Law Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy quoted on Bloomberg Government on foreign involvement in elections
Trump Ukraine Fracas Echoes Nixon, Clinton Campaign-Law Scandals
By Kenneth P. Doyle
Bloomberg Government
Nov. 7, 2019
Excerpt
![Ciara Torres-Spelliscy](https://www.stetson.edu/law/news/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/torres-spelliscy-square.png)
What’s different now is that the episode at the heart of the probe involves not money but something that could be just as valuable–a foreign government investigation of a political rival, according to Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a law professor at Stetson University, who’s studied the history of campaign finance law.
“It is beyond the pale,” Torres-Spelliscy said, to make the request Trump did in a phone call to Zelenskiy. The House clearly could determine this was an illegal solicitation of something valuable to the president as a candidate for re-election, she said, but lawmakers wouldn’t be able to point to a specific precedent.
Torres-Spelliscy has written that articles of impeachment drafted against [President Richard] Nixon but never voted on due to his resignation in 1974 included alleged campaign-finance violations.
This article was originally published on the Bloomberg Government website on Nov. 7, 2019, with the headline, “Trump Ukraine Fracas Echoes Nixon, Clinton Campaign-Law Scandals.”
Post date: Dec. 2, 2019
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