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The payments were personal and not campaign expenses.
cohen has already admitted this week that the purpose of the payments were so the stories wouldn't have a detrimental affect on the campaign.
Quote:
The Trump campaign did not pay them ....
doesn't matter. the payments were made with the specific purpose of helping the campaign making them an unreported campaign contribution no matter where the funds came from.
How can you plead guilty to a crime that isn't a crime?
"...the government would prove (if there were a trial) that the defendant caused an illegal corporate contribution of $150,000 to be made in coordination with a candidate or campaign for federal office, and also that Mr. Cohen made an excessive contribution of $130,000 in coordination with the campaign or candidate for the purposes of influencing the election."
The FEC doesn't prosecute people. They make referrals to the Justice Department for prosecutions. This case was already at Justice, so no need for a referral.
Often, plea agreements (also called plea bargains) are reached because the defendant wants to take a lesser, known sentence, rather than risk going to trial, where juries and verdicts are not predictable. Because of the nature of a “lesser” sentence, it is standard practice for a defendant to plead guilty to a crime he or she did not commit simply to benefit from the agreement.
This is known as a legal fiction and happens every day in every jurisdiction in the country. Some argue the practice is rife with problems, but that’s a policy issue for another day. Legal fiction plea bargains do happen and they happen in a majority of cases that end in plea deals. I personally have handled hundreds of cases as a prosecutor and defense attorney where plea bargains were involved.
Why does this happen? Let's say, for example, you’re charged with speeding. You don’t think you were speeding and question the officer’s radar, but really don’t want your insurance to go up, so you accept the prosecutor’s offer to plead guilty to a broken headlight. In exchange for the plea, the prosecutor will drop the charge of speeding, your insurance won’t go up, and you’ll just have to pay a small fine.
So, you stand in front of a judge and say, yes, you signed the agreement stating you’re guilty of a broken headlight on your car. Is that true? Nope. Everyone in court knows that, but everyone also knows that you’re agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for the benefit of the agreement.
Is Cohen benefiting from this plea? Absolutely. And even if he says in front of a judge in open court and under oath and recites the nursery rhyme “cross my fingers,” it doesn’t make his plea any more than an exchange for a pretty sweet deal, considering what he was facing.
Cohen made these payments to Stormy Daniels. That is true.
What is not true is the assertion that this is a violation of campaign laws. If it actually was, we would be seeing this presented to the Federal Election Commission, who has jurisdiction over these sorts of matters.
But that is not happening, because this is not a violation of any of their laws or regulations.
You might want to talk to Cohen, Lanny Davis, the prosecutor, and the judge about that.
[indent] Often, plea agreements (also called plea bargains) are reached because the defendant wants to take a lesser, known sentence, rather than risk going to trial, where juries and verdicts are not predictable. Because of the nature of a “lesser” sentence, it is standard practice for a defendant to plead guilty to a crime he or she did not commit simply to benefit from the agreement.
That is materially different from arguing that Cohen pled guilty to an act that isn't a crime in the first place.
Going with your broken headlight example, obviously driving with a broken headlight is a crime. You can't plead guilty to something not criminal - I dunno, eating ice cream in a noisy manner - in a plea bargain.
Oh, and your source is an opinion piece written by someone employed by the "James Dobson Family Research Council", one of those hyper-right-wing Christian non-profits. She's hardly an uninterested observer.
Cohen made these payments to Stormy Daniels. That is true.
well.... that's still an unknown. cohen originally claimed he paid them without any payback, giuliani claims cohen was paid back personally by trump ( in payments over the course of more than a year which seems strange for a "billionaire" ).
cohen has already admitted this week that the purpose of the payments were so the stories wouldn't have a detrimental affect on the campaign.
doesn't matter. the payments were made with the specific purpose of helping the campaign making them an unreported campaign contribution no matter where the funds came from.
If Trump get his hair styled differently, that could have a detrimental effect on the campaign. In fact, almost anything could.
Just because something somehow might "effect" the campaign, it does not follow that any expenses related to such items are campaign expenses. If they were, a lot more would be allowable as campaign expenses than what is currently allowed by the FEC.
And politicians would like that a lot, by the way.
If Trump get his hair styled differently, that could have a detrimental effect on the campaign. In fact, almost anything could.
Just because something somehow might "effect" the campaign, it does not follow that any expenses related to such items are campaign expenses. If they were, a lot more would be allowable as campaign expenses than what is currently allowed by the FEC.
And politicians would like that a lot, by the way.
Are you a lawyer?
You are claiming to know the law better than the prosecutor, the judge who accepted the plea, and the defendant who is also a lawyer himself.
That is materially different from arguing that Cohen pled guilty to an act that isn't a crime in the first place.
Going with your broken headlight example, obviously driving with a broken headlight is a crime. You can't plead guilty to something not criminal - I dunno, eating ice cream in a noisy manner - in a plea bargain.
That is what actually has happened in this instance.
The FEC is in charge of overseeing campaign finance violations. If there really were campaign finance violations by Trump, that is where this would be pursued. The court has no jurisdiction over this question, nor did it claim that it did by receiving this "plea deal" between Cohen and the prosecutors.
If Trump get his hair styled differently, that could have a detrimental effect on the campaign.
and if someone paid the photographer $130,000 not to release photos of the crappy haircut* that would be considered a campaign contribution by FEC regulations.
if you want to remain blind that's your right, just don't be surprised when the outcome goes different then you expect ( or claim "deep state" ).
The payments were personal and not campaign expenses. The Trump campaign did not pay them and it would have been a campaign violation if the campaign had paid them, as these sorts of payments are personal expenses.
As a result of not being campaign expenses, there was not appropriate for Trump to report them on his campaign financial disclosure.
If Trump improperly failed to include anything on his campaign financial disclosures and failed to do so, the FEC is responsible for overseeing that and holding even currently sitting presidents accountable, as they did with Barack Obama in 2013, with regards to campaign violations during the 2008 race:
Yessir. When the truth isn't the truth a guy can plead guilty to a thing he didn't even do! I keep wondering what color the sky is in ya'll's world. You've gone all in.
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