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Donald Trump has filed a legal complaint against the UK’s ruling Labour party, alleging “illegal foreign campaign contributions and interference” to help Kamala Harris in the US presidential election.
The complaint filed by Trump’s campaign to the independent Federal Election Commission accuses Labour of sending strategists and staffers to help the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign.
As UK ministers sought to head off a potential transatlantic spat with Britain’s most powerful ally, they said the aides were volunteering in their spare time.
“These are individuals and they’re there . . . at their own expense,” John Healey, Britain’s defence secretary, said on Wednesday. “It is very different to the determination of the Labour government to work with whoever the American people elect next month as their president.”
But the Trump campaign attacked “another feeble attempt in a long line of anti-American election interference”, in this instance by what it described as “the far-left Labour party”.
Lawyers for the Trump campaign evoked the American Revolution in a letter to the FEC dated Monday, writing: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
The new Labour government has taken pains to build relations with the Trump team ahead of the US’s finely poised election in under two weeks time.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer met Trump for a two-hour dinner in New York last month, while David Lammy, UK foreign secretary, has claimed “common ground” with Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance.
Trump’s legal team cited media reports that Labour party officials — including Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney; his head of strategy Deborah Mattinson; and Matthew Doyle, Downing Street’s director of communications — had travelled to the US in recent months to advise the Harris campaign.
The complaint also cites a now deleted LinkedIn post from Sofia Patel, head of operations at the Labour party, who wrote that “nearly 100” current and former Labour party staff would be travelling to the US in the coming weeks to help elect Harris, the Democratic vice-president. “[We] will sort out your housing,” the post added.
Trump’s lawyers argue such support amounts to “contributions” from foreign actors, in violation of US campaign finance laws.
The Republican candidate’s lawyers requested an “immediate investigation” into what they described as Labour’s “blatant foreign interference” in the election and the Harris’s campaign acceptance of it.
Starmer told journalists en route to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa that Labour party members “have gone over [to the US] pretty much every election”, adding: “They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers.”
Emily Thornberry, Labour chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, questioned the Labour activists’ efforts, telling the BBC: “I actually don’t think that British politicians going over to America and telling the Americans the way they should vote really helps.”
Trump and Harris are locked in a dead heat in the polls, according to the Financial Times’ tracker, with the former president all but erasing his Democratic rival’s slender advantage in the swing states that will decide the contest.
“In two weeks, Americans will once again reject the oppression of big government that we rejected in 1776,” said Susie Wiles, co-chair of Trump’s campaign. Wiles said Harris’s campaign was “flailing” and “seeking foreign influence to boost its radical message”.
Billionaire Elon Musk, a major donor to Trump who is actively campaigning for him, also claimed last week that on his social media platform X that Labour activists’ work for Harris was “illegal”.
Nigel Farage, the UK Reform party leader and member of parliament who has campaigned for Trump this year, also weighed in on X: “This is direct election interference by the governing Labour party, and particularly stupid if Trump wins. Who is paying for all of this?”
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Starmer’s dinner with Trump last month, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, was the first meeting between the two men. Trump said ahead of the meeting that the UK prime minister was “very nice”.
On his way to the Commonwealth summit, Starmer told reporters he did not believe the row over Labour support for Harris risked jeopardising his ties to Trump, saying the two men had “established a good relationship” over dinner.
“We had a good, constructive discussion and, of course as prime minister of the United Kingdom I will work with whoever the American people return as their president in their elections, which are very close now,” he added.
Additional reporting by John Paul Rathbone
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