My Facebook friends are super excited about media attention around Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation establishing that payments were made to various (non-Russian?) women in exchange for them not talking about the men with whom they allegedly had sex back in 2006. Supposedly this violates Federal campaign finance laws.
Two questions…
Prostitution is illegal in most U.S. jurisdictions. But the women have not said that they were working as prostitutes or that Donald Trump hired them as prostitutes. From what I have read, the women say that they were affiliating with a rich old married guy because they had an inner fondness for rich old married guys. Therefore, whatever happened between them and a rich old married guy (if anything did actually happen) was perfectly legal. I can see why it would be illegal to use cash to cover up evidence of a crime, but why would it be illegal to pay women to keep quiet about an embarrassing, but legal, event? If a political candiate had once ordered a Ford Pinto in a 1970s orange color, would it be illegal to pay a car salesman to keep quiet about that unfortunate lapse of taste?
Why do my Democrat-voting friends want Trump impeached? Wouldn’t that elevate Mike Pence, currently a non-entity, to Presidential status and therefore make it easy for him to win the next two elections as an incumbent (Americans are always fearful of change)?
[Rolling back the clock a bit, why did Republicans want Bill Clinton impeached back in the 1990s? Woudn’t that just have made it easy for Al Gore to win the following elections?]
Separately, if these women had not been paid to keep quiet back in 2016, what would the news media have done with their stories? A big headline: “Candidate had sex back in 2006”? Wouldn’t the New York Times need some corroboration for a story like that? Without paperwork around a payment, what corroboration would there have been? No photo or video evidence of the events described seems to have been uncovered. In the Ford Pinto hypothetical above there would be a signed order for the embarrassing car, but did Stormy Daniels issue cash register receipts for her work in 2006? Even with corroboration, what would be the relevance to an election? We’re not supposed to judge peoples’ legal lifestyle choices in our society, are we? The NYT does not take the position that the American who is faithful to his or her spouse is a superior human being to the American who has sex with various neighbors and sues his or her spouse for divorce, alimony, and child support, right? If there is no official position that stable and faithful marriage is evidence of superior morality, why would it be news that someone was having sex outside of marriage 10 years previously?
Related:
Why don’t you ask Trump and his friends why they wanted to cover it up ? If I claimed to have sex with him they would laugh at it and ignore me.
The illegality is not reporting the campaign contributions.
This is the saddest part. You can do it so it’s not illegal at all. In fact it’s routine.
If Candidate Trump had told his lawyer “Hey, I don’t want my wife to find out about this, whether it’s true or not, so please take this $130,000 and give it to that fine young lady in exchange for her silence,” that would be perfectly legal.
It’s only a problem because he was concerned about the effect of the disclosure on the election. (And it seems his lawyer got that on a recording. Wow.) That makes the payment an attempt to influence an election, and that has to be done according to the rules for campaign expenditures.
Further, as I understand New York finance law, corporations have to correctly record the purpose of each expenditure, and the Trump Organization may have hidden the real purpose of the payments, which makes them fraudulent transactions. Since the pardon power doesn’t extend to State laws, this could turn out to be the bigger problem.
Similarly, if you are a candidate trying to hide the fact that you once bought an orange Pinto, because you’re afraid people won’t vote for you, that’s a campaign expenditure and has to be done according to campaign finance laws. If you hide it because you’re concerned some person won’t sleep with you, that’s just fine. But pay it out of your personal checking account, so there’s no lurking line item “Cover up color of Pinto” on corporate books somewhere.
Separately, the cool kids have websites that don’t make you switch to a different keyboard for the @ and . when asking for an email address on a phone
Phil: What you are missing is that a faithful marriage is a sign of character when it coincides with friends of the New York Times who succeed at it. Otherwise it is completely irrelevant or possibly problematic. Here’s a chart:
Liberal, faithful: Sign of character
Liberal, unfaithful: Irrelevant, if anything women should be lining up with knee pads as thanks for keeping abortion legal. Seperately if any of these women were later uncomfortable they may be entitled to compensation.
Conservative, faithful: Problematic, creepy and chauvinistic. He can’t even stay faithful to his wife while submitting to maximum temptation?:
Conservative, unfaithful: Evil. Why do the Evangelicals tolerate this? The prostitutes involved are so brave.
Just one point. Stormy had sex with trump in a county in Nevada, where prostitution is legal and commonplace. We can blame the rest of the story on TDS!
It is not illegal, period. You are allowed to fuck whoever you want (if it actually occurred). You are 100% allowed to sign an NDA with anyone and pay them. It is not a campaign contribution whether you or someone else pays as long as THERE IS A REASONABLE CAUSE TO MAKE SUCH A PAYMENT OTHER THAN EXCLUSIVELY FOR CAMPAIGN PURPOSES. It doesn’t matter if it also benefits the campaign as long as it benefits some other reason other than the campaign. Yeah, if it benefits Trump’s neck tie business that is good enough reason.
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The Deep State should not be allowed to start a bullshit investigation based o ZERO EVIDENCE, NO PROBABLE CAUSE, A FRAUDULENT DOSSIER and LIES TO A FISA JUDGE. They should definitely not be allowed to use such an investigation as a pretext to investigate, harass and prosecute everyone related to a President they don’t like for TOTALLY UNRELATED STUFF. Robert Mueller is the ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. He should be declared as such and special prosecutors should be appointed to investigate the investigators for TREASON and COLLUSION TO UNDERMINE AND OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT OF THE USA. It is time to declare TOTAL WAR of the FBI leadership and the “special counsel”.
@ toucan sam: It is not prostitution if you willingly fuck someone without an agreed compensation beforehand. It is not prostitution if after fucking someone he buys you dinner or an Aston Martin. It is not prostitution if after fucking someone you reach an agreement not to talk about it. It is definitely not prostitution if he says it never happened, YOU signed a statement saying it never happened and there’s nobody else in the room to know one way or the other. Doesn’t matter what state it allegedly happened in, it doesn’t matter whether you are running for president or dog catcher.
@ 2tc: It doesn’t matter if the payment also affects the election. As long as there is another reason to make that payment, it is not a campaign contribution.
Unfortunately, the President arranged the payment to influence an election. (Based on the recording.)
Robert Mueller is nobody’s enemy. I keep hearing how somebody somewhere (on either side) has committed treason, but always without naming the enemy to whom they gave aid and comfort. Even Russia is not our enemy, just our adversary. These accusations sound like the ravings of someone with more energy than understanding.
What is the difference between asking to be payed a large sum to sign an NDA and blackmail?
Looking for justice in a political trial is a futile exercise.
It’s the Al Capone thing, except Trump is not as obviously a mobster. He is an insult to the established order, and such an insult cannot remain on top of the order. He probably has done some crime that will bring him down or cause him to resign. When he is out of power the pressure will stop.
Everybody has committed a crime, but most are not observed or prosecuted. When the perp profanes the norms of their place in society or government, investigation and prosecution is an efficient corrective. The norms for president are different from a street criminal so the choreography is different. He won’t be shot in the back or sent to prison, just exiled to cable tv.
Your Democrat-voting friends don’t want Trump impeached. Not really. It’s all about disrupting Trump’s ability to govern. Unfortunately, Trump makes this all too easy.
@dwight I know! But our host Phil seems to think prostitution was involved. If that were the case it would still be perfectly legal thanks to the laws in the great state of Nevada
Toucan Sam: I wasn’t there so all that I can do is credit the women’s statements that they were having sex with a rich old guy for the pure thrill of it.
tc>: “the President arranged the payment to influence an election”. If he paid the money himself, how is that a violation of campaign finance laws? There is no limit on the candidate spending money to maintain a positive public image, is there? Circling back to my original post, why does the fact that the payment was associated with a sex act change anything, assuming that the sex act was legal?
Mememe: you are correct that “Stormy Daniels” committed extortion / blackmail and is the person who should be facing criminal charges in this matter.
The President didn’t use his own money. Cohen paid the money (which was more than the limit) and was reimbursed not by Donald J. Trump but by the Trump organization.
Sex has nothing to do with it, other than the possible embarrassment factor. An orange Pinto would be just as embarrassing, and just as legal. If the President, or somebody around him, had just known how campaign finance law worked, and tried to hide the sex from his wife (who presumably has her own financial interest) rather than the voters, none of this would have been a problem.
Anonymous: So it would have been legal if Trump had paid personally? Does it matter that it was the Trump Organization instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trump_Organization says that Trump is the owner of this organization. So the Trump Organization buying something is really Trump buying something, no?
(And given the reliance of the Trump Organization on Trump’s personal brand, couldn’t the $130,000 paid to Stormy Daniels have been justified as a way to preserve brand value and therefore enterprise value? Nothing to do with the election except that Trump’s candidacy made the New York Times suddenly interested in which women found a rich old guy attractive enough to have sex with (not in exchange for a cash payment, of course!).)
No, Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization are not the same person. The Trump Organization is a separate legal entity that can go bankrupt without its owner. Being a corporate entity imposes additional rules under both NY State and Federal campaign laws.
If the Trump Organization had recorded the payment as an NDA agreement to preserve brand value, that would indeed have been legal under both NY State and campaign finance laws.
The stated reasons matter, not to the point of being dispositive, but enough to provide an articulable suspicion and trigger an investigation. The fact that sex is involved just makes it more interesting to people who like that kind of thing.
Thanks, Anonymous!
Nobody has answered my final question from the original post: “if these women had not been paid to keep quiet back in 2016, what would the news media have done with their stories?”
I’m confused about that. How would the editors have spun two adults having sex in a morality-free society as news?
(Not an American)
So looks like trump supposedly banging someone, (12 years back, as a private citizen) is like the most imp. thing in the US today? ugh…
I really miss your old president man, he was so cool. I mean like only feel-goody-goody stuff on facebook n other media – things used to be so awesome…
@philg I think you know the answer. During the campaign, the media would have published their stories as further proof of character flaws in candidate Trump. In the GOP “party of corrupts”, moral flaws such as that are a terrible sin to the God-fearing pious masses (unless the candidate also happens to be a racist). Society is not morality-free in conservative areas. Would this have influenced the outcome of the election? No one knows, but since Trump won with the thinnest of margins mostly thanks to conservative votes, it is possible.
I could’t care less who Trump sleeps with and this campaign finance case is just a minor distraction (the collusion and subservience to Russia being a much bigger deal). Nevertheless, this small matter has exposed a corruption level that I didn’t think would be visible in North America in my lifetime. This is a full-blown Brazil-level of corruption. The evolution of Trump’s speech is the following:
“Don’t know about any payment. I didn’t pay anything”
“Ok, I knew about the payment afterwards, but Cohen paid for it.”
“Of course I knew about the payment before. But it was not a campaign violation.”
“Yes, it was a crime. But so what? If you impeach me, the stock market will crash.”
This reminds me of the bread-n-butter Brazilian politician argument of “roubo, mas faço” (“I steal, but I build”). Thanks to Trump, corruption in the GOP is now at South American levels.
@dwight looi You should drink less of the MAGA kool aid. It is bad for your health. Thankfully, Trump is getting rid of all that Deep State and only hiring the most upstanding citizens using his very stable genius judgement of character.
Yawn:
http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2012/05/arbitrary-campaign-finance-prosecution-department.php
> Nobody has answered my final question from the original post: “if these women had not been paid to keep quiet back in 2016, what would the news media have done with their stories?”
The news media would have published their stories and nothing much would have changed with the election outcome. Why? Trump won not because he was a better candidate than Hillary, he won because Americans were feed up with the Clinton’s. Americans would have voted for ANYONE but the Clinton’s (or the Bush’s for that matter). It’s really that simple and I don’t understand why the liberals don’t get it. After all, if the Access Hollywood tape [1] didn’t bring him down during the election, nothing was going to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Access_Hollywood_tape
> Why do my Democrat-voting friends want Trump impeached? Wouldn’t that elevate Mike Pence, currently a non-entity, to Presidential status and therefore make it easy for him to win the next two elections as an incumbent (Americans are always fearful of change)?
You are giving Democrats too much credit for thinking ahead.