A Russian company accused by special counsel Robert Mueller III of being part of an online operation to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign is leaning in part on a decision by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to argue that the charge against it should be thrown out.

The 2011 decision by Kavanaugh, writing for a three-judge panel, concerned the role that foreign nationals may play in U.S. elections. It upheld a federal law that said foreigners temporarily in the country may not donate money to candidates, contribute to political parties and groups, or spend money advocating for or against candidates. But it did not rule out letting foreigners spend money on independent advocacy campaigns.

Kavanaugh "went out of his way to limit the decision," said Daniel Petalas, a Washington lawyer and former interim general counsel for the Federal Election Commission.

A motion filed by the Russian company this week repeatedly cites Kavanaugh's decision, bringing new attention to his rulings on campaign finance laws and regulations during his tenure on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Legal experts who have analyzed his work say he appears to fit comfortably within the high court's conservative majority, which has found that restrictions on campaign-related spending conflict with the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. That argument underpinned the seminal 2010 Citizens United case, which allowed corporations and other organizations to spend unlimited sums on independent political activity.

In the case of the foreign national decision, Kavanaugh said the government would have to prove that foreign nationals had knowledge of the law's restrictions before seeking criminal charges. And he said the ban did not include foreign spending on "issue advocacy and speaking out on issues of public policy."

The Supreme Court affirmed the decision in 2012 in a one-sentence order, without noted dissent or scheduling the case for a hearing. The Obama administration had asked the opinion be affirmed, arguing in a brief that the federal law was narrowly tailored to respect the speech rights of foreigners.

Neither the law in question "nor any other provision of federal law prohibits foreign nationals from speaking out on issues of public policy," wrote Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. "The statute thus leaves open . . . a broad range of expressive activity, from contributing to issue groups, to creating advocacy websites, to funding mass television advertising."

The exceptions, said Richard Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, create "potentially a huge loophole for foreign and undisclosed issue ads on federal elections."

Kavanaugh's decision has been embraced by Concord Management and Consulting, one of 16 Russian individuals or companies indicted by a federal grand jury in February in connection with allegedly taking part in an "information warfare" campaign aimed at swaying American voters.

The indictment alleged that Concord paid $1.25 million a month to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency for projects such as setting up rallies for President Donald Trump or various advocacy groups in the United States, creating Twitter and Facebook accounts to spread false information and "to interfere in U.S. political and electoral processes without detection of their Russian affiliation." The company was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Concord is alleged to be controlled by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian catering magnate known as "Putin's chef" for his longtime association with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is the only one of those charged to have responded to the indictments.

In Concord's motion to dismiss the charge, its attorneys frequently cited Kavanaugh and his 2011 decision in Bluman v. Federal Election Commission.

The lawyers noted that Kavanaugh distinguished between explicitly political ads — those that urge the public to vote for or against a candidate — and "issue ads."

"Foreign nationals are not barred from issue advocacy through political speech such as what is described in the indictment — they are only precluded from willfully making expenditures that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a particular candidate," wrote Washington lawyers Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly, who are defending the company, citing the Bluman decision.

It is the second issue related to Mueller's investigation that is sure to receive attention at Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. He said in a 2009 law review article that presidents should not be distracted by civil lawsuits and criminal investigations and that Congress might be "wise" to provide such protection until they are no longer in office.

Like Justice Neil Gorsuch, who also was a Trump nominee, Kavanaugh appears to fit the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia, who joined the court's conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. — as skeptics of the constitutionality of many campaign finance restrictions.

"Based on his opinions and public statements, as a Supreme Court justice Kavanaugh would almost certainly be a reliable vote to overturn campaign finance restrictions in the Scalia/Alito/Roberts mold," said Andrew Herman, a Washington lawyer who practices campaign finance law.