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Responding to the news that Russians bought nearly $100,000 in Facebook ads to influence U.S. voters during the 2016 election, Rachel Maddow warned that this is the kind of revelation that could bring about criminal charges.

The MSNBC star said that if any American – i.e. anybody connected to the Trump campaign – knew this crime was being committed, or helped in committing it, they may face time in the slammer.

Video:

#Maddow Warns Trump That Criminal Charges Could Follow After Russia-Facebook Revelation pic.twitter.com/AkMJDMLCvp — Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) September 7, 2017

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Maddow said:

You can’t spend foreign money to influence a U.S. election, even just on Facebook ads. And so this is evidence now – direct evidence – confirmed by Facebook of a discreet, clear crime committed in the course of the Russian attack on our election. … If any American knew that crime was happening, if any American was part of the effort to make that happen, that American could absolutely be criminally charged on that matter.

In other words, if anybody connected to the Trump campaign was aware of what was happening with Russia and, in this case, a massive social media platform, they would face criminal charges.

Given what we already know about the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia – particularly their countless secret, undisclosed meetings with Russian officials during the campaign – it seems increasingly possible that somebody on Team Trump knew what was going on.

As Maddow noted on Wednesday, if any of the ongoing investigations reveal that to be true, then criminal charges could quickly follow.