A foreign socialist political party was reportedly planning to send scores of operatives to the U.S. to seemingly campaign on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, according to multiple reports.
The United Kingdom’s (U.K.) Labour Party, currently in control of the country’s government and headed by self-admitted socialist Kier Starmer, has already had some interactions with the Harris campaign ahead of the November U.S. elections. Labour Party Head of Operations Sofia Patel announced on Wednesday that roughly 100 current and former party staff planned to fly to the U.S. in the coming weeks to campaign for Harris, according to multiple posts on Patel’s LinkedIn profile that have now been deleted.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reviewed the posts before Patel deleted them on Thursday. It wasn’t clear whether the trip had been canceled.
Patel appeared to delete her entire LinkedIn page after the DCNF reached out to the trip’s organizers, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Other outlets including The Washington Times, The Federalist and British newspaper The Telegraph reported on Patel’s post.
Sofia Patel, head of operations for the Labour Party, shared plans via LinkedIn on how to get British left-wing political operatives to the U.S. to help Kamala Harris win the election. pic.twitter.com/am2osqrdVv
— Andy Ngo
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(@MrAndyNgo) “The staff are going to the US in the next few weeks heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” Patel wrote in a now-deleted post on Wednesday. “I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina — we will sort your housing.” The post included an email address with the phrase “Labour for Kamala” in the title.
Seemingly clarifying the purpose of the trip in a post two months prior, Patel said the goal was “to help our friends across the pond elect their first female President.”
“Let’s show the Democrats how to win elections!” Patel said in the post. How exactly the Labour staff intend to help “elect” Harris wasn’t made clear in the deleted post.
Hans von Spakovsky, attorney and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF that the optics of having Labour Party staff help the Harris campaign are negative — especially given the Democratic Party’s own focus on combatting election interference.
“It is technically not illegal for a foreigner to participate as a volunteer in a U.S. campaign,” Spakovsky told the DCNF. “But from the standpoint of public relations, the Democrat Party has been the loudest complainer about supposed ‘foreign interference’ in elections, starting with their false claims about Trump and the Russian government. Yet, here they are accepting volunteers from a foreign political party?”
“They are obviously soliciting and accepting foreign interference and should loudly and very publicly reject this — or explain why they suddenly believe that foreign election interference is a good thing,” Spakovsky said.
There are incredibly strict guidelines around how foreign nationals are allowed to participate in U.S. elections. Per the Federal Election Commission (FEC), foreign nationals are strictly prohibited from making “contributions or expenditures” in connection to any U.S. election, whether local, state or federal. Foreign nationals “may participate in campaign activities as an uncompensated volunteer” but cannot be part of “the decision-making process of the campaign,” according to the FEC.
“For example, a foreign national volunteer may attend committee events and campaign strategy meetings, but may not be involved in the management of the committee,” the FEC website reads.
The ties between the Harris campaign and members of the Labour Party have seemingly deepened as the election draws close. Strategists tied to the Labour Party traveled to the U.S. in September to provide advice to campaign staffers on how to draw in more voters, according to The Washington Post. A Labour Party delegation was present at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago the same month.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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