse, and yet now we are talking about the sector of large media corporations, large social media corporations essentially regulating political speech. Of course, as a republican, as a bulgarian, libertarian, these companies can do whatever they want. But there is this uneasy tension that is apparent here. But probably we would not object if facebook came up with a new policy and said we are not going to take ad money in rubles anymore. What . Not allow for ad money to be paid for in rubles anymore. Would that be a good thing for them to do . Sure. But facebook is not a purely american platform. It is not available in china because it is censored. I dont know if it is available in russia. If their platform were successful in russia i think they would perhaps have to make some accommodation for russian users. If the ads are in russian, how about that . A question for the audience that is written in english, on that topic, what is the costbenefit analysis of regulating tech, social Media Companies to prevent foreign influence . What our values on both sides of that conversation . I want to just say that i think facebook has voluntarily said they were going to take some steps that would be helpful, but when we put out our notice, and i specifically reached out to the Tech Companies, to facebook, google and twitter to comment on this and give us your ideas, they actually all said they would appreciate having some guidelines. They would like to hear from the federal government to give them some parameters. And they think that might be helpful to them rather than them try to make it up on their own. So i consider that a positive step. In terms of the cost, i have written a lot about this. These social media platforms, even though they have great that,nce, i will concede they have great influence for social change. Look at the me too movement. That started on social media. Look at the womens march, which was sparked by a facebook post. And it spread like wildfire across the country. Look at a lot of these democratic movements in the middle east in recent years. They were all conducted on social media. So my message is you have to be careful about not imposing Overly Burdensome Regulations on social media in a way that will stifle a lot of these genuinely grassroots movements for social change. I agree with eric that you want to make sure youre not fighting the last battle. Right . Some of the reforms, i think the most important response to the russian interference in our election is that we know, fool me once. That is powerful. And these conversations are powerful. We do not know what the next is going to be. I do think on the cost analysis there should be cautioned that whatever our response is, it is not about what happened last time, and is a supple enough response and that the Law Enforcement institutions are Strong Enough to deal with whatever we dont know about what is going to come next. That is the concern. We dont know what it is and we cant talk about it. Interesting question from our audience. How can we ferret out bots on twitter and other platforms, and once you find out, what should you do . Part of what is frustrating about all of this is that foreign interference is already illegal. Our regulators cannot be everywhere at once. I am reminded of signs that went up in new york after 9 11, if you see something, say something. So one thing to do if you see something that looks really peculiar on your facebook feed or your twitter, it looks like it is coming from a bot, report it to facebook or twitter. And if it is really pernicious, call your favorite journalist. Because i am sure they would also be interested to investigate whether we are getting another foreign attack on our current election. We are in an election year, after all. You know, on that point, my side has always said the best antidote for bad speech is more speech. I dont know exactly how it is done on facebook or twitter. I do use facebook, i dont use twitter. If there is someone else flagging suspicious posts, i would certainly be for that. I always flag spam emails because i know that will go into the algorithms that these Tech Companies have so that those types of emails from certain senders will also be sequestered for all users. So i think that is a way of essentially crowdsourcing a response to foreign attempts to sow division in our society. I would add to that, one of the things that some of the russian bots were doing during the 2016 election was pretending that they were Bernie Sanders supporters, and so they would get into these fights with clinton supporters and would never turn off. Because they are a computer program. So the clinton supporter would think they are arguing with a real person and would get frustrated and waste time and effort thinking they could not convince this bernie supporter of some political point. I would just encourage you to step back and know that that is a possibility. If you get into an argument and the other side just wont give an inch, it is possible you are arguing with a computer. And dont waste your time on that. Like, just dont waste your time. It is not worth it. Maybe even if it is a person dont waste your time on it. [laughter] [applause] another question from our audience. Does Citizens United enable nonu. S. Citizens to legally contribute to u. S. Elections, and could foreign contributions be used as a premise for a suit to overturn . No, not technically. So the reasoning of Citizens United, which is that you cant discriminate on the basis of who is speaking, even when it comes, especially when it comes to campaign expenditures, that reasoning, it wasnt a crazy lawsuit to bring on behalf of Foreign Nationals, that reasoning applies. That is what president obama was talking about in the state of the union. But the Supreme Court, in a one sentence summary affirmance, dodged the issue because i am not sure they could really explain themselves anymore. That has been settled. So the idea of foreign contributions being a vehicle to come after Citizens United, the court has made its decision and said Citizens United is a different issue, even though it is not. Unfortunately they have dodged the issue and i will expect they will continue to dodge the issue. Let me clarify. What do you mean by its the same issue . It seems to me the reasoning you just talked about would provide for distinction. You are talking Domestic Corporations paying able to speak about our domestic politics. , versus this idea we dont want Foreign Nationals outside of our political system, outside our Political Community which is the language of the court views in their decision. That is what prohibits outsiders , foreigners from spending on our elections. Why isnt that a principal distinction . It is not the principal they use in Citizens United. Ok. I guess i would just add to is clear as mud in the current campaignfinance system what counts as a foreigner from the point of view of a corporation. My go to example of this is budweiser. A lot of us think of budweiser as being an american company. By mbev, whichn is not an american company. Which should be the controlling thing the americans who work at budweiser or their parent company, which is not american . Fec, i would point out has articulated very clear guidelines on that over the past 20, 30 years. You cant have Foreign Nationals controlling the spending. It has to be controlled entirely by american citizens. Moreover, no part of the foreign revenues of the company can be used to engage in political spending in the United States. It all has to come from the u. S. Subsidiarys revenues. So it is sort of a red herring that is being thrown out there. It is just not the case. But that line of cases, that line of precedence stems from old law that stems from whether companies can subsidize the operations of their pacs, which draw money exclusively from u. S. Citizens who work for those companies in the United States. So it is not clear to me post Citizens United whether that law is still good. Would it be possible for a company, a private corporation, 49 foreignowned to spend money in an American Election . Probably, as long as the company is under current law, as long as the company is using money that was generated in the United States and the people who are making the decisions are u. S. Citizens. But i think this is a problematic area. I have written about this. As i said, there is a new section in the disclose act and the st. Pete laws, even at the local level. I think that we have to really take a hard look at what it takes to control a corporate decision, and who even u. S. Managers are thinking about what their priorities are when they are spending corporate resources. Because they work for, in some instances, foreign bosses, and they dont have to have those foreign bosses dictate to them, i want you to spend this money in the greater interest of the larger organization. They know that is their job. If i may, i would just add to this that we have to remember millions and millions of american citizens work for subsidiaries of foreign corporations. And this idea that corporations may spend in American Elections to some extent, whether it is through direct contributions in states that permit it or independent expenditures at the federal level, which most corporations dont do, you dont want to disenfranchise the millions of American Workers whose interests would be actually affected through these corporations. That is why you need to have an outlet for corporate spending to some extent. And those millions and millions of American Workers have zero say over how their corporate bosses are spending their money. [applause] we have got about five minutes left. A question from the audience. 2018 midterm cycle coming up. What is the threat of foreign influence look like for any elections, federal, state or otherwise . How bad does it look and is there any realistic chance something can be done to close those loopholes before the elections in november . Point, wereiterate my cant know that it is going to it is probably not going to be rubles buying facebook ads. We dont know. Maybe they are that clever. But we dont know exactly what it is going to look like. You kind of feel like they almost wanted us to know when they used the rubles. I think that there is a good chance, and im going to push hard for it, that we can an act this very tiny advance in fec regulations to address the disclaimers on express advocacy, internet ads. But this is such a small sliver of the problem, i really think that what is needed is more pressure on federal legislators. Because there is just so far the fec can go under current law. I think we need more pressure on federal legislators to take stronger steps. Yeah, i would echo that. If we are trying to take action items from this conference, one is just making it Crystal Clear to your representatives, your senators, write the white house. [laughter] you know, tell them that you care about the issue. What do we say about not engaging in arguments that are not productive . [laughter] touche. But let your elected member of Congress Know that you care about dark money, and you do not want to see more of it. You cant say that enough to them. If i may, i would just point out, from my perspective this debate illustrates the great vulnerability that we face. We are barking up the wrong tree. We are looking at the wrong problem. I would cite this Washington Post article. This article points out that the russian ads were targeting nonbattleground states like maryland and d. C. Anyone who knows anything about president ial politicsknows that if you are trying to influence that election, you would not target maryland and d. C. The ads did not even target any of the battleground states. That was the subject of another panel today. So the real problem, i see in terms of our vulnerability, is russian attempts to hack our voting system. That is a real problem. All of the debates about disclosure, this goes to my suspicion that this is being used as a pretext to enact disclosure measures that have nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the problem of foreign interference in our elections. That is the great vulnerability. I agree with you that we need to do everything we can to ensure that our voter databases are secure from hacking. That is absolutely a strong priority. But to say that when all of this information has been spread around the country by russian bots, that is completely not a problem, there were more people exposed information being spread by the russians than people who voted in the election. That is how many people saw that. And we need to do something about that. [applause] so would state and local performers be able to respond to, if they thought there was fear of russian interference elections, would they be able to stop that over twitter or facebook . Might run into wicked preemption problems. By preemption i mean if you have regulation at the federal level, that will displace of the ability of state and local systems to regulate, and i would imagine things that are that look like they are regulating the internet are most likely beng to be deemed to preempted by federal law. States and people, localities are the ones who administer our elections, including our federal election, are above. Of course i think the Common Ground here in terms of addressing election infrastructure, which we all agree on, that is something that states have to do. And it will be states and localities alone, because the feds, congress, the resources for the states that have traditionally been there, those federal resources have dried up. Absolutely contact your state and local officials about hardening their infrastructure about these attacks and talk to federal officials about getting them the help that once was there. A good note to end on. Ladies and gentlemen, please thank our panel. A reminder, we have cards on the backdoor. When you head out, please grab an inspiration card. Please use eyewitness on the app please evaluate this on the app. [applause] announcer tomorrow, watch eric trump address the annual Action Congress at marylands national harbor. Live coverage at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Sunday on cspans q a, Duke Divinity School assistant professor kate bowler talks about her memoir, everything happens for a reason, reflecting on being diagnosed with stage four cancer at the age of 35. I felt the presence of god. I felt the love of other people. All the intense prayers. The second i got sick my whole community got together and prayed like marathon runners for me. The president was reflecting back to me love. My hope is that as you are prepared to die, i was having to make preparations, that someone or something beat you there. I certainly felt that way. Announcer sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan. Today,er earlier students protested outside the white house advocating for gun reform after the Florida School shooting. The protest happened hour before President Trump met with parents, students and teachers who had been victims of School Shootings, including those affected by last weeks School Shooting in florida as well as victims from the columbine and sandy hook shootings. Their time is coming. We are going to vote in the 2018 midterm elections. We are going to vote in the 2020 elections. And none of them are going to stand a chance. [applause] they are stopping what needs to happen in this country. We need common sense gun control legislation now [applause] no more waiting. No more thoughts and prayers. Tell me the last time thoughts and prayers saved anybody. They havent. It is time for legislation. We need it now. We needed for all of us here. None of us are safe without it. [applause] as long as lunatics are running around with ar15 assault rifles, none of us are safe. Something needs to give and it has to happen with the lawmakers, or else they are out of here. [applause] thank you all again so much for coming out. Who would have been nothing without you. Daniel, daniel, daniel, daniel. 24. E out here march that is the national walkout. Be here. And the 14th. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. Today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court, and Public Policy events in washington dc and around the country. Cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. Sunday on cspans schoolke divinity assistant professor talks about her memoir, everything happens for a reason, reflecting on being diagnosed with stage four cancer at the age of 45 35. I felt the love of other people. People pouring in. All the intense prayers. My second i got sick, community prayed like marathon runners for me. Part of it was then reflecting back to me love. Also just a sense that my hope is as you are preparing to die like i had to make preparations, that someone or something meet you there. I certainly felt that way. Announcer sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan. Announcer former secretary of housing and urban Development Julian castro has said he is thinking about a White House Run in 2020. He spoke at an event in New Hampshire recently. His remarks are cspan. Parents who have lost family because of School Violence share aetna vent with President Trump. After that, later a look at russian interference and elections in elections. Announcer cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up thursday morning, former Energy Secretary ernest monis discusses Nuclear Threats facing the u. S. And the world. Then the leadership institutes Kevin Phillips talks about conservatism and millennials. And issue ones Meredith Mcgehee will discuss reform. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern thursday morning. Join the discussion. Announcer former housing and urban Development Secretary Julian Castro spoke at a Young Democrats event in New Hampshire. He talks about lyrical strategy heading into the 18 and 2020 elections. Mr. Castro also served as mayor of san antonio, texas and has said he is considering running for president. All right. I have the honor and privilege of introducing our featured speaker tonight. When we were thinking about who to invite to our event tonight