President Trump is pursuing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the British Labour Party and Vice President Harris’s campaign for “illegal foreign national contributions.” The Brits are dispatching about 100 staffers who presume to “show the Democrats how to win.”

On Monday, the Trump legal team asked the Federal Election Commission to launch “an immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference in the 2024 presidential election.” Heave that tea into the harbor, this columnist says, and teach all would-be meddlers a lesson.

The plot came to light last week when the Labour Party’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, posted on LinkedIn that she had recruited “nearly 100” staffers for the trip. In August, Ms. Patel first announced that she aimed to “help our friends across the pond elect their first female president. … Let’s show the Democrats how to win elections!”

Ms. Patel advised recruits that she would “sort your housing.” At least that’s progress since the days of fife and drum. The Quartering Act, one of the Intolerable Acts passed by Parliament in 1774, forced Colonials to provide lodging for King George III’s soldiers in their homes. The Third Amendment to the Constitution later banned such intrusions in peacetime.

A spokesman for the Federal Elections Commission told the Sun last week that it’s “perfectly legal,” for foreign nationals to “participate in ‘uncompensated volunteer activity,’ though they may not contribute to campaigns or spending groups.” Non-citizens, however, are prohibited from “decision-making at campaigns.”

With an eye on this, the Trump letter cited last month’s Washington Post report that two “former top advisors” to the Britain’s Labour prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, were “briefing Democratic strategists and pollsters from the Harris campaign.” The Telegraph reported that Mr. Starmer’s chief of staff and director of communications “met with Ms. Harris’s campaign team.”

Attempts to game elections can rub voters the wrong way. In the mid-1990’s, Vice President Gore worked the phones from his White House office to drum up campaign contributions. This violated the United States Criminal Code which bans such activity in any place “occupied in the discharge of official duties.”

Mr. Gore claimed there was “no controlling legal authority” because no court had ruled whether the law applied to the vice presidency. The Department of Justice ignored the matter, but the phrase lived in infamy though the vice president’s run for the Oval Office in 2000.

Unlike the Department of Justice, the Federal Election Commission is an independent agency tasked with enforcing election law; so wise candidates have always steered clear of drawing its attention and of foreign influence. This was the case in 1968 when the USSR’s ambassador to America, Anatoly Dobrynin, offered to bankroll the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Humphrey.

Dobrynin wrote in his 1995 memoir, “In Confidence,” that the Kremlin ordered him to supply Humphrey “any conceivable help.” The vice president rejected the offer. In 2004, the Spirit of ’76 was in the air again when the Guardian tried to influence the vote at Clark County, Ohio.

The BBC wrote that “the left-wing paper identified the area as a vote-swingers hotspot” and launched “a letter-writing campaign which aimed to give people outside the U.S. a say in the election.” Operation Clark County, the BBC reported, “set up its readers as pen pals with American voters to press home the international ramifications of a vote for” President George W. Bush.

An estimated 14,000 volunteered to write letters but Mr. Bush won Clark “thanks to a 1,600-vote county-wide swing in his favor.” The state proved the decider in Secretary Kerry’s defeat and the BBC reported that a “somewhat tongue-in-cheek question” was being asked in a Cockney accent: “Was it ‘the Guardian wot swung it?’” 

As for Ms. Patel’s effort across North Carolina for Senator Clinton in 2016, Trump won the state by almost four percentage points. Why she expects to do better this year is anyone’s guess. It took the Colonials years to convince the British Army to quit, as well, so that what they called “our posterity,” meaning us, could govern free from London.

On X, the Conservative Party MP and former prime minister, Mary “Liz” Truss, called it “unbelievably arrogant and foolish” for Labour “to interfere in the U.S. election.” Whether Mr. Starmer’s operatives or Ms. Harris pay a price for their political liaison is an open question, but “the British are coming” is again a rallying cry across America.