William Bennett Turner and Dennis Aftergut

Opinion contributors

Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, the indicted Ukrainians helping Rudy Giuliani dig up dirt on Joe Biden, had an unnamed accomplice: the Supreme Court's controversial 2010 Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited spending on elections.

Fruman and Parnas were arrested at Dulles International Airport this month with one-way tickets to Frankfurt. Hours before their arrest, they had lunch with Giuliani at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The Ukrainians pleaded not guilty to charges of using a shell corporation, Global Energy Producers (GEP), to funnel $325,000 to America First Action, Inc., a super PAC aligned with President Donald Trump. The indictment said the money came from a Russian businessman.

'Independent' spending for access

It's a crime for foreign nationals to make American political contributions, and for anyone to file false reports with the Federal Election Commission, as Fruman and Parnas allegedly did about the source of the money.

America First PAC says it's “the primary super PAC dedicated to electing federal candidates who support the agenda of the Trump-Pence Administration.” It does this by making “independent expenditures” for favored candidates. GEP and America First are corporations. That’s where Citizens United comes in.

The Roberts 5-4 majority held that the campaign finance law barring corporations from spending money to support political candidates violated the First Amendment. There were two main themes.

First, the Constitution protects “speech” regardless of the speaker's corporate identity.

Second, the court said that “independent expenditures," which it conceded could be used to gain "ingratiation and access," cannot corrupt candidates because they don't control the spending.

Citizens United enables corruption

Result? The birth of super PACs like America First: Independent expenditure corporations that accept unlimited donations and spend them to support their candidates.

So except for Fruman and Parnas’ apparent lying about their source of funds, what they did was perfectly legal under Citizens United. They used a corporation — GEP — to donate $325,000 to an independent expenditures PAC, America First, and that corporation could spend the money on favored candidates. They thus exploited both major themes of Citizens United. The decision enabled their alleged crimes.

Indeed, Ukraine-gate illustrates precisely how independent expenditures can corrupt. Consider that Giuliani says he met Fruman and Parnas in "mid-to-late-2018." Now consider all the things that happened in May 2018, according to public reporting and the federal indictment:

►GEP made a $325,000 contribution to America First.

►Fruman and Parnas were photographed with Trump at an eight-person White House dinner.

►They were photographed with Donald Trump Jr. at a breakfast in Beverly Hills, California.

►They met then-Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas at a fundraising event sponsored by America First and committed to raising $20,000 for him.

►They solicited his help getting Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine, fired.

►Sessions wrote Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seeking her dismissal.

And later, Parnas connected Giuliani with Viktor Shokin, the former prosecutor who protected corrupt Ukrainians and whose (now debunked) claims about Biden were at the center of the infamous Trump phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Supreme Court gave corporations permission to buy "ingratiation and access" through “independent expenditures,” leading the Trumpians straight into the swamp.

William Bennett Turner, who practiced law for 45 years and teaches courses on freedom of speech and the press at the University of California-Berkeley, is the author of "Free Speech for Some: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing the First Amendment to Empower Corporations and the Religious Right." Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.