I cant imagine any court that would interpret "a thing of value" to include simple facts.
If any court were corrupt enough to interpret "thing of value" as not including facts, then it would largely short-circuit campaign finance law, and the laws against foreign interference in our elections. At that point, any campaign would be free to outsource all campaign functions that have an output consisting only of facts.
For example, campaigns spend a lot of money acquiring and processing voter information -- who lives where, who donates to whom, who is registered with the Party, and what other information is available about people that could be used to solicit donations. That output merely consists of a series of simple facts. So, all a campaign would have to do is call up whatever foreign dictator wants their guy to be his guy, and describe which "simple facts" would be helpful to them. Likewise, obviously, the money campaigns currently spend on opposition research needn't come from domestic sources. They can just hand off opposition research to outfits that take foreign donations, and then those outfits can produce whatever "simple facts" can be used to help the campaign. A lot of the work that goes into policy position papers and speech-writing also involved gathering facts, so that can also be done on the foreign dime. Why use US-donor money to fund policy research when you can just have a foreign-funded researcher hand you those "simple facts" after he's done the work? Market research can be outsourced, too. If you want to know how people in certain demographics react to certain talking points or ads that the campaign is planning to circulate, the information needed consists of "simple facts." It's helpful to know for a fact that 65% of registered voters who watched an ad thought the candidate came across as too aggressive, right? Why pay a dime for that focus group when Putin will foot the bill and then be at liberty to share those facts with you?
And if a court is willing to throw out the plain language of the law to invent out of whole cloth the idea that "simple facts" aren't things of value, then couldn't they take half a step further and include any immaterial assistance? For example, software coding, help desk services, speech writing, debate prep, etc., is just the exchange of information, just like "simple facts." So, you could outsource your campaign's IT work and other brain work to foreign governments, while you were at it. You could have them manning your phones, too, making the actual calls to voters on their dime -- they're just sharing "simple facts" with those voters, after all. Heck, you could probably have a foreign government drive about 80% of traditional campaign expenses through that giant loophole.
Of course, that's not to say that an activist court, like the hard-right Supreme Court, wouldn't legislate from the bench by inventing a new concept that facts don't have value for purposes of campaign law. But wouldn't it be better to leave it to Congress to change the law if they mean to radically restrict it that way?
A campaign can both employ foreigners and have foreigners volunteer for their campaign.
What they can't do is employ anyone on the campaign at a foreigner's expense. Even if the work that person is doing is just providing facts. And that's what we're talking about here -- people on a foreign payroll helping a campaign.
