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Part of what makes this such a challenging topic to research and write about: For almost every significant question, someone with credentials is likely to make a case for every possible answer. You have to either grapple with the source material yourself or weigh whom you trust.
For my part, I trust Vance’s analysis more than McCarthy’s and think the identifiable lacunae in Mueller’s charging docs support her view (e.g. Mueller leaves out how Stone learned WikiLeaks possessed hacked emails before any were released). But for your part, do you trust me?
1 - This USA Today column by Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor and law professor, names one potential charge re the Trump campaign tasking Stone to solicit valuable info from Wikileaks (soliciting a thing of value from a foreign national, 50 USC 30121). usatoday.com/story/opinion/…
2 - This USA Today column by Jonathan Turley, a law professor at GWU, asserts without considering the foreign solicitation statute that "even if Stone and the campaign did seek the email information, it would not be a crime." usatoday.com/story/opinion/…
It's got to be confusing for readers without legal training to deal with wholly contradictory pieces that aren't in even conversation with one other about where their points of difference are.
fwiw, I find McQuade's argument more persuasive and doubt Turley thought about the matter from a campaign finance perspective at all.
Here’s another column by another GWU law professor that doesn’t consider whether solicitation of a thing of value from a foreign national by a campaign is prosecutable, preferring to substitute some shoddy heuristic for analysis of the facts and the law.
