The Senate Judiciary Committee is questioning whether the Democratic National Committee violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by working with Ukrainian government officials to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign last year.
In a letter sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley pointed to a report published by Politico in January laying out DNC official Alexandra Chalupa’s collaboration with Ukrainian politicians to compile research on Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman.
Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American activist who is no longer affiliated with the DNC, was paid $70,000 as a consultant for the party during the 2016 presidential cycle. She was paid $412,000 between 2004 and last year.
Republicans have recently latched onto the Politico expose as evidence of a double standard in the reporting about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney who allegedly promised to provide opposition research on Hillary Clinton.
Trump critics have responded by pointing out that Ukraine is not an adversary of the U.S., as is Russia. The Ukrainian effort also appears to be far less sophisticated than the Kremlin’s efforts to hack Democrats’ emails and disseminate them through several websites. The DNC-Ukraine collaboration also did not directly involve the Clinton campaign.
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