Trump alleges UK ‘interference’ in US election
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a complaint over alleged election meddling in the upcoming US election by the ruling party in the UK.
Labour Party officials have reportedly advised US Democrats about strategies, while activists have worked in battleground states, but insist that this is all perfectly legal because they haven’t technically donated any money to the party.
In a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump campaign alleged “blatant foreign interference” by Labour in the US election, in the form of “apparent illegal foreign national contributions” accepted by the Democrats and their nominee, current Vice President Kamala Harris.
Foreign nationals are prohibited from making “a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation,” in support of an American candidate, “directly or indirectly,” the complaint said, citing US law.
Among the evidence cited by the campaign is a Washington Post report that “strategists linked to Britain’s Labour Party have been offering advice to Kamala Harris about how to earn back disaffected voters and run a winning campaign from the center-left.”
Likewise, the UK outlet Telegraph has reported that Morgan McSweeney, chief of staff to British PM Keir Starmer, as well as Starmer’s chief of communications Matthew Doyle, attended the Democrats’ convention in Chicago and met with Harris’s campaign team.
Last week, Labour’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, posted on LinkedIn that she had “nearly 100 Labour party staff, current and former, going to the US in the next few weeks, heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” advertising ten openings in North Carolina. Patel told potential applicants that “we will sort your housing.”
Trump supporters, including Elon Musk, have pointed to Patel’s post as a clear violation of campaign laws. The post has since been deleted. Democrats, however, insist that none of this is illegal because it doesn’t involve financial contributions.
“This is a normal thing that happens in elections,” British Employment Minister Alison McGovern told Sky News last week, noting that Labour activists have campaigned for Democrats many times before.
Democrats have made unsubstantiated allegations that Russia somehow “meddled” in the US elections and that Trump was “colluding” with the Kremlin, after his surprise victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Claims of “Russian collusion” were used to oust and even imprison several Trump advisers and campaign aides, while hobbling his presidency and driving US-Russia relations to their worst point since the Cold War.
