Posted on 08/21/2018 8:24:53 PM PDT by Mariner
If after Today’s Staged attacks, Trump speaks to Mueller, then he deserves to be Impeached.
It’s what I was hearing on radio circa 5pm CST today. But I only report what the wild allegation is supposed to be.
Maybe someone was drawing in too much from one of the other campaign fund scandals today?
The allegation as I remember it is that funds came from a company as “billed services” to reimburse Cohen. Paying for an NDA would be services (it is more than merely handing a check, you think there’d be a legal document signed by the silenced party). And then the company was reimbursed.
I think Trump’s legal team will argue that his motivation for paying the women was to keep the stories of infidelity from coming out and damaging his family. This could very well have been his motivation, at least partly.
from May 3rd
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/03/trump-cohen-payment-explanation-566044
Trump says money reimbursed to Cohen wasn’t connected to campaign
By LOUIS NELSON 05/03/2018 07:46 AM EDT
“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” Trump wrote on Twitter, stretching his message across three posts to accommodate the social media site’s character limit. “These agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth.”
Maybe I’m missing something, but how is illegal for a candidate to contribute any amount to their own campaign. Candidates self fund all the time. Cohen may have violated campaign finance by contributing to the Trump campaign in a round about way, but if Trump pays him back, how is that a violation?
None of this is a crime, and he wasn’t sentenced for the whore money.
It’s a giant headfake, and Cohen was on record saying Trump knew nothing about those payments, so either he was lying then or he was lying now.
Mueller dropped Cohen like a burning box of shit, it goes no where but gins up the DNC media into an impeachment frenzy.
Weak.
Give me 20 prosecutors and unlimited time and budget, and Ill get Hillary, Uranium One, Comey, Stroke, McCabe, Yates, Ohr, Power, Rice, Brennan, for illegal spying, perjury, election tampering and Russian bribery. I’ll even throw Lynch and Obama, and Seth Rich’s murderer.
Not a bullshit tax case from 2005.
Politico tried claiming that the money (whether or not tied to campaign funds) itself was illegal as it tried to influence the election.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/03/trump-cohen-payment-explanation-566044
The payments to Daniels, which was made days before the 2016 election and went unreported to the Federal Election Commission, could constitute a violation of federal election law if it was made in order to protect the Trump campaign from political damage.
Im no expert but Im pretty sure signing a non disclosure agreement is not a crime. Breaking them might be, Im not sure, but it certainly makes one open to a lawsuit.
Especially if Trump has a history of paying out-of-court settlements to avoid litigation (which I think he does, as a prominent businessman/celebrity).
I.e., it was a usual and common expense for him, predating his presidential campaign.
In second grade a kid told me to steal a toy gun from the dime store. I got in trouble, he didn’t.
Is DU down today?
Do you really think the president is that stupid?
“prior to the 2016 presidential election” he broke a campaign law...
Time travel?
Cohen is a fool
Yep.
read it again folks, the first paragraph proves the headline a lie.
It's much more than that.
If the (D)'s win the house, not only will Trump be impeached, but they will effectively stop his agenda and that of MAGA.
It will be as if the Trump election was a minor 2 year attempt to stop the destruction of our country from within.
Whatever small progress has been made regarding exposing the illegal activities the (D)'s foisted upon the country in 2016 will be not only swept under the rug, the rug will be burned along with the room it's in.
Conservatives, (R)'s, "independents" and even America loving (D)'s who are non-socialist, non-Antifa, non-hate whitey better get out and vote to keep Republicans in power this fall. As crappy as Ryan and many in the House have been, it will be like stabbing our country in the back if the (D)'s control the House after this fall.
It's not clear how this can be regarded as a campaign contribution under the law. That is helpful to Trump, but not to Cohen (because Cohen agreed it was a contribution.)
Cohen has admitted to making the "contribution" and has now exceeded the maximum contribution limit. That is not Trump's problem; Trump didn't make the contribution.
Trump's potential problem requires SDNY to clear a very high bar: 1) They must get Cohen to say that he told Trump this was a crime and Trump told him to do it anyway -or- 2) Independent of Cohen saying so, they must prove that Trump knew this was a crime and told him to do it anyway.
The latter is very unlikely, since there are a lot of legal people, including former FEC officials who say that this is not a campaign contribution, so what Cohen did wasn't a crime. If the experts don't think it's a crime, why would Trump think so?
The question is, can they get this scumbag to testify to (1)? That is, that Cohen warned Trump this was a crime and he directed Cohen to go ahead and do it anyway. In the latter case, unless Cohen has a tape, or another witness, it becomes a one man's word against another's, and the only damage is political. No prosecution is really possible if it's a finger-pointing contest.
Mark Levin says its a legal nothingburger. I’d go with him because so many of the other legal talking heads just don’t practice “due diligence” on a subject before they pontificate on it. Levin does his homework whether you agree with him or not. Others bloviate.
Davis is an idiot, which is why Bill Clinton used him as a PR flak, and not as his defense counsel.
Trump cannot be charged with making an illegal over-limit contribution to his own campaign--he can contribute as much as he wants. Cohen, on the other hand, cannot. He is limited to a few thousand dollars.
If we stipulate to the hypothetical that this actually is an over-limit contribution, and it probably isn't, Davis' bizarre legal theory is that I could draw Barack 0bama into a criminal conspiracy by making an illegal contribution to his campaign. It's ridiculous beyond words and is nothing more than political grandstanding.
If Cohen, acting on advice of his attorney, pleads guilty to something that is not actually a crime and the Judge accepts the plea, does Cohen later have grounds to challenge his conviction based on judicial misconduct and/or inadequate counsel?
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