I disagree with your position that 'Free speech is a good thing even when the speech is bad...' on the premise that intent matters in democracy. In this case, '

I disagree with your position that 'Free speech is a good thing even when the speech is bad...' on the premise that intent matters in democracy. In this case, 'free speech' was really 'paid speech' whose intent was not to argue the relative merits or problems of one policy or candidate but cynically targeted with the intent to achieve a specific outcome for a client. It makes no difference if the speech is domestic or foreign, legal or illegal. Taken to an extreme, the ecosystem of speech and ideas that democracy relies upon becomes a wilderness where it becomes impossible to discern who is articulating their real opinions and who is simply making a bad-faith argument in which they do not necessarily believe in order to get a paycheck.