Phones. Be a onehour question please hold your questions until the end. Dont be afraid to give feedback the sessions. Scott. Is i work to develop the legal ization advocacy work. I could not be zoned by a better what has become in a very short time the issue of True National priority. Our state,bility of local, and National Elections to and the urgentce need for americans across the political spectrum to come to find bold, forward looking, and Sustainable Solutions to the problem. Made verylection vulnerable to foreign hacking. According to the office of the National Director of intelligence, it undermines public faith in the American Democratic process. The first time weve seen foreign influence. Theres every reason to think the loopholes still present vulnerabilities for us in 2018 and beyond. Theres never going to be a better time. Introduceto briefly the panel. Ill ask a couple of followup questions. Remains minutes for question and answer. Weintrau is ellen b. She served on the legal team that advised the senate rules the electioning contest in the 1996 election. To her is professor anthony johnstone. He teaches about federal and state constitutional law, law, and related subjects. Prior to joining um, he served as a solicitor. They focused on the historical perspectivetional on why foreign influence is such for democratic. His left is ciara torresspel li iscy. Shes the author on how they could be hiding illegal foreign and how it threatening our national and political sovereign ty. Yes. Yes. I can. I would love to. Is adavthe staff of the legal r coordinates, implements , and reveals the broader trial court strategy. Previously worked in the office of general counsel where litigated cases for the fcc. Eric wang who is law attorney who focused on political activity regulation under political and lobbyingpaign finance, ethics, and tax laws. They previously worked as general counsel and served as counsel to carolyn the f who is the chair of cc. Weintraub, ifr you would. Thank you, scott. Thank you for coming. Be here. At to in 2016, they interfered with our election. They will do it again if we dont take time to stop it. Is not a concern. Thats the funny thing about loopholes, we dont know. All of theve information. Given what we know that foreign governments used rubles to buy ads, we were would be naive to think they arent exploring other avenues. It is a great technique. Mark warner has pointed out that if you added up all of themoney that that russians spent to try to influence the u. S. , the dutch, french, and the british election, it still wouldnt cost fighter jet. E we have to think hard when we think about money in politics and the influence it can have about how cheap some of this is do. One of the various mechanisms that a foreigner could use to electiontervene in our they could try to give a direct donation. It has happened from time to time. They could use dark money llc, c4, other entit ies that can spend money, who is behind us them to try to influence our elections. Look at how if you much foreigners own of the thatrations, 25 of stocks are u. S. Corporations are owned by foreigners. When corporations are spending in our election, think about whose interest they are representing. Then, of course, it was the hack infrastructure. Now that also cost money. You got to pathos hackers. I certainly hope the department of Homeland Security and the state governments are working on hardening their resource s against that. That one is a little bit out of my jurisdiction. Were the internet add s. We know that they had an effect. They caused people they organized events with people on sides of the issue. People showed up and got into fights with each other. This organized from a foreign country. Thats pretty scary. Digitallook at democracy and how much of it is how much of our political moving to the net , we know we have to pay a lot more attention to this. 2016, 1. 4 billion was spent on digital political advertising an eightfold increase from 2012. So this is skyrocketing. The future. Ve of we have to do something about it one small step that were trying fcc is to make sure there are adequate disclaim ers on the advertising that you see on the internet. It hasnt been clear until now. When we put it out there to do something about it, we got six comments. Ago, we of months thought we should take another look at it. For comment. 150,000 of you commented on it. 98. 5 said please do something. Were among the 150 ,000, we appreciate that. From you. Hear well be starting the process. Up, use twito keep ter. There are state that is have been active in the issues. We do with the fcc is just a small slice of what needs to be done. Acts in congress that take aim at trying to keep foreign money out of the elections. Yourf those proposals need support. Ill stop. Well, i want to start with a word that richard who couldnt be on the panel today. Being int perfect for new orleans at this time of year on a campus. Professor paynor puts it it is typical trying to get in the freshman yard on a typical college campus. Some context and partisanut the cross concern. Russia is interested in disruption. Going tos what it is be. Two years ago, who knows what it is going to be. Dnc was ago, right, the known for going after Foreign Campaign contributions. I want to go deeper and try to rather than the suspicious, i the suspicion of that put. Just we think the path to citizenship it is not a matter of drawing of bigotry against outsid ers. Specialnot about the government. And our choice. To choice to who we want participate. We can we aught to be able to make that choice how we want. Have avenues to bring outside voices in. They are welcome. Circle ofw the citizenship and belonging to the american Political Community broader. We want. But thats our choice. A is not that it is not red dawn moment of being scared of the russians. To maked be up to us that decision in the first place vocabulary thinking about the questions and one i thek about in my job is constitution. Well hear about the First Amendment. Lot moreout theres a in the document beyond the First Amendment. The constitution, the whole thing, theres all sorts of concern expressed in there about foreign influence. You want house members to be seven years, thus fathering some ways of the bill withghts with george mason the First Amendment. And what george mason said a wide openpening immigration. Immigration. Te pro he said wide open for immigrants were not choosing to let foreigners and adventurers make law for us and govern us. It might happen that a rich foreign nation might send over their tools. Going to draw the line and were going to require and ex press some concern about outsiders. The president being a natural born citizen. Sure if professor painter was here, he would mention. More generally the idea of a republican form of government that James Madison talked about openoncern once you government up to represent us, to represent the people, is to that it is the right us. In that. Ave some say ill end in what i think is the getting aholdfor of the issue. They are not necessarily on the same side in republican government. Party thatarty, the does not have the majority of possesslar votes may such a superiority of resources talents and experience. It doesnt have to be jet fight ers. Foreignt suckers from powers as will render it superior. The party that has less political power in the country through foreign help can gain and power in our democracy. And thats the concern and the should care. Good evening. Im going to try that again. Evening. Good evening. Okay. Were all in the same room together. Torresspelliscy. Let me get to the matter. The constant dying out of d. C. Is giving me a headache. It is breaking my heart. And one of the biggest lies that troubling me today is one thats been told by the president s lawyers. That lie is that theres no the special counsel is investigation. As both as me nuts citizen and as a law professor. Me, therel forgive are some possible crimes that counsel could be investigating. Bribery is a crime. Laundering is a crime. Violating the foreign corrupt a crime. Act is lying to the fbi is a crime. Lying to the special counsel is a crime. Statements to the f cc or the fec 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 value from the Foreign National as a american president ial candidate is a crime. Aiding and abetting the a crime. Is criminalt of the conspiracy is a crime. Obstruction of justice is a crime. Last but not least, treason is a crime. [applause] fortunate for all of us, many of those that i just listed listed the federal crime. Analogs. Also state the reason where it is important that there are state analogs to mentioned is president ial pardoning power federalends to the crime. So im hopeful that there will 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. 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 would like to make two points. One legal point and one related point that is 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 side, seeking to enhance the First Amendment rights of 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. 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. Thank you. I agree with a lot of what adav 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. We were asked to discuss the policy and action items. Because i relish the role of rebel so much, i will discuss action items first and then policy. I think you will see why. Lets say you want to toughen laws against foreign interference in our elections. 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 complex registration requirements, including 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 costs, if not more. That is the tax on free speech, accept the proceeds go to members of the Campaign Finance bar, like myself. Last year, my colleagues and i analyzed campaignfinance laws in all 50 states. We found that 15 states purport to regulate you as a pac even if you spent so much as a penny. In 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 campaign advocacy. Changing the laws of our system often requires action by an elected official. Certain elected officials simply dont align with your agenda, so you might need to remove them, right . But if you advocate for their election or defeat, the same pac analysis i described will 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. If you dont trigger campaignfinance laws, the 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 and breitbart accolades keeping tabs on all your Political Activities . To republicans, in an alternative universe, would you want the Hillary Clinton administration and her partisans monitoring everything you are doing . We heard from Katniss Everdeen. Do we want president snow looking over the shoulder of Katniss Everdeen and her Political Activities . Thats basically the hunger games, right . And the problem with these laws is they do 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 and other machinations. 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. For enacting more onerous on americans 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. Speak to that. 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. 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, because of the technicalities, was able to dodge it and not able to justify it self. It upheld the ban on foreign contributions and expenditures in 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 community, 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 that action cannot be taken at the federal level. I think it actually makes sense to the federal government to address the problem of foreign interference in elections, because the federal government is responsible for protecting the country from foreign invasion. 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 under state law against foreign spending. California comes to mind. Those are sort of the belts and suspenders measure. The federal law is the primary one prohibiting foreign interference in our elections. Where we are running into as senator Amy Klobuchar 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 Reform Community has been pushing before the ink had dried on the Citizens United position. These ancillary laws are being pushed through congress. 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. Scott lets talk about a state that has adopted protections. I want to talk about california. One of the few 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 about the use of condoms during pornography. Wouldnt you know it, a foreign pornographer decided to spend over 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 that i voted for the pornographer. [laughter] while the foreign pornographer got away with it, under a split vote, he did not get away with it in california. The california regulators held his feet to the fire and levied a stiff fine. [laughter] is that something that every state could do im going to let that it took a while. [laughter] and we are back. [laughter] is that something, by the way, that every state could do in Ballot Initiatives which is not covered by federal law to protect Ballot Initiatives . Indeed. I was going to say exactly what you just said. 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. 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, florida adopted a local ordinance that says if you are a foreign influence corporation, meaning you have an ownership threshold that is at least 5 , one single equity stakeholder, 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 likely to be at least two states that submit to their voters the question to ban Foreign National money from ballot measures, or through 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 the mueller investigation, have how can conservatives and 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 parameters that could be viable for folks to come together in the middle and support . I mentioned taking a harder look at the Foreign Agents registration act. There are two companion bills in congress. One in the Senate Introduced that chuck grassley, and other one in the house. Those dont actually specifically target of these problems that we have been talking about, like foreigners posting ads on facebook. I think that is a surgical approach, a legislative approach, that perhaps could be accomplished. I think people ought to be advocating for that. Going to it eric said, if we want those policies to be effective, there might be nothing wrong with a belt and suspenders approach. I think we look at National Security and say it is the federal governments issue, but for most of our country history, states had a much more active role with respect to foreign affairs, integration, etc. Particularly at a moment where im sorry, the federal cop is asleep on the beat. I think empowering states, state attorneys general, and other folks to enforce these laws at other levels, can be a good thing to make sure that the policy we want actually makes a difference. I am not going to speak so much to the state stuff, because my jurisdiction is a most almost exclusively federal. Except when it comes to foreign spending. I want to circle back to something eric said about disclosure earlier. He is smiling because he knew i would not be able to resist, but 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. The disclose act has been beefed up in the last congress 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. The honest ads act is not a rehash of the disclose act. One of the things the honest ad act does is make sure we have Digital Advertising covered in our disclosure rules. We really need to have beefed up disclosure and disclaimers, a subset of disclosure, in order to find out where the information is coming from. People were spreading information around the internet that came from a russian bot farm. I dont think anyone wants to get their information from there, and if they knew thats where the information was coming from, it might affect how much they were paying attention to it. I think disclosure is not the end all and be all, but a necessary step we really have to take. If i could just respond to that, lots of these what are the ads we are talking about . Do we all agreed that in order to address the problem, we have to identify it currently . I think we all agree on that. The problem of these ads would not even meet the issue of issue advocacy. They were just messages about social issues. A lot of us know, the ads were about issues like black lives matter. Do we want the federal government or state governments regulating black lives matter and their messages . I think that is a dangerous road to go down. Moreover, i would point out that, according to the Washington Post, which we all know its fake news, right . 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 want to be clear about why disclosure and disclaimers matter in this context. No one is under the illusion there is going to be an ad one day and the disclaimer is going to say paid for by the russian government. No one thinks that is going to happen. [laughter] the reason it matters, giving that information on the face of the ad and whatever sort of disclosure may be mandated, gives Law Enforcement, journalists, watchdog groups like us, and voters as a whole the opportunity to investigate further and to detect illegal activity when it is happening, and ideally to deter it from happening in the first place. It is not a cureall but it is a necessary step. Scott lets talk about solutions that can come from outside of the government, quickly. Companies like facebook and twitter especially twitter, as the threats of regulations started to heat up, talked about new disclosure policies for online ads. 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 has to be able to respond to, and encouraging public watchdogs. What are solutions in the absence of federal action, 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 powers under the securities laws to bring shareholder resolutions am a witch asked for more transparency. Resolutions which asked for more transparency. The most popular things they have been asking for is more transparency about lobbying and corporate political spending. Because of that, 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 now. The money that would go to 501 c 4s, social welfare organizations and 5013 sixes, like the chamber. Scott me other any other thoughts on private companies . On that point, there is this uneasy tension i have noticed, at this conference, 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 specter of large media corporations, large social Media Companies regulating political speech. Of course, as a republican, libertarian, i would be surprised these companies can do whatever they want. There is this uneasy tension that is apparent here. But i think we probably would not object if facebook came up with a new policy who said, we are not going to take ad money in rubles anymore. We will not allow for ad money to be paid for in rubles anymore. Could we agree that would be a good thing for them to do . Sure. [laughter] but facebook is not purely american. I know in china it is not available because it is censored. I dont know if it is available in russia. But certainly if their platform were successful in russia, they would have to make some accommodation for russian users. If the ads are in russian, how about that . Scott a question for the audience written in english, on that topic, what is the costbenefit analysis of regulating tech social Media Companies to prevent foreign influence . What are the sides of that conversation . I want to just say i think facebook has voluntarily said they were going to take steps that would be helpful, but when we put out our notice, and i specifically reached out to the Tech Companies at facebook, google, and twitter to comment on this and give us 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. They think that might be helpful to them rather them try to make it up on their own. I consider that a positive step. In terms of the costs, i have written a lot about this. These social media platforms, even though they have great influence for social change look at the me too movement. That started on social media. Look at the womens march, sparked by a facebook post. It spread like wildfire. Look at a lot of these democratic movements in the middle east in recent years. They were all conducted on social media. 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, you want to make sure youre not fighting the last battle. Some of the reforms, i think the most important response to the russian interference in our elections is that we know. Fool me once. That is powerful. These conversations are powerful. We do not know what the next thing is going to be. I do think on the cost analysis, there should be some caution that whatever our response is, its not about what happened last time, and is a supple enough response that the institutions are strong enough, 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. Scott interesting question from the audience. How can we ferret out box and other platforms . And if and when you identify something as a foreign actor or a bot, what should you do . Part of what is frustrating, for an 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. One thing to do if you see something that looks peculiar on your facebook feed for your twitter, it looks like it is coming from a bot, report it to facebook or twitter. If it is really pernicious, call your favorite ournalist. Im sure they would be interested to investigate whether we are getting another foreign attack on our current election. We are in an Election Year after all. On that point, my side is lways said that the best antidote for bad speech is more speech. I dont know exactly how it is done on facebook or twitter. If there is some way of flagging suspicious posts, i would be for that. I flag scan 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. I think that is a way of crowdsourcing a response to foreign attempts to sow division in our society. I would add to that. One of the things that some of he russian bots were doing during the 2016 election was pretending they were Bernie Sanders supporters, so they would get into these fights with clinton supporters and would never turn off. They are a computer program. The clinton supporter would think they are arguing with a real person and get frustrated and waste time thinking they could not convince this bernie supporter of some political oints. I would encourage you to step 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. Dont waste your time on that. Just dont waste your time. It is not worth it. Maybe even if it is a person dont waste your time on it. [applause] another question from our audience. Does Citizens United enable nonu. S. Citizens to legally contribute to u. S. Elections, and could foreign co another question from our 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 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 cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, former Energy Secretary discusses Nuclear Threats facing the u. S. And the world. Then the leadership institutes Kevin Phillips talks about skevbtism and millennials. Meredith nes mcgee. Be sure to watch live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Vice president spence will speak at the Political Action conference this morning. Well hear from white house council, senator ted cruz and education secretary bet devos. Live coverage beginning at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Following last weeks president ting trump met with people who lost family members killed at sandy hook elementary and columbine high school
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