Posted on 08/22/2018 9:48:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Let’s stipulate that there are competing choruses taking to the risers. One will sing loudly that every rotten thing critics have been spouting about President Trump must be true now that Paul Manafort is a convicted felon and Michael Cohen has struck a plea deal.
On the other stage, Trump supporters will spin that the fall of two shady characters is no great stain on the president, and that in fact this is another occasion containing no evidence of Russian election collusion.
So, on the first full day of digesting an explosive day of court action, what are the ramifications for Trump, legally and politically?
The simple answer first: the Manafort verdict is meaningless on both fronts. His crimes had nothing to do with Trump or the 2016 campaign.
The Cohen plea deal is a starkly different matter. As Trump’s attorney, he engineered the payment of funds to two accusers to keep their stories of salacious affairs out of the news as the 2016 election approached.
But the question will be: Does that make them campaign contributions? If so, they far exceed the limits permitted by law. The plea deal contains Cohen’s own assertion that those funds were intended to affect the election result. Case closed, right?
Not so fast. Who knows what kind of stretch Cohen was willing to undertake in order to cut a deal mitigating his punishment? Plea deals, by their nature, are negotiations that afford prosecutors and defendants a portion of what they want. Michael Cohen wants to avoid dying of old age in prison. It would be a fairly tiny price to color the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal payoffs as intentional campaign spending, even if they were not.
This will be the battleground as Trump’s tormentors seek to ramp this up to an impeachable offense, while his defenders circle the wagons of damage control. So if objectivity is possible, a question: Can the argument be made that those payoffs were a protective strategy that would have been made even if there were no election?
Of course it can; it already has, by Rudy Giuliani three months ago when he described those financial arrangements as separate from the campaign operation. Does any expenditure in an election season automatically count as a campaign cost?
The answer may lie with the famous private citizens who have opened big checkbooks to dissuade publicity or lawsuits. Michael Jackson heaped $20 million onto an accuser and his family in 1994 to extinguish a civil suit stemming from molestation claims. This week’s headlines contain the stories of nearly $400,000 paid to a teenage actor to restrain sexual assault allegations against actress Asia Argento. Neither effort was connected to a quest for political office. It is very nearly a law of physics: famous people will often face damaging accusations, and when they do, they may pay large settlements to make those stories go away, whether true or not.
Trump, his attorneys and his defenders are free to paint the payoffs as an understandable path any famous private citizen might pursue. What they will face now is an army of opponents clamoring for Trump to be subpoenaed if not indicted.
It is arguable whether either of those can happen. It is a chaotic prospect to imagine presidents subject to local district attorneys wielding court orders that can bring the nation’s business to a halt. As a necessary exercise in consistency, I would assert that even if we were enduring a Hillary Clinton presidency, she would be similarly immune from the Manhattan phone book of charges that would hang over her head as a result of her email scandals and the blatant mishandling of classified documents.
So here we are. The usual voices calling for Trump to be drawn and quartered will claim sweet vindication of some sort. Trump will probably not plumb the depths of detail about the payoffs, leaving Giuliani and others to assert that they were not campaign contributions, even if Cohen said they were under pressure from ambitious prosecutors.
Look for Cohen to be characterized as a sleazy opportunist, fabricating the campaign law angle to save some portion of his hide. If that effort begins to stick, it will come in handy in a defense against the other bear trap that lies ahead for Trump— the Cohen claim that however they are defined, the payments were pre-approved by the candidate, despite his famous Air Force One video clip saying he was unaware.
The complete absence of Russia collusion evidence creates a burning hunger among Trump-haters for some storyline to stoke in pursuit of impeachment. The spring in their step will last for a while, but their ultimate goal requires a transfer of the stench of guilt from Michael Cohen to his client. That path seems blocked by procedural and possibly factual obstacles.
The greatest likelihood is that the people who despise Trump will add this to their reasons why, while the millions who voted for him will absorb and process this latest drama, and then get on with their lives.
Agreed.
It was hardly hush money as the old affair was well known.
And....there were many far worse stories and video tapes of Trump talking about women badly.
I think Trump’s publisher pal and Cohen got together on this clumsy effort to help Trump.
I really wonder if Trump knew anything about it as Cohen claims.
Let’s wait for corroboration, if it exists of Trump’s awareness.
“Blackmail..... money from (a person) in return for not revealing compromising or injurious information about that person.......... extortion or coercion by threats especially of public exposure or criminal prosecution.”
Okay, very good.....ya call 911 and don’t pay the blackmail.
You don’t negotiate into a non-disclosure agreement or a publication agreement and then claim you’r a victim of blackmail. Call the cops..........
.......”when you are a candidate for national office, hush money has to be declared as a campaign expense and reimbursement declared a contribution”......
Then do congressional leaders have ‘taxpayers funding’ their hush money account for payoffs to those in sordid affairs or paid off to keep quiet while in office or while running???
Even if you pay it this doesn’t protect the person from the fact they were blackmailing you.....it’s still a crime.
I’m still slack jawed at seeing that yesterday, as well.
I respect Alan Dershowitz, yet anything that comes out of the mouth of Davis is a radical left lie.
Strange times.
“payoffs to those in sordid affairs”
Unfortunately, yes, that has been going on with members of Congress. There has been a hush money slush fund for years for affairs while in office.
What’s different here is that the hush money was paid to benefit a campaign for elective office, and then not declared.
Doesn’t it seem ridiculous that we want to clean up elections but not the behaviors of the elected?
“doesn’t protect the person from the fact they were blackmailing you”
True, welcome to fame, call the cops.
The Clintons and Gore took all kinds of illicit funds from people like Riady, Huang - I can’t even remember all the names! The candidates’ punishment is they have to return the money. The donor’s punishments are prison sentences.
But of course, the politicians wrote the laws so they wrote it such that they get a slap on the wrist for taking bribes, but those who give bribes go to Leavenworth. Seems backwards, doesn’t it?
Manafort was in my HS graduating class.
We went to a strict parochial school run by Srs. of Notre Dame and Jesuits. Rigorous curriculum.
Well, every protective father of every HS girl there, warned their daughters.: *stay away from Paulie. He’s a greaser.*
The Manafort family business [originally a house wrecking/salvage company] had a reputation of being mob connected. I don’t know if that is fact; what did I know then. Just a kid, who listened to her father. IIRC, Paulie had to take his cousin to the prom.
1. He didn’t want his family to find out
2. He didn’t want his reputation tarnished
I can go on with some more if you want me to.
And once again see John Edwards. Not guilty.
Given that Mr. Trump put a good deal more of his own money into his campaign than the alleged total hush money payouts, it would seem to be necessary to have some awfully good proof - not just a plea bargain by Cohen - to prove that campaign money separate from Mr. Trump’s personal money - went to the hush money. And also that Hillary’s foundation didn’t illegally channel unreported, illegally sourced money in substantial amounts into her campaign.Mr. Trump denies that it was campaign funds, and that’s good enough for me. Well, it would be - not only did I vote for Trump knowing that by New Testament standards he is a bigamist, but my settled opinion is that, root and branch, “Campaign Finance Reform” is a violation of the First Amendment.
McConnell v. FEC was decided by a single vote, 5 to 4. The fifth vote was Sandra Day O’Connor. She, and two other members of that 5-4 majority - as well as all justices in the minority except Mr. Justice Thomas - are no longer sitting on SCOTUS. McConnell v. FEC should be relitigated.
Agree 100%.
We know that Edwards was having an affair which he wanted to keep secret.
We don't know that Trump ever had an affair with Stormy Daniels or the other woman. All we have is their allegations. In the context of an election, a totally false allegation can be damaging--how can the person being accused prove his innocence? Even if only a minority of the voters are swayed by the allegations, that could be decisive in a close election.
So Cohen paying off the blackmailers proves nothing at all about whether the allegations were true.
Please explain the secret congressional payout slush fund under your interpretation of the law. Congress used tax money to pay off harassed staffers and kept it secret.
“1. He didn’t want his family to find out
2. He didn’t want his reputation tarnished”
Those are legitimate reasons. But Stormy happened in 2006 and was publicized in 2011.
Trump knew she was out there and should have dealt with her before he declared for Presidency.
It’s a slush fund to payoff whatever dirty business the Congressman engages in. I didn’t say it was a secret.
Real simple, any monies that benefit a candidate have to be disclosed.
This statement is an oversimplification. Since Trump funded his own campaign, at least through the primary, he is entitled to spend as much of his own money as desired, without an FEC cap (as with individual donors). It’s also murky to determine specifically how the money accrues a tangible benefit to the candidate: keeping a hooker silent may, or may not, influence the outcome, but there is no way to draw such a conclusion, other than by inference. Which is entirely subjective.
One more thing I thought of that I didn’t see or read mentioned yet. One of the very few ways that the Attorney-Client confidentiality can be broken is when the attorney and the client both commit the same crime together.
So for the benefit of those who don’t know this, if you rob a bank today and hire a lawyer tomorrow and confess the crime to the lawyer, the lawyer is bound to keep your secret whether you get arrested or not. The only way to break the secret is if the lawyer took part in the robbery with you, or if you told the lawyer in advance that you were going to rob a bank.
So hypothetically even if Trump broke a law, he has the right to legal representation. The reason they wanted Cohen to plea to a campaign violation is because this is the only way they can tie a crime to Trump. If Cohen broke the campaign law at Trump’s instruction they claim Trump broke the law. It’s a bunch of crap of course but that is why Mueller wanted this plea.
And while many are wondering why Cohen hired Lanny Davis (I wondered why too, until now) it is clear now that Cohen used Davis precisely because Davis was close to Clinton. By hiring Davis, Cohen telegraphed his intention to “switch sides”. And imo, Cohen was guilty as heck on a bunch of charges and faced decades in prison. But campaign violation? Obviously the only reason for this was to tie a crime to Trump and to break the atty-client privilege.
But it is still very problematic. Because this alleged affair took place in 2006, and was reported in 2011. Trump and Daniels negotiated a contract for the story rights, and both Trump and Daniels had (and needed) legal representation to negotiate that deal. Trump has an expectation that he can hire an attorney to negotiate contracts for him.
Which brings to the point Mark Levin made. This crime requires both elements: You had to know that this was illegal, and you had to do it with the intent to influence the election. IMO it fails on both elements. They can never prove that he did it to influence the election rather than to simply protect his Trump brand, and they can not prove that they knew it was illegal to negotiate the story rights with private funds while a candidate for office.
In all this I am thinking about how absurd these campaign finance laws actually are.
If you think back and remember these (or search) these names: James Riady, John Huang, Charlie Trie, Maria Hsai atc you will see how it plays out.
If you are a politician and you accept the money, your penalty is to return the money and maybe pay a fine. If you are the person who gave the money you go to prison.
Seems strange, but on second thought not really. Politicians wrote the law. So of course they wrote the law in a way that lets them slide if they get caught, but “appears tough” on others.
Agreed. It is murky.
It should be remembered that non-disclosure is a very mild offense if it is accidental, happens all the time in elections, especially with in-kind donations.
Cohen’s claim is not corroborated, could all be loose talk.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.