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Because the purpose of the payment was to benefit the campaign. According to the FEC
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Perhaps I have not followed the trial closely enough but it is not clear to me, from reading the actual NY law at issue, that the crime being covered up has to also have been committed by the person doing the covering up. If A enters false business records to cover up B's crime it seems to me that would be covered. It does not seem to be required that A's false business records cover up A's own crime, but I could be wrong about that.
This is not correct. Cohen committed a crime (an illegal campaign contribution) and then Trump committed a crime (falsifying business records) to cover up Cohen's crime. As I note in my comment if Trump had paid Daniels himself it likely would not have been a crime, because candidates are allowed to spend as much as they want on their own campaigns.
I think that depends on what you mean by "this." I do not think it is that common that powerful people get their lawyers to commit bank fraud and FEC violations to help them get elected, then commit further crimes to try and cover it up. Heck, if Trump had paid Cohen back out of his own pocket (rather than his business) that probably wouldn't have been a crime either! Or at least it wouldn't have been this crime.
There is no IRS claim here. If he recorded this as a business expense instead of a personal expense then there would be tax implications. No such case exists.
Honestly the lack of a tax charge is completely confusing me on what he was misrecording.
The fact the FEC reviewed this and said no crime also seems like a big issue for NY to say a crime occurred.
It does seem like there ought to be further tax charges, under either NY or federal law. Not sure what you mean with the FEC review. The FEC definitely thought Cohen committed a crime but I don't think there's an allegation that Trump's conduct was an FEC-enforceable violation.
Then why didn’t the FEC charge Cohen? The underlying crime which makes what someone wrote in excel a felony is that there is an underlying crime.
That crime is under the jurisdiction of the FEC. They never charged anyone.
Because he pleaded guilty? You can read all about the FEC violations he committed in the contemporaneous DOJ release. What was left to charge him for?
This isnt really accurate. He was being investigated for tax fraud and they threw it in (basically working with a Clinton attorney) as part of the plea.
Not accurate... how? He didn't plead guilty to those crimes?
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You don't think that powerful people cover up crimes all the time? I think this is incredibly naive, in an age when regulatory choke means everyone is breaking technicalities all the time.
Moreover: this is an extremely dubious technicality. Your argument is that Trump definiteky committed a crime which wouldn't have been a crime if he'd made one simple bookkeeping change. This is really your idea of a slam-dunk solid case of crime?
Yes. Lots of things can be a crime if entity A does them but not if entity B does them. If Trump had paid Daniels (and maybe Cohen) out of his own pocket there would have been no crime. The crime is entirely in how he went about it.
Then when Hillary and the attorneys at Perkins all get convicted of the same thing over the Russiagate dossier then I'll update as this is legitimate.
Hillary Clinton was fined 100k for improperly reporting expenses on the dossier as legal expenses.
That's my point. Business as usual is fining a campaign some token amount years after the election.
If either Trump's 2016 Campaign or 2020 Campaign organizations were similarly fined no one would be up in arms. When she and the attornies who assisted her in that are all personally convicted on criminal charges that's an indication of similar treatment.
I really would like to through and prosecute everyone and their attorneys whose been given a misreporting campaign expenses fine with criminal fraud charges. Would go a long way to actually draining the swamp.
What crimes did they commit? The only person in Trump's case convicted of (pleaded guilty to) campaign finance violations was Michael Cohen, because he gave an illegally large in-kind contribution. Trump's crime is a New York state charge for falsifying business records.
How are they not falsified business records?
That's a good question actually. I'm not sure how political campaign committees are legally organized. Are they the kind of corporation that would have been covered by the relevant NY law?
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They commit fraud against the FEC when they misrepresneted their campaign expenses. They probably also commit fraud about the background of the dossier when they misrepresnted the Steele Dossier as intelligence to the press. I'm good with nailing swamp creatures to the wall as long as we don't stop at 1. If there are not attorneys willing to lurk in the swamp it would be a good day for the nation.
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Yes, a fine is the typical response to misclassifying campaign expenses, not a felony.
Sure. If the Trump campaign had reimbursed Cohen and lied about what it was for they plausibly also would have paid a fine. Instead Trump had his New York business falsify documents to reimburse Cohen.
That is how you see it. I read it as Trump had his New York business correctly state that he was paying Cohen for legal expenses.
Opposition research clearly wouldn't happen except in the context of a campaign, and thus is a campaign expense. Paying someone to sign an NDA to keep their mouth shut about an affair is not a campaign expense. As former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith wrote:
Right. That's why a bunch of Cohen's testimony, texts, emails, etc were about establishing the motive to pay off Daniels was campaign related. It was Cohen's belief that Trump kept putting off paying Daniels because he hoped he could until after the election, when it wouldn't matter if she went public. That is the perspective of someone concerned about the story's impact on the campaign, not the perspective of someone who didn't want it to get out irrespective of the campaign.
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This is crazy! Why would Trump go out of his way to do things the illegal way if it were already legal? Apparently, Michael Cohen paying something on Trump's behalf becomes a campaign contribution, which means Trump paying Cohen back becomes cover-up. That's ridiculous!
That's not a serious legal theory, which is why it's never been used on anybody before now. That's the rationalization made up to explain why Trump was guilty. If it weren't that, it would have been something else.
Part of the problem with this whole thing is assigning intent to a guy who seems to wing it on instinct and never really bothers to do due dilligence to make sure he's doing things the proper way -- and who hires shitty, sleazy lawyers who are also incompetent at covering the legal bases. Trump is sloppy. Contrary to the memes, he's barely playing 1-D Chess. He follows the straight line from his desires to his ego. It's entirely possible given his apparent modus operandi that no one thought to check if there were any legal issues with anything related to the FEC or any other set of regulations, and "legal services" was written on the checks because Cohen was a lawyer, making anything he does "legal services."
I don't doubt that Trump is guilty of hundreds (if not more) of compliance violations, because he generally holds all rules and official processes in contempt. Felony convictions for details he likely never bothered to consider or understand seems harsh; but it does make a good case for why political parties should screen their candidates with a more serious sense of purpose.
But that’s the entire point. You needed to do it with an intent to defraud and commit another crime. If he wasn’t thinking at all about that, then that is proof he didn’t commit the crime.
The prosecution has to argue he was thinking about it, there was in fact a legal method, and Trump was like “fuck that, I want the criminal way. Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins.” That just isn’t reasonable.
Yeah, I agree. But Trump is his own worst enemy and creates most these problems for himself. It's hard to feel sympathy for him when he is essentially dooming himself by repeating the same mistakes over and over rather than adapting -- even though I think he is being unjustly persecuted in a way that really hurts the entire country. Even if he's the least-bad part of this whole debacle, I can only shake my head in pity at mess he's put himself in.
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But having laundered that through a jury, it's established. There's no avenue for appeal there.
There are some avenues for appeal where a fact is improperly admitted as evidence or testimony, or where a jury makes an improper decision of law, albeit with a fairly high standard of error...
But it doesn't really matter. Trump (probably) can't even file an appeal until after sentencing, and there's zero chance that the New York Court of Appeals will decide the case before November (and might not even hear the case before then), in the likely event that they refuse, it'll be a year or longer for federal courts to get involved, and there are extremely limited grounds where a federal court can bypass state courts.
And while a lot of the errors here are reversible, or even cause to mandate recusal by the judge, they're not severe enough to throw out the case; even a 'victory' just starts the trial over again, and Bragg will not be dropping this case.
I think a lot of the progressive legal sphere is assuming that even if this case is overturned, it'll happen after Georgia/federal documents/whatever gets him, too (or Trump will self-moot sometime), but to anyone that isn't as far buying every charge against Trump as AshLael is, there's a non-trivial chance that Trump will eventually be found not guilty of multiple different cases... in 2025 and 2026. After he's lost the election.
Georgia is jammed up due to the crooked prosecutor, and the documents case is jammed up due to the usual FBI malfeasance combined with a Trump-friendly judge, so neither is likely to matter in the election.
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I think there clearly is since the judge did not allow evidence in where FECA / the prosecution made false statements
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If Trump were really sloppy as you allege, prosecutors would have been able to find more serious charges to bring against him. Ten years of political spotlight and they can only get him on charges that have literally never been used against anyone ever before. You don't doubt that he's guilty of hundreds of similar crimes? Then why haven't they brought anything forward? That's the sloppy thinking here.
Not necessarily. As we can see in this case, it can be really hard to create the semi-coherent appearance of a case out of a bunch of nonsense and make it just opaque enough to pay off. If a guy is racking up hundreds of little process violations because HDGAF about process, the trick is to turn those into a felony in one of the jurisdictions jaded enough to convict without ever questioning the premises. It's probably easier to charge and convict a smooth operator who is knowingly committing crimes because once you catch them in act with intent, you have your smoking gun. If someone is carelessly racking up violations by just not caring, it's going to be really hard to prove an intent that never existed.
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According to who? The prosecution?
This is a novel argument: personal money you spend on personal causes makes you a better candidate, so it counts as a campaign contribution! There is no limiting principle here, because it's a silly argument that has never been used before. Even your quotation of the SEC shows the distinction: according to the prosecution, the payment wasn't made by Trump's campaign but by Trump himself.
The prosecution, yes, but also according to Cohen, Packard, and others who were negotiating the deal at the time.
Let's not get confused. There are two payments here. Cohen's payment to Daniels was an unlawful campaign contribution by the FEC definition. It exceeded the allowed limits and was made on behalf of and in coordination with the candidate. If Trump had made that payment himself it would not be a crime because he can spend as much as he wants on his own campaign. Trump's payments to Cohen may also not have been problematic if Trump made them directly, but he paid them through his business instead and lied about what they were for.
You have the basic factual problem that both Stormy and Cohen have coronated that Stormy’s story was shut down in 2011 putting a lie to Cohen’s belief that it was solely about the campaign. Indeed Cohen’s evidence (if you believe that POS) was that Trump didn’t give a shit if Mrs. Trump found it therefore he only cared about the campaign. Cohen seems to think it is binary. But maybe Trump would care about how his son with Mrs Trump would care? Maybe Trump was bluffing about Mrs Trump to not appear pussy whipped?
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Paying off a mistress sounds like a fairly normal thing for a private banker or rich guys personal fixer.
So does paying a grifter to go away if they sign an NDA with a huge clawback clause.
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It was tried once before re John Edwards. It was crushed and everyone moved on. It is why Brad Smith was willing to testify.
John Edwards was accused of the opposite, using campaign funds for his personal needs. That happens sometimes and politicians do occasionally get convicted for it. That's what makes the Trump case so egregious.
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His mortgage on his primary residence counts as a campaign contribution because people are less likely to vote for a homeless person. /S
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I still haven't seen a decent theory for why this payment is specifically for the campaign, while it would seemingly be perfectly legal any other day of the week for a Totally Upstanding Well-Known Businessperson and Public Figure.
Is it shady? Absolutely, but "running for office limits your otherwise-available personal publicity campaigning" seems a bit questionable under the generally-favored strict scrutiny for free speech questions. Which is part of why Citizens United came down the way it did: the government claimed then-extant election funding rules allowed them to ban books.
My understanding is that the motivation for it was specifically the impact it could have on voters, especially so close to the election (the payment was in late October). Rather than some general concern about Trump's image. I believe this specific concern is memorialized in contemporaneous communication by Cohen, Packard, and others.
As I mention in my original comment the manner in which Trump went about it is probably the whole issue. If he had decided to pay off Daniels out of his own funds there is probably no crime.
Isn’t the big problem for you that Trump seemed to try to keep this from coming out in 2011! That proves his motivation was not solely for the campaign.
And even then, see Brad Smith’s view on campaign contributions (ie he believes per se it isn’t a campaign contribution)
His motivation doesn't have to be solely the campaign for it to be a campaign contribution. If Cohen made a campaign expenditure on behalf of or in coordination with a campaign, then it was a campaign contribution.
Brad Smith former FEC chairmen appointed by Clinton explained that campaign expenses are things that a person (not the candidate) would only spend on an election (eg polls, fees directly related to the campaign). It would not include things like a nice suit even if the candidate purchased it solely with campaign in mind.
At best the law here is very convoluted. But we are to believe Trump and Cohen connected this scheme to try to keep Cohen out of hot water that may or may not exist even though Cohen didn’t testify “Trump did it for that reason.” Literally zero evidence on that point meaning per se the prosecution loses. But it doesn’t bother you?
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