Russia and our election

[Dill]

(07-11-2017, 04:59 PM)Au165 Wrote: Services by skilled professionals is considered valuable. You can attach an hourly value to hackers like you can lawyers. White hat hacking firms do in fact have hourly rates for services. The services used to acquire that report would fall under the in-kind contribution definition for services.

Imagine this. Putin orders a spy to break into Hillary's home looking for dirt. He does and finds a letter to Hillary's lesbian lover confessing that she killed Vince Foster because he stole money from the Clinton's child trafficking operation.  The spy gives the letter to Trump jr. who is caught by the CIA in the act of giving it to his father.

The courts would not set a monetary value on the spy's time burglarizing, and then assess both that and the letter as a "foreign campaign contribution."

I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure that illegal hacking would have about the same legal status as burglary in the above case. The courts would not assess crime as a "campaign contribution," and in any case would have no way of determining a number' of hours to value.

Rather, the "deliverable" in this case is alone the product of the hacking--Hillary dirt. It is not fungible against other items of campaign dirt (a pair of Bernie's underwear signed by Sarah Palin), nor could one assess its exchange value in money.  It does not free up campaign money for other purposes, as would donated items like restaurant meals and airline tickets.

For these reasons, I do not see how stolen information can be accorded the legal status of "contribution" as defined by law.