what are the implications of this very stringent interpretation of “benefiting the campaign”?
if a newspaper announces that this is an emergency and their goal is to stop election of a certain candidate, is their publishing activity a campaign contribution? If they have 1 million of digital readers, this would make it a million counts. The jury will take a lot of time to read them out.
when an elected official performs multiple acts to benefit his campaign (forgiving loans, proposing peace plans, issuing border instructions) – these are all benefiting his campaign. He should (1) reimburse USGOV all the expenses (2) use only funds he acquired via legit campaign donations for the reimbursement. Of course, you can argue that it is hard to prove that the president did this for campaign purposes, but after votes in South Dakota sue him, it will be up to a jury there to decide.