“In a motion to dismiss a new lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump’s campaign team of illegally conspiring with Russian agents to disseminate stolen emails during the election, Trump campaign lawyers have tried out a new defense: free speech.”

Nothing’s changed since 2016 since the GOP thinks it should be able to promote stolen electronic information like emails. Because among other uses, Trump quoting from stolen emails in rallies is supposedly OK. And the 2018 election remains vulnerable to the use of hacked information.

And having a SCOTUS majority might make the legal difference considering the attempts to condone vote suppression… because Citizen’s United condones the receipt of stolen property? And WTF is “true speech” because at 5,000+ Trump lies so far, “false speech” has become the GOP-Russian coin of the realm. GOP “finesse pimping” continues.

But the right to free speech, the campaign's lawyers argued, supersedes the right to privacy. "At a minimum, privacy cannot justify suppressing true speech during a political campaign,"

As Michael Flynn’s sentencing date approaches, that part of the Mueller probe on the search for hacked emails focuses unfortunately on the inability to prosecute the purveyors but there are collaborators aplenty, even in the US. They were only providing a service, trying to imprison the Democratic party’s candidate, obtaining information from diverse sources and "if it's what you say I love it". Who doesn’t love diversity … or Russian orphans.

x NEW THIS AFTERNOON with @dnvolz and @shelbyholliday: Republican activist Peter Smith met with Michael Flynn in 2015, and told associates he was using Flynn's connections as part of his quest to find Hillary's emails. https://t.co/oUkrQkG2d6 Ã¢ÂÂ Byron Tau (@ByronTau) October 10, 2018

No evidence yet of Trump campaign knowing or aiding hacking, but some people really loved it, especially if hacked RNC emails were used for extortion and DNC emails were used for political advertising purposes.

While there is no evidence yet that the Trump campaign knew about or aided in the hacking itself, campaign-finance laws prohibit candidates from accepting “anything of value” from a foreign national. The Trump campaign could face legal exposure, then, if a prosecutor could prove that Trump or his campaign associates made an agreement with Russia to publish the stolen emails—which were clearly valuable to the campaign, given how often Trump quoted from them during rallies—via a third party such as WikiLeaks, as Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, has written. x Committing weird constitutional jujitsu to own the libs and because youÃ¢ÂÂre pretty sure Justice Keg stand is in your pocket anyway. https://t.co/uLRCEKnAN0 Ã¢ÂÂ Molly JongÃ¢ÂÂ Ã¯Â¸ÂFast (@MollyJongFast) October 10, 2018 Their argument is timely, and troubling: The midterm elections, less than 30 days away, are as vulnerable to hackers who steal information and then dump it onto the web to influence voters as the presidential election was two years ago. Both parties face high stakes: Democrats hope to take back the House and the Senate, whereas Republicans are clinging to their majorities as a wave of GOP lawmakers chooses not to run for reelection. So far, however, only House Democrats have pledged not to use stolen or hacked materials in their campaigns this fall. As I reported last month, their Republican counterparts declined to match that commitment—and “one of the major sticking points” was how to address the press coverage of hacked materials. www.theatlantic.com/... x Peter Smith story is going to get a lot more interesting - in April twitter sleuth @brazencapital connected Smith with Modizo - founded by Michael Liberty (alleged funder of Smith's HRC efforts) - SEC has accused Liberty of stealing $48 mil from investorshttps://t.co/cLVmXZ6HWE Ã¢ÂÂ Wendy Siegelman (@WendySiegelman) October 10, 2018

More “finesse pimping” of information enabled by GOP lawfare continues, but there will be consequences.

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a California man to six months in prison and six months of home confinement after he pleaded guilty to a felony identity fraud charge tied to Russian troll activity that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign. The sentence for Richard Pinedo, 28, is the most severe penalty handed down yet in special counsel Robert Mueller’s high-profile investigation into Moscow’s meddling to help elect President Donald Trump. Pinedo’s case stemmed from his admission in February to unwittingly selling stolen bank accounts to Russian internet trolls who used the credentials to buy internet ads that sowed discord among Americans in the lead-up to Trump’s upset victory almost two years ago. x American who helped Russian trolls gets longest sentence in Mueller probe.



6 months in prison & 6 months home confinement for selling stolen bank accounts to Russian internet trolls who used them to buy internet ads.#HybridWar #InformationWarfarehttps://t.co/jDzzGj3eyW Ã¢ÂÂ Defending Democracy (@DefendDemocracy) October 10, 2018