UK’s Labour Party jumping into U.S. election to help Harris

Sofia Patel, head of operations for the United Kingdom’s Labour Party (yes, that’s Labor with an O-U-R), in a recent post claims she has “nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the U.S. in the next few weeks.” They’re heading to critical battleground states North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, as well as Virginia, Patel wrote in her post.

“I have 10 spots available for anyone available to head to the battleground state of North Carolina — we will sort your housing,” the leftist Labour Party official noted on her LinkedIn page, which now appears to have been deleted.

Patel, who served in field operations for former U.S. Secretary of State and failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, asked that interested parties reach her at labourforkamala@gmail.com.

As an interested party, I did just that. Patel has yet to respond to my email seeking comment.

Labour Party Favors

It’s not technically illegal for a foreigner to participate as a volunteer in a U.S. campaign, but election law expert Hans von Spakovsky said it’s definitely not a good look for Democrats, who have portrayed themselves as defenders against foreign influence in U.S. elections.

“From the standpoint of public relations, the Democrat Party has been the loudest complainer about ‘foreign interference’ in elections, starting with their false claims about Trump and the Russian government,” von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform initiative and a former member of the Federal Election Commission, said in an email response to The Federalist. “Yet, here they are accepting volunteers from a foreign political party? They are obviously soliciting and accepting foreign interference.”

According to the FEC, foreign nationals are prohibited from making contributions or expenditures — including advances of personal funds — in connection to any federal, state or local election. But “an individual who is a foreign national may participate in campaign activities as an uncompensated volunteer.”

Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican who represents swing state Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, said he wants to know who is paying the UK leftists to help Harris’ election efforts.

“If Democratic organizations are paying them, they need to comply with the campaign finance laws of the United States of America,” Tiffany told me in a phone interview Thursday evening.

Von Spakovsky said if the Labour Party is paying British volunteers’ expenses while they work for the Harris campaign or is paying them a salary or stipend covering travel expenses, “then you do have a violation of the federal law against foreign contributions being made to, and accepted by, a campaign.”

The election law expert noted an FEC enforcement action in 2016 when the leftist Australian Labor Party recruited volunteers for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. No problem with that, but the party ran afoul of campaign finance law when it paid the volunteers a stipend and picked up their travel bills to the U.S.

“The FEC concluded that was a violation of federal law because finding that constituted the contribution and acceptance of foreign in-kind contributions,” von Spakovsky said. The party and the campaign each agreed to pay a civil penalty of $14,500 and to stop violating the foreign national prohibition.

Tiffany notes the extremely fine line foreign leftist billionaires like Hansjörg Wyss have walked in attempting to influence U.S. elections. An Americans for Public Trust report published earlier this year shows Wyss’ Berger Action Fund at that time had “funneled $243 million into [the] Sixteen Thirty Fund.” Nonprofit tracker InfluenceWatch describes the powerful group as a “left-of-center lobbying and advocacy organization” tied at the hip to Democrat and leftist agenda supporter Arabella Advisors.

As The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway noted in an investigative piece published this week, between 1990 and 2006, “Wyss gave almost $120,000 to candidates and political committees despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to spend money on U.S. elections. Wyss was never punished because the statute of limitations had passed by the time the Federal Elections Commission investigated his illegal donations.”

Another ‘Act of Desperation’

Great Britain’s Labour Party this past summer won a landslide victory, its first in nearly 20 years. Self-proclaimed socialist Keir Starmer, who ascended to prime minister upon the election, and his party have benefitted from a hefty war chest. As the BBC reported in July, the Labour Party “declared more donations than all other parties combined during the general election campaign.”

Patel, chief of Labour’s operations, has worked closely with Starmer for the past several years, according to her LinkedIn page. John Lehal, chief operating officer for the party, attended August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, calling it a “real privilege” to be there in a LinkedIn post. His promised “highlights” from his trip don’t show up on his X account.

Tiffany points out that Brits have a recent history of interfering in U.S. elections. Exhibit A: former UK spy Christopher Steele and his bogus Russian dossier — paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee as false opposition research against her opponent, Trump.

“That was a case of election interference and [Democrats] were able to use the story all the way to the midterms in 2018,” Tiffany said of the phony dossier. Thanks to a lazy, irresponsible and corrupt corporate media the truly fake news hung on for years before being utterly debunked.

“Much of the American public believed that there was Russian collusion with President Trump when it was exactly the opposite,” the congressman said. “The information gathered by the Clinton campaign that ultimately became the Steele dossier was used to discredit Trump.”

The assist from British liberals in the vice president’s presidential campaign, Tiffany said, shows just how desperate Harris and her supporters are.

“Pulling out the UK Labour Party for help at this point, with a little over two weeks to go before the election, is very much an act of desperation,” he said.

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.