This is a little sloppy. You quoted Trump here, attributing these exact words to him, but that hasn't been substantiated. WashPo's journalism amounts to the laziest and least admissible kind of evidence, which is 3rd party attribution: "according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation."

Trump is pretty good at walking up to the line of legality and saying something that sounds illegal if you're not paying much attention, but is actually, barely within the lines. And you even cite precedence indicating that under current law, what he (allegedly, through anonymous sources) said is legal.

The less impressive part of this whole piece is the big picture. If you or anyone else here thinks that pols don't regularly ask for campaign finance contributions with a tacit or unspoken promise to push through a policy, then you're just sadly mistaken. That's the whole business in DC. It's why the whole zip code is what it is, and why it has more millionaires per capita than anywhere else. It's why negative-charisma swamp creatures get paid six figures to speak at Goldman Sachs. It's not because DC makes anything especially useful or valuable. Trump lays it barer, but he's doing the same thing as every other cretin in town. That's why every congressperson leaves office vastly more wealthy than their $175k salary would justify.

If your readers genuinely think this started with Citizens United, there's an empty turnip truck driving around somewhere right now. As with many "reforms" CU basically outlined exactly how corrupt you can be and still have cover of law. It's not a regulation, it's a road map.