Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/973e10e2-4261-3df3-b916-d206629f919d/cohen%E2%80%99s-lawyer-says-there%E2%80%99s.html

Michael Cohen’s lawyer says there is “no dispute” that President Donald Trump committed a crime during the 2016 e******n, after Cohen told a judge on Tuesday that Trump directed him to buy the silence of two women who said they had affairs with him. Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis said he wanted to clear up “the ambiguity, the smoke that [Trump attorney] Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump and the people around him are blowing.” He continued, “very clearly, there is no dispute that Donald Trump committed a crime. ...MORE___

JW

A client cannot direct a lawyer to commit a crime. A client might request that a lawyer do something illegal but unless that client is also a lawyer, being cognizant of the law, it is the lawyer's function to keep the client within the law. If Cohen allowed Trump to break the law, I'd think Trump has a really great legal malpractice suit in his future.

woodguru

And I think that the details surrounding the instructions by Trump prove beyond any doubt that he knew what he was doing was illegal. The instructions to pay Cohen out of campaign funds had to have come directly from him.

Besides the fact remains that the Trump campaign staff conducted a conspiracy to perpetrate a f********t e******n by hiding the illicit affairs by paying these women off.

Congress has the power and obligation to preserve the intregrity of the presidency, and they do not need to follow any laws, they can impeach at will. I think it was McConnell that so passionately and eloqently said this about Clinton's impeachment proceedings, now we'll see if he walks the talk for even more egregious crimes than lying about a blowjob.

JW

It doesn't matter. Trump is not a lawyer.

Regarding paying off the women, it's not illegal to pay to keep bad news out of the press although, it may be a crime to demand payment for one's silence.

What campaign funds? Trump was self-funded at the time.

PeterS

He can sue him from jail...

Bad Bob Loc: Virginia

PeterS

God you people are living in never-never land. Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations. As Trumps "Fixer" his job was to fix problems not inform Trump of any legalities surrounding them. The payoff was to keep both women quite and not provide an October Surprise to sink any chance Trump might have to become president. That, provides a benefit for the campaign, a benefit that was not reported, and therefore a campaign finance violation. Since it was Trumps campaign the violation therefore falls at his feet. You people really need to grow up...

JW

You just don't get it. It's not a crime to pay for someone's silence about an embarrassing piece of information. He used his own money. He can do anything he wants with his money... even to get elected. He doesn't have to report how he spends his own money, even in the support of his campaign.

The evil witch lost. The system worked. Obama's illegal machinations are coming undone. The d********g mess he created out of this country is getting cleaned up. The Left's destruction of the Constitution has been, at least temporarily, halted.

If growing up is needed, it's not the Right that needs it but I think it will take more than a maturing process to fix your side's problems.

PeterS

I get it fine. What you aren't getting is that the hush money was to keep both women quite less their testimony would negatively effect the campaign in an October surprise. That means the money was used to benefit the campaign so it would have to be disclosed as such. It wasn't, which makes it a campaign finance violation, which Cohen copped to leaving Trump as an unindicted coconspirator.

And this has nothing to do with Obama or the horrible mess that he left the country in. This has to do with Micheal Cohen, Donald Trump, and Donald instructing Cohen in how to disperse the funds to keep the two women quite less they sink his chances of becoming president.

And I'm sorry, but you people are in complete denial. This isn't like Obama's campaign violations where there was confusion in some of the accounting for 1 billion in donations but a specific order by Donald Trump to arrange to payoff for two of his whores less them become problematic and ruin his chances to be elected. That's all kinds of wrong on a very personal level and from what I can tell there isn't a conservative on this board who doesn't have their heads stuck in the sand pretending that their fearless leader has done no wrong. Both you and Blade Runner have come up with wonderful excused why this couldn't possible be a problem and both of you are ignoring the fact that this money was for the benefit of the campaign and therefore had to be declared...it wasn't because what it was being used for was to hide just who Trump really was from the general public.

Oh, and btw. Nixon was once named as an unindicted coconspirator and he avoided prosecution by Ford giving him a pardon. Perhaps Pence will pardon Trump thus he too can avoid being indicted. On that we will have to wait and see wont we...

JW

You spend money on lawn signs when you run for office. They are meant to benefit the campaign. Is that a crime also? If it's your money, you can spend it on anything you want including hush money to benefit the campaign. It's not a crime as long as Trump used his own money and he did. He reimbursed Cohen and Pecker for what they spent from his own funds.

Being an unindicted co-conspirator is meaningless. An indictment is only an accusation handed down by a grand jury. Anybody can be indicted for anything and be forced into court. To call someone an unindicted co-conspirator means even less than indicting them because they are not even taken to court. If people are truly innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, then an indictment isn't proof of anything and to be unindicted means someone is just calling names.

Nixon was an accessory after the fact in a criminal action, the Watergate burglary. What is the crime Trump is supposedly an accessory to? It isn't misappropriating campaign funds because it was his own money. It isn't failing to disclose his affairs with those women because he has no obligation to disclose those things. It isn't paying them to keep quiet because that isn't a crime.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

We may need to grow up, but you, good grief, you really need to wake the hell up and stop wallowing in the cess pools of media and political corruption. You are eating that crap like a starving bottom feeder in a rat infested sewer.

Trump has not violated campaign finance laws, and here's why


Those payments to mistresses were unseemly. That doesn’t mean they were illegal.

Bradley Smith

If a candidate for public office decided to settle a private lawsuit to get it out of the news before E******n Day, would that be a campaign expenditure? If a business owner ran for political office and decided to pay bonuses to his employees, in the hope that he would get good press and boost his stock as a candidate, would that be a campaign expenditure, payable from campaign funds?

Under the theory that then-candidate Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen violated campaign finance laws by arranging hush-money payments to women accusing Trump of affairs, the answer would seem to be yes. We should probably think twice before accepting that answer.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York has extracted a guilty plea from Cohen for “knowingly and willfully” violating campaign finance laws by arranging for payments to two women accusing Trump of extramarital affairs. Cohen admitted he did so under the direction of “a candidate” — obviously referencing Trump — to “influence” an e******n. Cohen was facing multiple tax and fraud charges that could have landed him in jail for the rest of his life, even if he beat the campaign finance allegations. By pleading guilty, he limits his jail time to just a few years.

However, regardless of what Cohen agreed to in a plea bargain, hush-money payments to mistresses are not really campaign expenditures. It is true that “contribution” and “expenditure” are defined in the Federal E******n Campaign Act as anything “for the purpose of influencing any e******n,” and it may have been intended and hoped that paying hush money would serve that end. The problem is that almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to “influence an e******n,” from buying a good watch to make sure he gets to places on time, to getting a massage so that he feels fit for the campaign trail, to buying a new suit so that he looks good on a debate stage. Yet having campaign donors pay for personal luxuries — such as expensive watches, massages and Brooks Brothers suits — seems more like bribery than funding campaign speech.

That’s why another part of the statute defines “personal use” as any expenditure “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s e******n campaign.” These may not be paid with campaign funds, even though the candidate might benefit from the expenditure. Not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.

Suppose, for example, that Trump had told his lawyers, “Look, these complaints about Trump University have no merit, but they embarrass me as a candidate. Get them settled.” Are the settlements thus “campaign expenses”? The obvious answer is no, even though the payments were intended to benefit Trump as a candidate.

If the opposite were true and they were considered campaign expenses, then not only could Trump pay them with campaign funds, but also he would be required to pay these business expenses from campaign funds. Is that what campaign donations are for?

But let’s go in that direction. Suppose Trump had used campaign funds to pay off these women. Does anyone much doubt that many of the same people now after Trump for using corporate funds, and not reporting them as campaign expenditures, would then be claiming that Trump had illegally diverted campaign funds to “personal use”? Or that federal prosecutors would not have sought a guilty plea from Cohen on that count? And that gets us to a troubling nub of campaign finance laws: Too often, you can get your target coming or going.

Yes, those payments were unseemly, but unseemliness doesn’t make something illegal. At the very least, the law is murky about whether paying hush money to a mistress is a “campaign expense” or a personal expense. In such circumstances, we would not usually expect prosecutors to charge the individuals with a “knowing and willful” violation, leading to criminal charges and possible jail time. A civil fine would be the normal response.

But Cohen is not the normal defendant, and prosecutors almost certainly squeezed him to plead guilty on these charges, in part, for the purpose of building a case for possible criminal or impeachment charges against the president, or even, daresay, “influencing the ree******n” of Trump.

Laws, once stretched from their limited language and proper purpose, are difficult to pound back into shape. We should proceed with caution here.

Did Michael Cohen actually commit campaign finance violations? Some legal experts aren't sure
by Steven Nelson
August 22, 2018 03:34 PM

President Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen pointed a finger at his old boss Tuesday, saying he committed two campaign finance crimes at the direction of Trump when he arranged six-figure payoffs for women alleging affairs.

"His crime was the president's crime," Cohen attorney Lanny Davis, a Democrat who represented former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, told Fox News Wednesday.

But many legal experts say Cohen didn't actually commit a campaign finance crime, leading to speculation about why he pleaded guilty, and what his confession may mean for Trump.

The criminal case against Cohen dealt largely with unrelated tax and bank fraud charges. The campaign finance charges were the only ones directly related to Trump, and in pleading guilty he accepted a contentious legal theory that payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal were campaign contributions.

Among e******n law experts, however, there’s doubt that Cohen committed a crime. Skeptics say silencing the women may have helped Trump during the 2016 campaign, but also protected Trump's family and company from embarrassment, meaning it wasn't an e******n contribution.

Experts point to the failed prosecution against former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., whose wealthy supporters gave money to his mistress Rielle H****r to silence her.

“The big fish here is Trump, and this is a long way toward trying to ‘get Trump,’ so to speak,” said Bradley Smith, a former Republican chairman of the Federal E******n Commission.

But Smith, a professor at Capital University Law School who is "not a big fan of Trump," said Cohen’s plea doesn’t necessarily torpedo the president, given the legal question is unsettled.

“I think it is not a crime to pay a mistress in this way, because it’s not a campaign expense, even though it is something that potentially benefits the campaign,” he said.

Smith said campaign finance offenses are generally dealt with civil fines unless the offense is “knowing and willful,” a difficult standard when precedent is unsettled. “Knowing and willful is what makes it criminal, absent the knowing and willful it’s just a civil violation and you get a fine,” he said.

Smith said it’s conceivable, however, that prosecutors would seek some tangential criminal charge against Trump pegged to Cohen’s conduct, such as a fraud or conspiracy charge.

Outside of court Tuesday, prosecutor Robert Khuzami, deputy U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Cohen submitted “sham” invoices for reimbursement after acting at Trump's direction to pay $130,000 to Daniels and to broker payment of $150,000 to McDougal by the Trump-allied National Enquirer’s parent company.

David Warrington, a Republican attorney who formerly worked with the Trump campaign, said he believes prosecutors may have sought Cohen’s plea to the campaign finance counts to help special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

“Slapping on the campaign finance violation, maybe somebody in the prosecutors office thinks that helps them build a narrative in the Mueller investigation, even though this was done by the Southern District of New York,” he said.

Warrington said he could imagine a legal theory from Mueller's team relying on the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, a corporate accountability law that he said has been wielded by prosecutors because of a broad prohibition on creating false records.

"I could see the Department of Justice coming up with a theory that allegedly false invoices would amount to a violation of Sarbanes-Oxley, in conjunction with the Federal E******n Campaign Act alleged violation Cohen did," Warrington said. "All of that is a stretch from a legal standpoint, but that doesn’t necessarily stop the Department of Justice from investigating and charging someone under those theories."

Warrington also believes that the alleged campaign finance crimes aren’t actually crimes, and questions the legal guidance of Davis.

“Lanny Davis had his client plead guilty to a crime that isn't a crime,” Warrington said. "Who’s Lanny Davis really working for, Michael Cohen or the Clintons?”

Trump made the same argument Wednesday, tweeting, "Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime."

Warrington said he believes that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Cohen after a referral from Mueller’s team, would not seek to unilaterally indict Trump, instead deferring to Mueller on the potentially unprecedented action.

Other experts believe the Cohen plea implicating Trump may be intended primarily for political effect, potentially empowering an impeachment push among Democrats, should they regain control of Congress in the November e******n.

"The idea that this is a campaign contribution or expenditure is highly speculative," said attorney Cleta Mitchell, a Republican e******n law expert, saying that she believes Cohen's plea was not motivated by legal strategy, but by political motivations.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the FEC who works at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that "I believe the Justice Department would have a hard time prosecuting any such claim" that payoffs were campaign expenses.

Davis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Smith, the former Republican FEC chairman who is not a Trump supporter, said he's concerned about prosecutors' actions.

“I find the whole thing kind of disturbing – what seems to be almost a determination to use wh**ever laws we can find to get Trump because a lot of people know Trump’s such a bad guy, he must be violating the law, and even if he’s not, we have to get him anyways," he said.

PeterS

You should read your own link.

Snip>>>That's because any expenditure is not an expenditure simply because it may incidentally benefit a campaign. It must be an expenditure whose only purpose is to benefit a campaign.

The only purpose of the payments was to be a benefit to the campaign. After all, this is a man who boasted on Howard Stern about his prowess with women and c***ting on every wife that he ever had. Normally, he could careless if anyone found out about his infidelities so what would be the purpose in paying off his whores this time if it wasn't because it was the last month of the p**********l e******n, and he actually had a shot, so he had to keep them quiet else they could easily sink his campaign.

Now you are welcome to sit there and argue that there was no benefit to the campaign but my argument was, and will always will be, that the only reason for the payments was to save his campaign which makes them, without question, a benefit. Hell, if either or both of them had talked those 77,000 mid western v**es that got him elected would have melted away along with Donald's chance to be president of the United States...

JW