The continuing dramatic saga that is the US 2024 presidential race between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President & Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has taken an interesting turn with the question of election interference being raised in regard to volunteer efforts coming in from across the pond: London.
In a six-page complaint against what Trump calls the U.K.’s “far-left” Labour Party, legal documents filed by the Trump campaign claim that the Labour Party is illegally interfering in the US election. (Fact Check: the Labour Party is generally considered “centre-left” in English politics, not far left).
The official complaint was sent to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in a letter dated October 21, 2024, from Gary M. Lawkowski of the Dhillon Law Group, in his capacity as Deputy General Counsel for Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc.
In the complaint filed with the FEC, the Trump campaign accuses England’s Labour Party of "blatant foreign interference" that acts as illegal foreign "contributions.”
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has denied the accusations of illegal foreign campaign contributions and election interference, saying that the Labour Party has often sent volunteers to the US to campaign for numerous presidential candidates.
In a public statement, the Trump campaign manager Susie Weis alleged that “The far-left Labour Party has inspired Kamala’s dangerously liberal policies and rhetoric.
In recent weeks, they have recruited and sent party members to campaign for Kamala in critical battleground states, attempting to influence our election.”
The letter to the FEC, which was written “on behalf of” the campaign and includes a typo misspelling Great Britain, begins, “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
The Trump campaign letter goes on to state, “It appears that the Labour Party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message. I write on behalf of Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc. to request an immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference in the 2024 Presidential Election in the form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom and accepted by Harris for President, the principal campaign committee of Vice President Kamala Harris.”
However, The Telegraph, launched in 1855 and considered a “newspaper of record” for Britain, reports that Labour Party visitors traveled to the U.S. to strategize with Kamala Harris’ campaign, not to “interfere” with the election. The Telegraph reports that “Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, director of communications, attended the convention in Chicago and met with Ms Harris’ campaign team” and “Deborah Mattinson, Sir Keir’s director of strategy, also went to Washington in September to brief Ms Harris’ presidential campaign on Labour’s election-winning approach.”
Contrary to accusations that the Labour Party paid for volunteers from their party to fly to the US and campaign for Kamala Harris, The Telegraph published internal emails stating that anyone who wanted to do so must pay for their own way.
However, this statement came AFTER a certain LinkedIn post was deleted by the Labour Party head of operations Sofia Patel. In that post, according to the BBC and other sources, Patel said she had “ten spots available” for volunteers to campaign for Harris in North Carolina and that “we will sort your housing.”
An email published by The Telegraph and quoted in the FEC complaint says, “Labour activists who want to help with the Harris campaign have been told they will need to pay for their own flights and car hire but that Democrat volunteers would provide accommodation” and that “ny staff intending to travel are expected to book annual leave for the duration of their trip.”
The heart of the Trump campaign’s complaint seems to focus on the “sort your housing” quote in the now-deleted post from Patel. The question is whether providing accommodations for volunteers (presumably staying in the homes of U.S.-based volunteers) amounts to compensating foreign nationals for campaigning, which would be a violation of U.S. election laws.
According to the Federal Election Commission, “Federal law prohibits contributions, donations, expenditures(including independent expenditures) and disbursements solicited, directed, received or made directly or indirectly by or from foreign nationals in connection with any federal, state or local election. This prohibition includes advances of personal funds, contributions or donations made to political party committees and organizations, state or local party committees for the purchase or construction of an office building funds under 11 CFR 300.35, and contributions or disbursements to make electioneering communications.”
This section of the law was quoted approvingly in Bluman v. Federal Election Commission, 800 F.Supp.2d 281, 287 (D.D.C. 2011), in an opinion written by then-Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh. In this opinion, which was also cited in Robert Mueller’s report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Kavanaugh wrote, “he Supreme Court has drawn a fairly clear line: The government may exclude foreign citizens from activities ‘intimately related to the process of democratic self-government.’”
The FEC may need to decide if the initial now-deleted LinkedIn offer posted by the Labour Party staffer on LinkedIn to house volunteers willing to travel to the U.S. to campaign for Harris, was illegal.
However, the Labour Party has said publicly that no members were compensated to volunteer or given any money to pay for travel and that they all paid their own way.
UK Prime Minister and head of the Labour Party Keir Starmer sees no wrongdoing on the part of Labour. “It doesn’t look like it to me,” Starmer said. “If these individuals are going under their own steam, paying for their own flights and doing their own thing, and their accommodation is either they’re staying with friends or they’re paying for it, there’s not a problem. But they’ve played into the Trump-Vance campaign hands, and that press release was the sort of politicking that you’re going to see this close to an election.”
Starmer added as he spoke to reporters today that such volunteering had happened at “pretty much every election. They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying I think with other volunteers over there.”
