I understand you are not a lawyer but this doesn't exempt you from critically analyzing your own information. For instance, did it ever occur to you to question whether a mere professor of law at Cornell and a former special counsel for the Defense Dept. are experts in election law? What makes them experts in election law? If the law professor has been teaching torts for the last 30 years at law school and has not researched, taught, practiced, or litigated election law, then the Cornell law professor is hardly an "expert" in election law. I have already explained, previously, why the former special counsel for the Defense Dept. should not be assumed to be an expert in election law. Yet, your default position was to treat them as experts on the basis of, essentially, nothing more than the fact the title of an article called them "experts." This is a problem.
The only clear expert cited in the article was Rick Hasen. Yet, the article did not articulate a complete analysis of the statute, as the article did not discuss every element of the statute. Hasen was only quoted in reference to a very limited aspect of the statute, specifically the "solicit" element, and ventured no opinion or analysis about the element of "contribution or donation."
Your instant deference to these lawyers isn't the only problem. You simply refused to engage the facts. The statute, its language, what the statute says, is part of the facts but was completely ignored by you. What was absent from your argument was any logical progression of questioning on the basis of the facts presented. What does "contribution or donation" mean? The chapter defines the phrase "contribution or donation" to mean "money or other thing of value." Does information constitute as "money or other thing of value"? Is Trump Jr. wanting "dirt" on Hillary the equivalent of "money or other thing of value"? Your argument did not bother to engage the facts with this logical line of questions and one does not have to be an "expert" in election law to ask these questions or to think critically in this manner in regards to the statute and Trump Jr.'s request for "dirt" on Hillary.
You can't properly explain away a complete failure to critically analyze these facts as merely deferring to alleged "experts."