AI
Thursday, December 13, 2018 5:47:13 PM
ForReal, More on Edwards v Trump.
‘A Simple Private Transaction’: Trump Lays Out a Defense in a Campaign-Finance Case
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, has admitted that he acted “with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election.”
Andrew Kelly/Reuters
By Charlie Savage
Dec. 10, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump defended himself on Monday against prosecutors’ accusation that he directed illegal payments .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/nyregion/michael-cohen-sentence.html?module=inline .. ahead of the 2016 election to two women to stay silent about alleged extramarital affairs with him, insisting that the payments were “a simple private transaction” — not election-related spending subject to campaign-finance laws.
[...]
Though it is rare to charge a politician with campaign-finance crimes over hush-money payments to mistresses, one clear precedent stands out: the Justice Department’s prosecution in 2012 of John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, over similar payments to hide a pregnant mistress while he was running for president in 2008.
A potential indictment of Mr. Trump for conspiring in the illegal campaign transactions to which Mr. Cohen has pleaded guilty would look a lot like the charges prosecutors brought against Mr. Edwards. In both instances, law-enforcement officials have alleged elaborate and deceptive schemes to influence “an election from the shadows,” as prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum on Friday seeking a relatively harsh sentence for Mr. Cohen on several crimes.
Mr. Trump directed Mr. Cohen to arrange payments for Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, and Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress, to buy their silence about alleged affairs with him “with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election,” prosecutors wrote.
[...]
The question, then, is whether prosecutors have more convincing factual evidence to present to a jury about Mr. Trump than they did in the case of Mr. Edwards. Legal experts pointed to several major differences.
For one thing, one of the payments to Mr. Edwards’s mistress took place as he was ending his candidacy, which further muddied how to interpret his motivation. By contrast, the payments to Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels came just ahead of the election.
For another, prosecutors in the Edwards case had little corroboration from other key figures in the transactions to explain their motivation. One of the supporters of Mr. Edwards who provided the funds, Fred Baron, had died, and the other, Bunny Mellon .. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/fashion/bunny-mellon-is-thrust-to-center-in-john-edwards-trial.html?module=inline , was a 101-year-old recluse prosecutors did not seek to drag into the courtroom as a witness.
By contrast, a key figure in both of the Trump transactions, Mr. Cohen, is available as a witness and has already admitted his principal purpose in helping pay off the women was to “suppress the stories and thereby prevent them from influencing the election,” as the sentencing memo said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/us/politics/trump-campaign-finance-crimes-defense.html?module=inline
‘A Simple Private Transaction’: Trump Lays Out a Defense in a Campaign-Finance Case
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, has admitted that he acted “with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election.”
Andrew Kelly/Reuters
By Charlie Savage
Dec. 10, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump defended himself on Monday against prosecutors’ accusation that he directed illegal payments .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/nyregion/michael-cohen-sentence.html?module=inline .. ahead of the 2016 election to two women to stay silent about alleged extramarital affairs with him, insisting that the payments were “a simple private transaction” — not election-related spending subject to campaign-finance laws.
[...]
Though it is rare to charge a politician with campaign-finance crimes over hush-money payments to mistresses, one clear precedent stands out: the Justice Department’s prosecution in 2012 of John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, over similar payments to hide a pregnant mistress while he was running for president in 2008.
A potential indictment of Mr. Trump for conspiring in the illegal campaign transactions to which Mr. Cohen has pleaded guilty would look a lot like the charges prosecutors brought against Mr. Edwards. In both instances, law-enforcement officials have alleged elaborate and deceptive schemes to influence “an election from the shadows,” as prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum on Friday seeking a relatively harsh sentence for Mr. Cohen on several crimes.
Mr. Trump directed Mr. Cohen to arrange payments for Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, and Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress, to buy their silence about alleged affairs with him “with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election,” prosecutors wrote.
[...]
The question, then, is whether prosecutors have more convincing factual evidence to present to a jury about Mr. Trump than they did in the case of Mr. Edwards. Legal experts pointed to several major differences.
For one thing, one of the payments to Mr. Edwards’s mistress took place as he was ending his candidacy, which further muddied how to interpret his motivation. By contrast, the payments to Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels came just ahead of the election.
For another, prosecutors in the Edwards case had little corroboration from other key figures in the transactions to explain their motivation. One of the supporters of Mr. Edwards who provided the funds, Fred Baron, had died, and the other, Bunny Mellon .. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/fashion/bunny-mellon-is-thrust-to-center-in-john-edwards-trial.html?module=inline , was a 101-year-old recluse prosecutors did not seek to drag into the courtroom as a witness.
By contrast, a key figure in both of the Trump transactions, Mr. Cohen, is available as a witness and has already admitted his principal purpose in helping pay off the women was to “suppress the stories and thereby prevent them from influencing the election,” as the sentencing memo said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/us/politics/trump-campaign-finance-crimes-defense.html?module=inline
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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