During an interview, President Trump said that if he were offered damaging information on his political rivals from a foreign government he might accept it and not inform the FBI. Since Trump is Trump, he also asserted that he thought that in such a case a person should maybe accept the information and contact the FBI. Laying aside the problem of trying to determine Trump’s definitive position on this matter, there is the general question of whether political candidates in the United States should accept damaging information provided by foreign governments or foreigners.
From a legal standpoint, there is some debate about whether accepting such information would run afoul of election law. Foreign nationals are forbidden from providing contributions, donations, other expenditures or exchanging any “thing of value.” The problem arises because “thing of value” is vague. On the one hand, damaging information could obviously be politically valuable to a campaign and would thus seem to fall under the law. On the other hand, one could argue that while such information would be useful, it is not a thing of value in the same sense as money or providing advertisements for a candidate.
I think that such information should be considered a thing of value; this is because the law is aimed at preventing foreign interference in our elections and providing such information would be providing something potentially valuable (opposition research is expensive) that is aimed at interfering with an election. One could also make the sophist argument that since political spending has been ruled to be speech, then it would follow that political speech is also money—so providing political information would be the same as providing political money. This argument is, of course, easily countered by distinguishing between the “is” of predication and the “is” of identity.
I am certainly willing to listen to someone arguing against me and contending that if China’s intelligence agency provided Joe Biden with damaging information about Trump, then this would be legally fine. As far as resolving the legal matter, I suspect that there will court cases arising out of the 2020 election addressing it. But what of the moral issue?
One way to offer a moral defense of accepting such information is to argue that if the information is true and relevant to the candidate’s suitability for office, then the source is irrelevant. For example, imagine that a Democrat has rigged a primary so that she wins and the Russians hack into her email and find out about it. If this information is given to the Republican running against her and he uses it, this seems morally acceptable: the information is relevant and true. Obviously, knowingly using false or irrelevant information would be morally wrong. For example, imagine that a Democrat gets an email from Russian intelligence claiming that Trump runs a sex-slave ring out of the basement of a McDonald’s in Tallahassee and decides to use the information. Since it is not true, using the information would be morally wrong. Unless, of course, one could make a utilitarian argument about the ends justifying the means.
It can be countered that even if the information provided is true and relevant, it would still be wrong to accept it from a foreign power or national. Such an argument would be built on the idea that an election should be limited to the influence of citizens of the United States and that accepting foreign help contaminates the process. This could be seen as a matter of fairness analogous to that of sports: a football team would be wrong to accept a stolen playbook provided by fan. It can also be seen as a matter of integrity: the election is our business, not the business of foreigners. There is also the obvious concern of ongoing foreign influence; that a candidate would be indebted to foreigners or that they would have blackmail material to use against them.
Because of these considerations, I disagree with what Trump might have said. That is, I hold that accepting damaging information from a foreign power would be wrong and that such efforts should be reported to the FBI. I hold to this whether the information aids the Democrats or the Republicans.
In my view the important thing is whether the “dirt” is true. For example, the problem with the Steele dossier was not that Hillary used a British spy to get dirt on Trump via the Russian government–the problem was that it was a pack of lies and Hillary promoted it anyway.
In any case, it is really rich of Mike to favor policies that encourage non-citizens to vote in our elections, but then he worries that non-citizens might provide information to one of the campaigns.
This conversation bears some similarity to the ethical considerations of using the results of Nazi experimentation on humans – many researchers and physicians refused to consider these valid test results simply because of the way they were obtained.
I think Trump’s answer to Stephanopoulos was candid and honest. I’m not surprised at your response to it – “because Trump is Trump he also …”, but that’s the tint of the glasses you wear. If you can look at his comments honestly and really try to understand where he’s coming from, he said that if information were provided to him, he’d probably take it but if he thought there were something wrong he’d go to the FBI.
“For example, imagine that a Democrat gets an email from Russian intelligence claiming that Trump runs a sex-slave ring out of the basement of a McDonald’s in Tallahassee and decides to use the information. Since it is not true, using the information would be morally wrong. Unless, of course, one could make a utilitarian argument about the ends justifying the means.”
Well, this actually happened, and evidence points to not only was the email provided by a foreign power, but it was bought and paid for by the candidate, which TJB alludes to.
Hillary Clinton and the DNC, working through the law firm of Perkins Coie, paid large sums of money to Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election. They then pressured the FBI to begin an investigation based on this fabricated evidence, and leaked the fact of the investigation to drive the narrative in the press and in the public eye to build it up to the “foregone conclusion” it became – specifically to discredit Trump and aid Clinton.
“Since it is not true, using the information would be morally wrong. Unless, of course, one could make a utilitarian argument about the ends justifying the means.”
Of course, the Democrats have that covered, right? Anything and everything that can possibly prevent Trump from attaining or retaining the office of President is justifiable in their eyes.
TJB says that the veracity of the information is of paramount importance, and I don’t disagree with that. I would also consider the method and intent of the information gathering – if is some bit of information that is passed on, that’s a different story than if a foreign power is actively engaged in opposition research for the benefit of one candidate or another. The first I might just listen and move on, the second I might contact the FBI, which is what I think Trump said, though not in so many words. Of course, actually supporting, financing, or encouraging this information gathering is another story altogether.
Imagine this scenario. You are a presidential candidate, and you have a reasonable shot at winning. International relationships are delicate, and extremely important. A Russian entity comes to you and says, “Listen, you know that we monitor things in the US very closely. We have information that your opponent is actively engaged in X, which we believe is potentially damaging to our diplomatic relationship, (or trade agreements, or whatever), and we wanted you to know.”
That’s it. One shot. Do you go to the FBI? If you do, are you signalling to this foreign entity that you are untrustworthy, and do not understand the nature of the treatment of delicate information? The result of such a report to the FBI would of course be all over the news, and depending on the political stripe of the candidate would naturally excoriate one side or another and whip the population into the kind of frenzy we most recently experienced.
Then you are president. You call the leader of the foreign power to start a new path to diplomacy or international trade or whatever, but the response is cool – because you are the guy who is a “tattletale”, who doesn’t understand confidence or secrecy or diplomacy at that level.
Or – because it came from a foreign source, you ignore the information, you do not use it – your opponent fabricates a story about their engagement in “X” (or it never comes up), and they get elected. Suddenly, “X” becomes policy, and damages the delicate diplomatic relationships between the two countries.
“I hold that accepting damaging information from a foreign power would be wrong and that such efforts should be reported to the FBI. I hold to this whether the information aids the Democrats or the Republicans.
I disagree. I think that it can be, and is, a very gray area depending on the kind of information, the amount of information, the veracity of the information, the intent of the provider, and the situation under which the information has been provided. I do not think there can be one single answer to this.
“In any case, it is really rich of Mike to favor policies that encourage non-citizens to vote in our elections, but then he worries that non-citizens might provide information to one of the campaigns.”
Interesting point. I’d love to hear how that plays out, ethically. Mike?
Imagine this scenario, you are a philosophy professor at a university that is well known and fairly well respected. You present ideas and opinions on the internet (for whatever reason…) and numerous people respond with rational, respectful, yet strong criticisms of your logic and reason. Additionally keep in mind that you also teach “ethics” at this institution. Do you take these criticisms seriously, do a significant degree of introspection, put some thought into them, address them on their strongest points, or do you dismiss such things with a wave of the hand, give minimal lip service, nit pick, and/or put on the clown nose when necessary? Keeping in mind also that your students (and the state’s taxpayers) are paying you to provide the best philosophy product that their money can buy.
Whattodowhattodowhattodo…
Just to be clear, you seem to be going full utilitarian here. I infer that the Nazi comment was to make that point that researchers should accept the Nazi data (if accurate) and not be put off by the source. Likewise, candidates should accept aid from foreign powers if it is useful/good. Is that right?
Not entirely. I personally think that the Nazi research can and should be used – after all, truth is truth, right? That said, having lost family members in the Holocaust I can totally understand the other side of that argument. In my own life, I try to advocate for turning negatives into positives wherever possible.
With regard to the political side of things – you rephrased the question a little here, which changes things a little. “Accepting aid from foreign sources” is different from “using information that comes from a foreign source”.
The former can imply some sort of active participation, which bears some nuance to it. The latter might be incidental, arising out of unrelated conversation in a “by the way” kind of context.
I thought Trump gave a pretty reasonable answer to the question, one that bears little resemblance to the hype/press it subsequently got. My understanding was that he said that if he were to receive information from foreign sources, for the most part it would be impractical to report every tidbit to the FBI, and he’d most likely use it if it were true and valuable. He used Norway as an example, which I think is useful in making a distinction between a benign, friendly ally and some sinister power like Russia or China who might want to influence the election.
“Pressed by Stephanopoulos, Trump made a distinction between foreign “interference” and simple “information” or “oppo research,” which he claimed was perfectly fine to accept from a foreign source.”
“It’s not interference. They have information. I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI, if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research. (mockingly) “Oh, let’s call the FBI.”
The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressmen, they all do it. They always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.
I think the difference between Trump and others is that he answers these questions candidly. Others would express shock and outrage, then go ahead and do it anyway.
““In any case, it is really rich of Mike to favor policies that encourage non-citizens to vote in our elections, but then he worries that non-citizens might provide information to one of the campaigns.”
I’ve never endorsed allowing foreigners to illegally vote in our elections. Quite the opposite, I have consistently argued that election laws and practices need to 1) ensure that every voting age citizen can vote and 2) ensure that no non-citizen can vote.
“I’ve never endorsed allowing foreigners to illegally vote in our elections.”
And I never claimed you did. I wrote that you favored policies that *encourage* non-citizens to vote. There is a difference.
“…election laws and practices need to 1) ensure that every voting age citizen can vote and 2) ensure that no non-citizen can vote.”
Can you name one policy you have endorsed that helps ensure that no non-citizen can vote? As far as I remember, you have labeled any attempt to ensure the integrity of the vote as “voter suppression.” You have also argued for de facto open borders. Taken together, you are implicitly asking for non-citizens to vote.
Hmm. This seems worth investigating, but according to Mike we shouldn’t because it took place in Ukraine and foreigners are be involved.
Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.
In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.
Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired.
But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.
U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived
Here’s a thought…If you have good reason to believe that the FBI is in bed with your opponent, that the FBI itself is dishonest, why would you tip them off that you have such information?
And where, oh where has the great philosopher addressed the glaring dishonesty, the ethical violations and such that have been uncovered involving the FBI?
And what are ones ethical obligations if one gets information on one’s opponent from the FBI? Doesn’t that campaign have a responsibility to out them? Speaking hypothetically of course.
As an aside, several years ago I was in a feasibility meeting on a project we were being potentially asked to bid on for the FBI. I was told that the subject matter in this project was sensitive in the sense that the FBI really wasn’t supposed to have some of this material. They were supposed to have destroyed some of it years ago. At the time it didn’t really concern me too much as the parties involved were likely dead or at the very least, long past their criminal years. After reviewing it, it puzzled me why they hadn’t just destroyed it anyway. Wasn’t sure wtf the point was of keeping it or what value it could possibly have held. It did have some minor value to us as potential outlier test material but a proper libertarian likely would have thrown a fit about it. After all that has now been revealed about the FBI, I think about that more and more and wonder if they were willing to wrongfully hold on to data that held no value, what else might they be doing that isn’t on the up and up.
Interestingly, one of the main themes in spy/thriller books is that the “letter agencies” are often needed to save the U.S. from feckless elected officials.
These guys were probably reading too many “Gray Man” novels.
I’m not a Trump fan, but I’ve got to admire his superpower. He shines a laser pointer on some empty corner of a room and all the cats of the leftist outrage mob leap into action, get to the corner, try to pounce on things, find no things there, look puzzled, look some more, meow a bit, write some articles and editorials, get paid and inspire clicks. Then Trump shines it somewhere else. They never learn.
Anyway, to the substantive question, I don’t begin to know how to address this. The operative factors are: a) is it true? b) can it be substantiated? c) is it relevant to the voters? Nothing else matters to the question of whether the information should be released. The analogy with games is meaningless. There may be a legal bar to campaigns receiving things of value as gifts, but not as exchanges. Clinton and the DNC paid for their faked dossier, so they should have no legal trouble there. I don’t blame Clinton/DNC for going to a rabidly Trump-hating Brit to allegedly ask some Russians for fictional dirt on her opposition. I blame them for carelessness, avoiding responsibility, incompetence, and lying. Especially I fault them for arranging to have the fake info whisked directly into high levels of the DOJ and FBI. I wouldn’t blame Trump for hearing out someone coming to him with alleged dirt on a possible Dem opponent either. I just hope he’d handle it with more competence. If Trump was told of dirt on an opponent, I hope he would by now have learned to get a lawyer to keep it legal.
provided by foreign governments or foreigners
There is a difference,
If a candidate had been convicted of battery and jailed for a month in Marseilles 20 years ago after a bar fight on the docks, but had kept quiet about it on his return, where would the information come from, if not the French government or a French national? Would it make a difference if an American reporter traced the candidate’s movements during that time?
There certainly may be ethical and legal factors affecting an individual’s decision about how to get involved with any such release of information. Was the information obtained ethically and/or legally? Is the information credible, taking into account any possible distortion by the immediate messenger. If the information was stolen, does it matter whether it was stolen by a Texan or an Italian? No. It may matter that the information was stolen, but not the nationality or interest of the one who stole it. Anyway, information is easily laundered. Just send it to Wikileaks, post it on Reddit, or arrange for an anonymous American to get it to a reporter.
The idea that only nationals should affect their country’s elections is ridiculous. OF COURSE governments affect each others’ elections all the time – and the US is the biggest affecter, though China is passing you now. Forget the headline items like threats of regime change, sanctions, bugged cellphones, and poisoned cigars – US Aid is blatant bribery of countries to keep governments in power that the Americans favour. Then there are less visible influences like individual trade deals, investment, even diplomatic events that make for nice photo-ops, giving favoured politicians a bit of favourable publicity. Sheesh.