A Russian company indicted earlier this year as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into foreign interference in our elections is using a decision written by none other than Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to try to dismiss the case.
As the Washington Post reported this morning, the company–Concord Management and Consulting—was one of the 16 people or entities indicted by a federal grand jury in February at as part of the special counsel’s investigation. On Monday, the company argued, “that it had broken no federal laws, that it was merely supporting free political speech and that the fraud charge against it should be thrown out.”
In its motion to dismiss, Concord specifically cited Judge Kavanaugh’s Bluman v. FEC decision regarding the ban on foreign spending on our elections…
As Campaign Legal Center and Demos wrote in their review of Kavanaugh’s record, “His interpretation means that the law likely would have covered only a small fraction of the campaign activity attributed to Russian operatives in the 2016 elections.”
Another leading election law expert, Professor Rick Hasen, agrees with this analysis of Kavanaugh ’s Bluman decision. “I believe that a Justice Kavanaugh could well vote with a new SCOTUS majority to hold that laws effectively limiting foreign influence in our elections violate the First Amendment,” he wrote earlier this month.