Wrong. Law doesn't define information as "a thing of value."

Posted on: November 13, 2017 at 22:08:16 CT

It states directly it is money and indirectly a thing that can be converted to money. All subsequent references to the contribution refer to depositing it, like in a bank account. Say the contribution is a bag of gold instead of money. The gold can be sold for cash which can be deposited. Or a house. Or a car. But how do you convert information useful only to your campaign into cash for deposit? How do you deposit information? I know you like to stretch the definition to include something that might be useful but has no monetary value into the definition, but it doesn't fit. Laws have to be specific. Any attempt to apply ambiguity will ultimately fail. You or I might consider information "a thing of value" but the law doesn't.

https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2015-title52/html/USCODE-2015-title52-subtitleIII-chap301-subchapI-sec30121.htm

Edited by Alferd Packer at 22:11:29 on 11/13/17