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Notes -
Bolded the key part.
Ok, so let's say Trump pulled two crisp hundred dollar bills out of his pocket to buy a YUGE sign that he put on his own lawn. Reportable? Criminal?
Aye, this again contributes to the claim that there is a distinction between a "campaign expenditure" and things that are not campaign expenditures. For example, Trump can take his campaign staff out to lunch and pay for it all using campaign funds, and this is a campaign expenditure. On the other hand, Trump can take his buddies from the golf course out to lunch and pay for it using his personal funds, and it is not a campaign expenditure... even if he thinks that this lunch has the possibility to in some way increase his chance of winning an election (e.g., he thinks that he will be incredibly charming and that they will be positively influenced to independently support his candidacy).
This is an obvious case where there is the possibility of mixed motives, which has been a huge thorn in the side of most arguments on several Trump-related topics. If Trump takes his golf buddies out to lunch, he may both have a motivation that they're going to like him and that it will increase their chances of doing business with him, so he has personal/business motivations. He may also have motivations that this same positive emotion might inspire them to support his candidacy. It is extremely difficult to tease these apart, which is why most of the rules try to avoid touching on these issues. They try desperately to avoid it (and they never bring such questionable cases, due to risk that SCOTUS will strike down larger swaths of campaign finance law than they would like), because there are obvious legal theory and constitutional issues. Even questions for things like lunches are a bit vague on this, likely precisely for this reason. Therefore, this is why they would have to build a case that the lunch is, indeed, a "campaign expenditure", but this requires facts, context, and argumentation. It's easiest and most clear to just identify the ultimate source of the funds - if it's coming from actual campaign funds, it's reportable. If it's not campaign funds, but a candidate took out all his campaign staff, in the same way that he would normally take them out and use campaign funds, but he used personal funds this time? Really hard case, though I doubt anyone would bring it unless they had a vendetta against the candidate. The candidate takes out his golf buddies, pays with personal funds, and maybe has some mixed motive that it might help his candidacy, too? Highly doubtful.
Now, put this in the context of the NY trial. We have at best for the prosecution a very murky federal law. We also have a murky NY law (are we sure unlawful means federally unlawful).
The prosecution offered zero evidence that Trump was thinking of either law let alone that Trump thought he was breaking either law and that hiding these internal records would help hide this alleged crime. Moreover, there is a standard in law that criminal statutes cannot apply if they are overly vague. When the FEC cannot agree on what the law is, then it surely cannot form the basis of a criminal conviction for state law purposes.
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