title:  Trump Continues To Solicit Illegal Donations From Foreign Lawmakers
text: Foreign nationals, including lawmakers and other political types, cannot legally donate to or influence U.S. elections. However, the Donald Trump campaign, even after they have been called out on this unlawful activity, continues to send fundraising emails to foreign leaders.MSN reports:Foreign members of parliament from the United Kingdom and Australia confirmed to The Hill that they received fundraising solicitations from the Trump campaign as recently as July 12  two weeks after a widely publicized FEC complaint issued on June 29 by non-partisan watchdogs Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center.Australian progressive MP Terri Butler spoke with reporters from The Hill via telephone, and says that the emails she received were unsolicited spam from Team Trump.  I haven t signed up for any Trump lists,  she said.United Kingdom House of Commons MP Bob Blackmon has also received these solicitations to his official government email address. He says that they were unsolicited spam as well: I did not sign up, these are sent unsolicited. Yet another foreign MP, UK member Peter Bottomley, says he reached out to the Trump family for an explanation for the spam. He said: Neither [Trump s] sons nor anyone else has answered my questions about how they acquired my email nor why they were asking for financial support that I suppose to be illegal for [Trump] to accept. Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, who watches out for campaign finance violations, says of Trump s activities: This is kind of absurd. I don t know of anyone else in this situation who would just go on keeping on soliciting money from foreign interests. I think the fact circumstances here are unprecedented.If they are put on notice that their fundraising solicitations of potential foreign donors are illegal and they keep doing it, then you potentially have knowing and willful violations of the law which moves this from civil violations to criminal violations.It s open and shut that federal candidates can t solicit contributions from foreign donors. There s kind of an arrogance about this. It s Trump, so of course he s being arrogant. He s the man who literally said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him. He seriously believes he can do no wrong, and that apparently also includes flagrantly breaking the law in an effort to raise money for his pathetic, broke campaign.Larry Noble, an attorney for the Campaign Legal Center, described the Trump camp s illegal activities as  really outrageous,  and continued: It is a serious violation of federal law to solicit political contributions from foreign nationals.There is no reason this should be happening. While U.S. citizens do live abroad, they usually don t have foreign government email addresses or are members of parliament, so they can t try to explain this by saying they thought they were soliciting U.S. citizens abroad.If the Trump campaign has continued to solicit foreign nationals after the matter first came to light in June, this looks like either gross incompetence, gross negligence or willful conduct. Exactly right. This is either incompetence or willful and knowing violation of federal law. Either way, everyone involved in this needs to be investigated and charged. Trump needs to learn that no, he isn t above the law, even if his ridiculous supporters seem to think he can do no wrong.Featured image via John Sommers II/Getty Images