The Fundraiser Warning

A congressman's campaign received about $30,000 at a 2016 fundraiser in Los Angeles that, prosecutors said, secretly came from a foreign national through intermediaries. In 2018 a cooperating witness, with an FBI agent listening, phoned the congressman and warned him the money had likely come from the foreigner. In 2019 agents from Los Angeles interviewed him at his home in his own state, and he later met investigators again in Washington, D.C. Both times he said he knew of no foreign or conduit contributions. He was charged in Los Angeles with concealing material facts and making false statements, and a jury there convicted him. He argued, among other things, that because every statement was made in his home state or in Washington, he could not lawfully be tried in California.