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 stat