Interesting. Thanks.
Oh, I’m sure the claims are true. I’m just wondering if they can be proven.
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Until I see these criminals, thugs and crime bosses in cuffs, heading off to life long prison terms, this doesn’t mean anything to me. Every single day there is more evidence of crime by this administration and everyone surrounding it and yet, nothing is done. Please don’t tell me ‘wait until Mueller is ready to move’ on this whole fiasco. With a GOP run government the criminals will cover for the criminals. If this were a Democratic administration doing this, even with a Democratic majority House and Senate, the cries for ‘LOCK THEM UP!’ would be so deafening it would not stop until life long prison sentences, possibly even assassinations took place.
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Rudy went off script.
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Fair enough. There may be campaign finance laws other than the ones I’m thinking of that this runs afoul of. If just strikes me that Giuliani completely misunderstands the basis for calling it an illegal campaign contribution. The whole point is that it wasn’t campaign money and it was being spent to help the campaign.
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The problem with that is it’s still a contribution. Just from Trump’s own funds. That is still counted as a campaign contribution and should have been recorded and reported. The recipient of the money should have been reported. Subject to:
I think they are trying to weasel it through on the basis that Trump didn’t know about the payment until after it happened.
Hence the “Cohen didn’t even ask. Cohen made it go away. He didn’t even ask” stuff.
I think they hope that if they can establish that Cohen made the payment without it being in cooperation with, in consultation with or with the knowledge of Trump or anyone on the campaign committee, they can argue this doesn’t fall into the category of campaign spending.
That is going to royally fuck with Cohen’s legal career since it hinges on establishing that he took action allegedly on behalf of a client without the client’s knowledge or instructions which is generally considered an ethical no-no but he doesn’t seem to have had much of a practice so that’s not such a big deal.
It would also mean that the NDA is invalid since Trump would be actively stating that he knew nothing about it and didn’t instruct Cohen to draw it up or make the payment. Again that’s probably less of a problem at this stage since a) it’s pretty obvious the NDA won’t hold up and b) everybody already knows he slept with her.
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As of this morning their story seems to be that Trump reimbursed Cohen without knowing what the reimbursement was for or that there was anything to reimburse. That way Cohen didn’t violate campaign finance laws and Trump didn’t violate … um …
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It would also be a major campaign finance violation by Cohen. So, career and prison.
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That’s pretty fun, I have to admit. Too bad Jebuz isn’t more than just a bystander eating popcorn. He needs to come and bring his wrath down upon those who are fucking up in his name.
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No way Trump wrote those himself
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That’s the point I don’t think it would.
A ‘contribution’ is prohibited if it is more than $2,000. That’s para 30116(a)(1)(A).
‘Contribution’ is defined in para 30116(a)(7) which reads:
(7) For purposes of this subsection-
(A) contributions to a named candidate made to any political committee authorized by such candidate to accept contributions on his behalf shall be considered to be contributions made to such candidate;
(B)(i) expenditures made by any person in cooperation, consultation, or concert, with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, his authorized political committees, or their agents, shall be considered to be a contribution to such candidate;
(ii) expenditures made by any person (other than a candidate or candidate’s authorized committee) in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a national, State, or local committee of a political party, shall be considered to be contributions made to such party committee; and
(iii) the financing by any person of the dissemination, distribution, or republication, in whole or in part, of any broadcast or any written, graphic, or other form of campaign materials prepared by the candidate, his campaign committees, or their authorized agents shall be considered to be an expenditure for purposes of this paragraph; and
(C ) if-
(i) any person makes, or contracts to make, any disbursement for any electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); and
(ii) such disbursement is coordinated with a candidate or an authorized committee of such candidate, a Federal, State, or local political party or committee thereof, or an agent or official of any such candidate, party, or committee;
such disbursement or contracting shall be treated as a contribution to the candidate supported by the electioneering communication or that candidate’s party and as an expenditure by that candidate or that candidate’s party; and
(D) contributions made to or for the benefit of any candidate nominated by a political party for election to the office of Vice President of the United States shall be considered to be contributions made to or for the benefit of the candidate of such party for election to the office of President of the United States.
The relevant sections are B (i) (highlighted in bold). Which requires someone in the campaign to know about the expenditures.
So if Cohen is prepared to state that he made the payment without anyone in the campaign knowing about it, it is arguably not a ‘contribution’ in campaign finance terms.
That’s my reading at least and it’s the only one that makes any sense out of what Giuliani is saying.
Not that he necessarily has to be making any sense of course.
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This is what I mean though, the original issue wasn’t that it was campaign spending, it was that it was a campaign contribution.
Say you are running a political campaign and American airlines says, “We’ll fly you around for free”. If we ignore rules about corporate donations or donation size limitations, you could accept that offer, but you’d have to report the value of the flights as a contribution to your campaign. You can’t say they were just doing you a favour, favours have dollar values.
So when someone paid off Daniels they were doing the campaign the same kind of favour. We know the dollar value of that favour: $130,000. If Trump paid Cohen back the $130k then he made a $130k donation to his own campaign without reporting it.
They charged John Edwards under this exact theory (though he was not convicted, the jury was deadlocked and the prosecutors decided it wasn’t worth the resources to retry him).
ETA: I should have read your second post which provides more detail.
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Wow, I see. it’s much worse than I thought. Like you say, that means the only way to wriggle out of it is to claim that the reimbursements were part of a “retainer,” paid in the normal course of the legal relationship, and without Trump’s knowledge of the Daniels NDA. Sounds like a high bar to clear, especially if there’s any on-the-record communication about the payment in the documents that have been seized… Crazy times.
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I need to type faster 
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- Yes, that’s still influencing an election.
- The Trump team had enough confidence in her story to pay $130K to keep it quiet. So I’d say “pretty confident.”
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Well, that’s the thing. It’s even worse. It can’t be part of a retainer and paid in the normal course of the lawyer client relationship if Trump knew nothing about it.
That’s not how these things work.
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Why is that? Is that just bad news for Cohen, since it would indicate legal malfeasance, or something else?
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you know that is the awesome thing here…since Spicer and others (including Trump) have established that the twitter account is his official POTUS account and they are HIS official words. It doesn’t matter who wrote it or hit send. It’s attributable in court to his words. He cannot deny it and say “but I didn’t type that”. Unless he has irrefutable proof that the account was hacked by a malicious party…he said it.
I love the stupidity. 
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Paying a suspicious-looking $130K line item on a legal invoice without even asking what it was for?
Smartest businessman ever!
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As if Trump would give anyone money, especially $130K, without knowing what he was handing over money for.
I believe both Cohen and Trump are spraying themselves with massive doses of that new perfume from Ivanka, Complicit.
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