Trump Files Formal Complaint Of 'Election Interference' Against UK Labour Party
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a complaint with the election commission, accusing the UK’s Labour Party of making illegal foreign campaign contributions and interfering in the 2024 presidential elections after its volunteers allegedly traveled to the United States to help campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to the reports, various senior members of the Labour Party met with members of the Harris campaign in recent weeks.
The Trump campaign described the visits as “strategic meetings.”
The complaint also cites a now deleted LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, head of operations at the Labour party, who wrote that “nearly 100” current and former Labour party staff would be travelling to the US in the coming weeks to help elect Harris, the Democratic vice-president.
“[We] will sort out your housing,” the post added.
Under federal law, foreign nationals are prohibited from “directly or indirectly” making “contributions, donations, expenditures (including independent expenditures) and disbursements ... in connection with any federal, state, or local election.”
The term “foreign national” is described in the law as an individual who is not a citizen of the United States and does not have lawful permanent residence, or a foreign principal such as a “foreign government or political party.”
Trump’s lawyers argue such support amounts to “contributions” from foreign actors, in violation of US campaign finance laws.
The Trump campaign says that, “the limited number of ’spots’ supports a reasonable inference that the Labour Party is financially supporting this effort.
After all, if individuals were being asked to volunteer on their own and sort out their own housing, there would be no reason to cap the number of remaining ’spots.'”
According to the campaign, the 10 spot number also “suggests scarcity, which in turn suggests an expenditure of resources.”
The Republican candidate’s lawyers requested an “immediate investigation” into what they described as Labour’s “blatant foreign interference” in the election and the Harris’s campaign acceptance of it.
“To protect our democracy from illegal foreign influence, it is imperative that the Federal Election Commission open a MUR, find reason to believe, and investigate this matter immediately,” it concludes.
The FT reports that Starmer told journalists en route to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa that Labour party members “have gone over [to the US] pretty much every election”, adding:
“They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers.”
Emily Thornberry, Labour chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, questioned the Labour activists’ efforts, telling the BBC:
“I actually don’t think that British politicians going over to America and telling the Americans the way they should vote really helps.”
“In two weeks, Americans will once again reject the oppression of big government that we rejected in 1776,” said Susie Wiles, co-chair of Trump’s campaign.
Wiles said Harris’s campaign was “flailing” and “seeking foreign influence to boost its radical message”.
🚨 BREAKING: Donald Trump has filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against 'far-left' Labour helping the Kamala Harris campaign for ‘illegal foreign campaign contributions’ and ‘interference in our elections’
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) October 22, 2024
[@e_casalicchio] pic.twitter.com/gRRz8R5Wpa
Nigel Farage, the UK Reform party leader and member of parliament who has campaigned for Trump this year, also weighed in on X:
“This is direct election interference by the governing Labour party, and particularly stupid if Trump wins. Who is paying for all of this?”
Lawyers for the Trump campaign evoked the American Revolution in a letter to the FEC dated Monday, writing: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”