From Politico:

A federal jury has acquitted two men of all charges in an alleged scheme to use straw donors to funnel nearly $2 million to various political causes including Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid and GOP House candidates in 2018….

Prosecutors said the two men served as straw donors for Allied Wallet’s wealthy owner, Andy Khawaja, and a businessman active in the Middle East, George Nader, in an attempt to curry favor with Clinton. The men shifted their donations and their focus to Republican causes after Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 election, exceeding donation limits and using go-betweens like Diab to transfer the gifts, prosecutors said….

The campaign finance case appears to have originated with a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who extensively debriefed Nader in connection with the investigation into foreign influence on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign….

At the trial that led to the verdicts this week, defense attorneys stressed that U.S. campaign finance laws are complex. To prove a criminal violation of campaign finance laws, prosecutors have to show that a defendant willfully violated the statutes, essentially that he or she knew that it was illegal to donate in someone else’s name or to exceed donation limits and did so anyway.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on the verdicts.