But that's essentially the same principle behind the argument for letting the government wiretap our phones and read our emails. If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about. Of course that's a really, really terrible argument.
I would like to see a proof that that's the same argument. I'm not saying that no politician CAN'T or SHOULDN'T hide what they're doing....and indeed, for some things, they have a reason too, like secret weapons projects and etc. What I'm saying is that politicians, as public figures, have no right to EXPECT privacy. They can do anything they want to secure themselves against such things, and yes, where the situation is from one of our own, they should be prosecuted for illegal actions. But politicians should expect that competing governments might know if they do something corrupt. We can't control a national government, unless they want to punish them with sanctions or war, and good luck with that. There is a vast difference between a government surveilling a government, and government survelling their own citizens.
In this case, the problem with "stop doing corrupt things" argument is lots of things you might do or say or write or text (we'll assume you're the candidate) might be unseemly taken out of context but not corrupt. And those communications are presumed private, and in many cases illegally obtained. We require warrants for LEOs to get that information, but you're arguing campaigns should be able to use it no problem.
The media as a whole takes things out of context, so I don't really think that matters, and if did matter, then voters are clearly much more sensitive to such things that I though. Still, that's their right. If candidates can't overcome this, then they should adapt.....or, as I said before, find someway to punish the government responsible, and good luck with doing that.
If we pass a law requiring all the texts and all the emails and all the phone calls of everyone connected to a campaign be made public, OK, then fair is fair, and it's fine for a foreign government to hack into your files and communications and release them to a campaign for their use, because there is a law requiring full disclosure of all communications by that campaign and everyone in it. But that's not how it works.
I don't think it's FINE for a government to do that, much less russia, but I wouldn't fault the campaign for taking the oppo information.
And there is a fundamental difference between a campaign working with a foreign government, and a media outlet publishing hacked materials, starting with their are laws prohibiting the former but our 1A protects the latter. It's true that a foreign government, if they're not morons, will simply launder what they want through the media. That's likely OK, but still the media outlet has some ethical and professional duties as to what's published.
But again, legally, there is no difference between corporate journalists, and any other entity acting as publishers of said information. None. What law stops Trump's head of PR from saying "Acting as a journalist here, here is all the emails Russia gave us. We hope the FBI punishes russia for what they did!"
Now, if a campaign PAID for the material, then I agree, that is collusion. The fact that Hillary Clinton essentially took over the DNC, and may have used funds to pay for the salacious steel dossier to monitor trump should have all of us worried. Paying for such material, I say, IS collusion and possibly conspiracy, as there is now a money trail, and financial incentive for them to take illegal actions. It's already a dark area to contract out a US investigator to do such a thing.....but at least we can trust he would do it legally. To contract out a foreign government though, should be illegal, and I would be shocked if it already isn't.
But in this case, it seems like Russia literally said "oh, we happened to find this out about clinton, here you go", no evidence, that I can see, that money was exchanged, or that they had even planned it out. It seems that russia sat on this information for years, and gave it to Trump after it looked like he would win the R nomination. While it's shady, yea, that's not something I would hold against the campaign. If someone said they had oppo research on my opponent and said "here you go" for free, I wouldn't care where it came from. I'd take it and run with it. But by all means, punish russia, somehow, preferably without causing loss of life.
