This is from russia with facebook, foreign influence in the u. S. Elections. So please take your seats if you would and silence your phones. This will be a onehour session. Please hold your questions until the end. If you have a question we will , have a runner with notecards. Going up and down the aisle. Please fill out the note card, pass it to the person in the blue volunteer shirt. In the spirit of unrig, if something in here today inspires you or presents an idea 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 the back door. The folks in the blue shirts will hand it to you. Fill it out and put it up in the engagement station, if you would. Also, please do not forget to give feedback on the summit app about the session. My name is scott. I am your moderator today. I am senior counsel with represent. Us. I work to develop the legal advocacy work, and i could not be joined to discuss what has by a better panel become, in a very short time an issue of true , national priority, the vulnerability of our states, local, and National Elections to foreign influence, and the urgent need for americans across the political spectrum to come together to find bold, forwardlooking, and Sustainable Solutions to this problem. The 2016 elections made very clear that our elections are vulnerable to foreign influence. 21 States Election systems were targeted by the russian government. The u. S. Intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the russian government interfered with the 2016 president ial election in order to, according to the office of the National Director of intelligence, undermine the public faith in the American Democratic process. As we will get it into get into this not being the first , time there has been russian influence, and we have every reason to think that the loopholes exploited present vulnerabilities for 2018 and beyond. There has never been a more important time to talk about i will briefly introduce our panel. Terratec they will get it started with some opening remarks. I will ask a couple followup questions. The remaining 20 minutes will be for question and answer. To my far left is commissioner Ellen Weintraub of the federal election commission. She has served on the fec since 2003. Before that, she worked at a , and servedw group on a legal team that advised the Senate Rules Committee during an election contest in 1996. It best next her is professor anthony johnstone, a professor of law at the university of montana. He teaches and writes about federal and state constitution law, election law, and related subjects. Prior to that he served as a , solicitor for the state of montana. His recent scholarship on this issue has focused on the historical and constitutional perspectives on life or in on foreign influences and why it is such a concern to our democracy. Then we had a professor of law from Stetson University college of law, a fellow with the Brennan Center of justice. She worked as counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. She looks at how dark money could be heading illegal foreign money and how it threatens our National Political sovereignty. Can you speak a little louder . Yes, i can. I would love to. [laughter] to her left is the senior director of trial that ignition in chief of the Campaign Legal center, where he directs District Court litigation and coordinates, implements, and manages the broader trial court strategy. He previously worked in the office of the general counsel of the federal election commission, where he litigated cases like Citizens United. Lastly, we have eric wang, a senior fellow at the institute for free speech, a political law attorney who focuses on political activity regulation under federal and state Campaign Finance, lobbying, ethics, and tax laws. He previously worked as interim general counsel at americans for prosperity. He was counsel to carolyn hunter, chair of the fec. Commissioner weintraub, start us off. Commissioner weintraub thank you, scott. Thank you all for coming. Great to be here. In 2016, we know, because our intelligence agencies told us, that a Foreign Government took steps to try and intervene in our election. Our intelligence agencies warned us that they will do it again if we do not take steps to stop it. Mike pompeo, head of the cia, said that just last week. So this is not a theoretical concern anymore. Do foreigners also take advantage to loopholes in our Campaign Finance system to spend more money directly into our elections . That is the funny thing about loopholes we do not entirely know, because we do not have all the information. But given what we already know, that a Foreign Government but buys facebook ads to interfere with elections, we would be naive to think that they would not be exploring other avenues. It is a remarkable Cost Effective technique buying these ads on facebook. Senator mark warner, the democratic head of the Senate Intelligence committee, has pointed out that if you added up all the money that the russians spent to try and influence the u. S. , the dutch, the french, and the british elections, it still would not cost as much as one fighter jet. So we have to think very hard when we think about money and politics and the influence that it can have, about how cheap some of this is to do. Ae of the various mechanisms foreigner could use to get into our elections, they could try and get a direct donation, which 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. Bear in mind that if you look good how much foreigners own of our corporations, about 25 of stocks that are u. S. Corporations are actually owned by foreigners. So when corporations are spending in our elections, think about whose interests they are actually representing. Then, of course, there was the hacking of the infrastructure, which also cost money to pay the hackers. I hope the department of Homeland Security and 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. We know they had an effect. Y actually caused people 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 to that, 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. It is the wave of the future and we have to do something about it. One small test step were trying to take at the fec is to make sure their adequate disclaimers on the advertising you see on the internet. Believe it or not, this has not been clear until now. This used to be a sleeper issue. When we put it out for comment about a year ago, asking, should we do something about this . 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 of them said please do something. If any of you in the room were among those 150,000, thank you. We appreciate that. We need to hear from you. Beare going to shortly forming the rulemaking process and there will be more opportunities for public comment. I will be tweeting on this, so follow me on twitter. Make sure you dont forget the middle initial. 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. I will stop. I want to start with the whos of richard banner, could not be on this panel today, but it is just perfect for being in new orleans at this time of year on a campus. The way that professor painter puts it, getting foreign money in u. S. Political campaigns is about as easy as getting illegal a call into the freshman guard yard 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. Two years ago, who knows. 20 years ago, the dnc was actually known for going after Foreign Campaign contributions. I want to go a little deeper. I worry a little about the suspicion about outsiders. When we talk about citizenship and think about this issue of outside influence, it is not a matter of drawing lines of bigotry against outsiders. Its not about that. Its about selfgovernance. To choice to who we want participate. We ought to be able to make that choice how we want. We have avenues to bring outside places in. They are welcome. We can draw the circle of citizenship and 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 to us to make the 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 is also its of concern there is all sorts of concern expressed in there about foreign influence. We want house members to be citizens for seven years. The father, in some ways, to the bill of rights, george mason, including the First Amendment, argued for seven years. 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 with the Founding Fathers had to say about immigration. They were quite proimmigration. But what he said was, wide open for immigrants, but we are 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. The emoluments clause 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 and the people, is to make sure 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 for this, is medicine said enforcing rights are not necessarily on the same side in republican governments. The minor party, the Party Without the majority may have such a support your ready of resources, of military talent and experience does not have to be jet fighters, can be hackers or of secret suckers from foreign powers, as 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 concern and the reason we should care. Good evening. I will try that again. Good evening. Good evening. Ok. We are all in the same room together. My name is sierra Tori Spelling my name is ciara torresspelliscy. 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 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 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] 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. 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 ,ort 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. Adavee with a lot of what 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