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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   23789 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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To point 2, that is correct. However, Trump did not pay off Daniels himself. Cohen did. The fact that he later reimbursed Cohen does not change the fact that Cohen made the payment on behalf of Trump, and that making a payment on behalf of a candidate is counted as a contribution to the candidate. There's no time travel involved, Cohen committed the initial crime during the election campaign. Trump later committed further crimes trying to hide the fact that he was paying back Cohen for committing that crime.

It's true that if Trump paid Daniels himself with no intermediary and reported the payoff as a campaign expense, there would have been no violation of campaign finance law.

if Trump paid Daniels himself with no intermediary

Could he have used a credit card?

Even if he were to write a cheque I suppose his bank is technically the one disbursing the funds -- so the only way to legally do it would be Trump hand-delivering a briefcase full of cash himself. Interesting theory!

Let me actually respond in a second post. For there to be a FECA criminal violation there has to be a willful violation.

So your theory of the case is that Trump knew he could do it entirely legally by paying Daniel’s directly, but by using an agent he would violate the law. He then enacted this crazy scheme in order to violate the law. Does that make any sense whatsoever?

Yep. He enacted the crazy scheme with the intention to conceal the fact that he had paid her off.

First, if hush monies are required to be reported, no one makes them. This gives a good reason to think “maybe it isn’t illegal” especially when the legality is heavily disputed.

Second you have the time travel issue since any reporting would’ve been after the election. So again it is hard to see how this impacted the 2016 election.

Third, how would Trump paying it directly conceal it less compared to Cohen? Since your argument is that Trump paying it directly reduces his liability you need to have a very good reason to argue why he did it indirectly since again willfulness is an element of the crime.

Yes but then you simply get back to “the report would have to be made in 2017l so still have time travel.

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