Twisting President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney’s arm, federal prosecutors got Michael Cohen to plead guilty to two violations of campaign finance laws. Cohen cleverly agreed to the charges, knowing that they wouldn’t stand up in court. Cohen’s plea shows that federal prosecutors have one thing in mind: Charging Trump with the same crime. Yet when you consider the legal reasoning behind Cohen’s plea deal, you have to do back-flips to make any sense of it. U.S. attorneys in Manhattan’s Southern District of New York got Cohen to plead guilty to illegal campaign contributions for paying off Trump’s alleged mistresses, adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy centerfold Susan McDougal. While Stormy was paid $130,000 and $150,000 to National Equirer for Susan McDougal, there was zero paid to-or-from Trump’s campaign funds.
Writing and talking about the plea deal in anti-Trump press shows how quickly it wants to try-and-convict Trump of high-crimes and misdemeanors in the public. Cohen’s plea deal is so off the wall, so illogical and so detached from anything resembling campaign finance laws that it makes your head spin. Getting Cohen to plea bargain to spare him jail time and become a cooperating witness shows the desperation of federal prosecutors to build a case against Trump. Saying that paying off Stormy and McDougal represents a campaign contribution stretches campaign finance law to the breaking point. There’s no way any jury would conclude that blackmail payments to alleged mistresses constitutes campaign contributions, violating the $2,700 limit. Federal prosecutors know that neither payment was a campaign contribution, no matter how U.S. attorneys torture the facts.
Cohen was so desperate to save his hide he was willing to say-and-do anything to mitigate any jail time. “President Trump and his campaign are on the book now for criminal violations of law give what was revealed in Cohen’s plea today,” said Paul S. Ryan, campaign finance expert with the nonpartisan group Common Cause. When called nonpartisan, there’s practically no group that hasn’t taken a side against Trump. No one in their right mind can possibly call payoffs to Trump’s alleged mistresses campaign contributions in any sense of the word. If federal prosecutors look for anything to nail Trump, getting Cohen to plead guilty to violating campaign finance law tells the whole story. Getting one “legal expert” to comment about what he interprets as a violation of campaign finance law doesn’t mean that it would hold up in court, let alone common sense public opinion.
Cohen copped a plea to U.S. attorneys that he paid Stormy and McDougal out of his own pocket from a home equity line. While Cohen insists he paid them at the request of a “presidential candidate,” Trump denies (1) that he had affairs with either Daneils or McDougal and (2) that he instructed Cohen to do that. Trump said he reimbursed Cohen after the fact but not, as federal prosecutors said, out of campaign finance funds. Trump disclosed on a campaign finance statement that he reimbursed Cohen for his expenses related to Daniels and McDougal’s payout. That’s a far cry from either ordering Cohen to pay the two women off or making campaign contributions as charged by federal prosecutors. Payoffs to Daniels and McDougal were not campaign contributions subject to federal election rules, requiring specific disclosures to the Federal Election Commission.
Trump’s media critics compared payments of Daniels and McDougal to President Richard Nixon’s criminal use of campaign contributions to supply a Watergate slush fund. “The comparisons between the Watergate scandals and the Trump scandals grow on a regular basis. And this is one, even though violations were different. You have two presidents knowingly engaged in serious campaign finance law violations,” said Fred Werthheimer who helped pass campaign finance law reform in the wake of Watergate. But any comparisons make zero sense, when Trump wasn’t involved in covering up a burglary or some other criminal activity. Arranging for payments to women threatening to go public with damaging PR against Trump are not campaign contributions, no matter how you twist the facts. Cohen helped sell McDougal’s story for $150,000 to the National Enquirer.
Getting Cohen to plea bargain to violating campaign finance laws doesn’t mean that he or Trump broke any campaign finance laws. Former U.S. Sen. and VP candidate John Edwards (D-N.C.) was accused of paying off women from telling their stories to the press before the 2004 presidential election. Federal prosecutors charged Edwards with campaign finance violations, only to watch their case go up in smoke. Leaping to conclusions about Cohen’s plea, Democrats and the press want to inflict as much damage as possible before the Midterm elections. Trump’s denied having affairs with either Stormy or McDougal, leaving Cohen, as Trump’s personal attorney, assuming the duty of resolving nuisance lawsuits. Resolving nuisance lawsuits cannot be interpreted as campaign contributions under anyone’s definition. Only the U.S. Attorney and the press have tried-and-convicted Trump in public court.
