A conservative nonprofit has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Hillary Clinton campaign of violating election laws when it paid British citizen Christopher Steele to gather Kremlin-provided political dirt on candidate Donald Trump.

Though not stated outright, the lawsuit argues that Democrats violated an admonition issued last week by Federal Election Commission Chairman Ellen L. Weintraub. She decreed that political campaigns cannot accept “anything of value” from foreign nationals.

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The lawsuit from The Coolidge Reagan Foundation says the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee accepted something of value from a foreign national, Mr. Steele, in the form of Kremlin anti-Trump smut….

“Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election,” said Ms. Weintraub, a Democrat. “This is not a novel concept. Electoral intervention from foreign governments has been considered unacceptable since the beginnings of our nation.”

Ms. Weintraub pinned the statement to her Twitter page, with the headline “I would not have thought that I needed to say this.”

The Coolidge Reagan Foundation said that during the 2016 election, Democrats did precisely what Ms. Weintraub described….

Mr. Steele, a former British intelligence officer, filled his 35-page dossier with now-debunked conspiracy charges against candidate Trump. Mr. Steele quoted Kremlin intelligence sources as saying Mr. Trump was a spy for Russia and financed its hacking of Democratic Party computers.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no such conspiracy….

(Excerpted from The Washington Times article by Rowan Scarborough.)