BUSTED: National Enquirer admits it committed a felony ‘in concert with’ Trump’s campaign

Only if they give it to the campaign but they can take it out just as easily. Campaign finance is to protect donor money and how it is collected and spent. I don't know that a reimbursement is considered a debt.

 

They actually had a better case against Edwards because he was using outside money.

 

IF anything it's a campaign reporting violation which are handled civilly by the FEC and involve fines and not very big ones.

 

He and the CEO go back decades. So was Clinton in bed with NBC?

 

we heard the conspiring on the tape recording, so why bother to try to lie about it.... crazy - his fixer recorded it and may be many more tapes to come - can't wait to hear them all

like the Nixon tapes all over again

 

Criminal violations are not handled civilly....

 

rotflmao!!!

 

LOL... Are you seriously still claiming Trump didn't use outside money?? May I recommend you read (for the first time) Michael Cohen's sentencing memo from the SDNY...

 

They actually did sort of make this movie, about how a clueless idiot became famous and big in politics (if not actually President) simply by watching and repeating TV.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_There

Not a beloved movie, but it's worth a watch one time... especially in these times...

 

It is payment back for a loan, and the loan is the debt.

 

Is Michael Cohen setting up a shell corporation and directing his own funds through it not considered outside money in your mind?

 

Not to even mention the AMI payment... I've never seen any report that this was repaid at all... I guess AMI decided not to submit bogus reimbursement claims to the Trump organization...

 

oh yeah, campaign finance laws are for the donors.

trump has been lying from day 1, he isnt anything special or different than any other politician you despise. i suggest you get used to the idea he is as corrupt as all others, and stupid enough to get caught

 

I see that the Trumpers here are just repeating the Orange Avenger's terrible arguments as though those are somehow serious legal defenses.

"Err, like, it was a loan! And, jeepers, that's just some sort of civil claim, and stuff!"

Yep. Like federal courts magically just started accepting guilty pleas in criminal cases to what are "really" civil claims. Jesus--unfreakingreal.

 

FFS, it IS a felony. Ask John Edwards.......and he was found innocent on only 1 of the 6 charges.

 

Uh, no.

Do want it spelled out for you, or are you willing to do a simple Google search to find out what kinds of transactions are covered by the law?

 

Here's something that I stumbled across that was very amusing and symbolic of the mental gymnastics "conservative" (*LOL*) thinkers are willing to do to exonerate the orange baboon in the WH:

Here's their "analysis" with respect to bad bad John Edwards:

https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/why-john-edwards-guilty

"Misinformed critics of the government’s prosecution claim that such gifts of funds are not covered by campaign-finance law. But federal law limits the amount that a donor can contribute to a federal candidate. That amount was $2,300 in 2008, when Edwards was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. The law defines “contribution” to include a gift or “deposit of money or anything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.”

Most important, FEC regulations state that the payment of a personal expense by any person other than the candidate is considered a contribution to the candidate, unless the payment would have been made irrespective of the candidacy. As the FEC said in a prior advisory opinion, the key question is, “Would the third party pay the expense if the candidate was not running for Federal office?”

The testimony of government witnesses makes it pretty clear that the payments by these donors would not have been made if Edwards had not been running for office. Edwards is a multimillionaire; he could easily have afforded to make the payments (including legally obligated child support) out of his personal funds. But such personal payments would have blown up his candidacy and made it impossible to hide what he clearly wanted to keep hidden. The payments by his maxed-out campaign contributors were clearly intended to “influence” the 2008 presidential election by keeping Edwards in the race and protecting his reputation.

Now, contrast that with their arguments in support of Bonespurs:

https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-...violate-campaign-finance-laws-and-neither-did

First, his theory that anything intended to “influence” an election is a campaign-related expense fails to take into account the statutory limitation on this definition. FECA (52 U.S.C. 30114 (b)(2)) specifically says that campaign-related expenses do not include any expenditures “used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.”

These payments were relatively small given Trump’s net worth—the kind of nuisance settlement that celebrities often make to protect their reputations, especially when faced with claims that will cost far more to defend than making a quick payoff without all of the bad publicity that usually accompanies such cases. Given Trump’s celebrity status, the potential liability to these women existed “irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.”

So, the claim is that Edwards was "rich", so that his decision to shuffle the deck and pay his mistress through surrogates = obvious effort to keep the payment hidden to influence the election. Meanwhile, Bonespurs is "rich", so the payments were obviously meant to be "nuisance" payments.

Err, huh? If that's the ****ing case, why did he have his lawyer do it through a shell corporation? And why is the Heritage Foundation such a collection of ************?

 

You simple dismissals refute nothing.

 

Yes not a candidates own money of which he is free to spend as much as he wants.

 

Yes. It's sort of like Trump and Cohen went to the grocery store, and Trump forgot his wallet, so Cohen's shell corporation bought the cold cuts and milk, and Trump agreed to reimburse the shell company.

Yup. It's just like that.

Good reasoning, fella.

 

Now you are just making things up to fit your agenda.
1. No money came from the Trump campaign
2. Cohen testified he was paid by the Trump administration for legal services at 35K per month
3. Cohen has no recorded conversation, tape, or email directing him to do anything but pay the settlement
4. Cohen stated in his sentencing agreement that he took it upon himself to pay it out of his own pocket and file the LLC because he wanted to be the fixer of the next president as he would make a lot of money in retainers fees if he had an inside line
5. Cohen actually did charge 4 million in retainers and hid the money and is why he was charged with tax fraud

This is whats in the Mueller agreement as well. I didn't just come up with it myself. Cohen was charged with Campaign finance violations for exceeding the allowable amount by paying Daniels 130K. Trump on the other hand can pay any amount he wants and anything that would have been paid with or without a campaign wouldn't be considered a campaign violation.

 

Here we go again.

What am I supposed to "refute"? Your bogus, unsupported, one line assertions?

Meanwhile, take a gander, ye of the short attention span and even shorter posts:

 

What Cohen did is what Cohen did and the question as to whether it was solely for the campaign still hinges. Would Trump have wanted a NDA if there was no campaign. I find no reason to believe otherwise.

Would Cohen have paid Daniels anyway?
The central legal question is whether Cohen paid Daniels to help Trump’s campaign, or to help Trump. Experts agreed that the most significant consequences hinge on this point.

The Federal Election Commission rules examine this through the lens of whether campaign funds have been put to personal use; the commission applies something called the Irrespective Test. The law says that something is personal if it’s "any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign."

By that standard, said Emory School of Law professor Michael Kang, "the circumstances and context here are suspicious," but it’s no slam-dunk that the payment was an expenditure on behalf of the campaign.

"Cohen may have been sufficiently involved in Trump’s personal dealings, perhaps with other similar transactions in the past, that they can credibly argue the hush payment would’ve been handled in similar fashion even if Trump were not a candidate," Kang said.

Former FEC chair Bradley Smith told us he sees evidence from Daniels that places this outside the realm of the campaign.

"Daniels herself has said that years before Trump declared for president, she was threatened about not disclosing any affair, suggesting, if she's telling the truth, that her silence was desired long before Trump became a candidate," Smith said.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-...-stormy-daniels-payoff-was-it-campaign-expen/

And they weren't campaign funds anyway.

 

Daniels' claims went back years. Why pay her off during the campaign instead of years ago? And, no, Cohen paid her off in order to influence the election, and at the direction of Bonespurs.

 

A reimbursement for an expense.