While the Manafort verdict (guilty on eight of 18 counts) was largely related to activities predating his association with Trump's presidential run, Cohen's being found guilty of violating campaign finance laws is more damning to the president.
Cohen's attorney said that if Cohen is guilty of violating campaign finance law, so is the president.
"Michael Cohen took this step today so that his family can move on to the next chapter," Cohen attorney Lanny Davis said in a statement. "This is Michael fulfilling his promise made on July 2nd to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump. Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?"
Andrew McCarthy of National Review provided his perspective.
Let’s split some legal hairs. The media narrative suggests that these payments violate federal law because they were made to influence the outcome of the election. That is not quite accurate. It was not illegal to pay hush money to the two women — Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. “Stormy Daniels”). It was illegal for Michael Cohen to make in-kind contributions (which is what these pay-offs were) in excess of the legal limit.
Specifically, it was illegal for Michael Cohen to make contributions exceeding $2,700 per election to a presidential candidate (including contributions coordinated with the candidate); and illegal for the candidate to accept contributions in excess of that amount. It was also illegal for corporations to contribute to candidates (including expenditures coordinated with the candidate), and for the candidate to accept such contributions. The latter illegality is relevant because Cohen formed corporations to transfer the hush money.
The law does not impose a dollar limit on the candidate himself. Donald Trump could lawfully have made contributions and expenditures in excess of $2,700 per election. Because of that, and because — unlike Cohen — Trump is a non-lawyer who may not have fully appreciated the campaign-finance implications, it would be tough to prove that the president had criminal intent. Nevertheless, that may not get the president off the hook. As noted above, it is illegal for a candidate to accept excessive contributions. It is also illegal to fail to report contributions and expenditures, and to conspire in or aid and abet another person’s excessive contributions. Moreover, we are talking here about hush-money expenditures, so drawing a distinction between the payment and the failure to report is pointless since the intention not to report is implicit in this kind of payment.
As I argued when news of these pay-offs first emerged, the best arguments President Trump has here involve mitigation, not innocence.
I sensed within the past few weeks that the Republicans would lose the U.S. House in the upcoming midterm elections. The Cohen verdict will now only embolden the Democrats' impeachment talk as well as provide more fodder to delay the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. While I believe Tuesday's news will only fortify the former, the latter is still an exercise in futility.
These verdicts also seem to shed light on another issue. That is, leftists are only concerned about getting Trump. Period. While they shrieked about Russian interference in our elections and raised concerns over cyber security, all of that was secondary to the belief that Trump is unfit as president and thus has to go by any means necessary while still clinging to the utter fantasy that Hillary Clinton can be installed as president
In the end I highly doubt this brings down Trump. However, this further underscores the point that Trump associating with unsavory characters was never going to allow him to go unscathed.
I feel as though Mark Hemingway summed it up best:
Let's face it: If Trump had followed the Pence rule, he wouldn't be in this mess.
Yup.
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3 comments:
Just to note, the notion this is some kind of campaign finance offense by Trump is purely ludicrous. End of story. What it DOES point out is how far off the rails and any reasonable prosecutorial discretion Mueller's Trump-haters have gone. That may bring out the GOP voters and actually blunt that "blue wave."
Per Jerry's note, if indeed the Cohen prosecution required the notion that this is a campaign finance violation, as soon as Trump proves it's not, he's free on appeal.
The point would seem to be that this case will never come before a court at all, or even a grand jury. There is ample evidence that this had nothing to do with the campaign and if somebody wants to make the case it is, then the huge double standard that applied to Democrat candidates who did similar things and more openly would raise great doubts.
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