Thursday, August 23, 2018

Trump vs Edwards

Many people have pointed out that there are some pretty striking similarities between the charges against Cohen, and the indictment against John Edwards, shortly after he ran for President. Edwards, was indicted for a very similar arraignment, when he allegedly orchestrated approximately a million dollars in payments to two women with whom he had had affairs with. He also argued that those payments were "personal" rather than campaign related. He was ultimately charged with not "reporting" the campaign contributions.

With the Edwards case, the million dollars was paid for by two wealthy donors. He was not in a position to (nor did he) pay back the million dollars to the two donors. This is fairly significant distinction between the Edwards case and the Trump case. By all accounts, the money used to pay off Daniels/Clifford came from Trump himself, with Cohen possibly fronting the money through a dummy corporation that was used as the ultimate source to pay for them.

Edwards knew that these people would be going over their campaign limits (if it was determined to be a contribution). Trump (as the eventual payer) is not limited to how much he can pay. So there is a distinct difference (even is you accept that these are campaign contributions) as to whether or not the amounts violate the laws.

There is also another difference to consider. Edwards only approached these women with the offer, after he became a candidate. Trump has been working on a NDA with Stormy Daniels since 2011. This makes the argument that it was a personal expenditure much more convincing in Trump's case.

But possibly the biggest caveat to this whole comparison is that Edwards was never convicted of those crimes. He went to trial, fought the charges, and received a combination of acquittals and hung verdicts. The prosecution was unable to convince twelve jurors that such an arrangement was criminal.
_______

Note: Cohen also brokered an arrangement to purchase the rights to a story from the National Inquirer regarding another affair with former playmate Karen McDougal. But that agreement fell through, and no money actually changed hands.

42 comments:

American Voters said...

Most trump voters don't care about manafort or Cohen. All they know about manafort is that his charges are about activities over ten years ago and have nothing to do with trump or the campaign.

As for Cohen, voters see a guy willing to read the script Mueller is handing him to save himself. Right now he's as believable as omarosa.

In the end, stormy, McDougal, omarosa, manafort and Cohen all have one thing in common. They have nothing to do with Russia or collusion.

Meanwhile, the criminal deep state continues to be ignored by their friend Mueller.

commie said...

All they know about manafort is that his charges are about activities over ten years ago and have nothing to do with trump or the campaign.

A crime is a crime...didn't donnie berate the DOJ for not telling him about the investigations??? Didn't donnie say he would hire the best people evah???? What happened??????LOLOLOLOL!!

Anonymous said...




could all this boil down to the fact that edwards is a democrat and trump is a republican?

nah, the answer couldn't be THAT simple...


commie said...

Interesting comparisons the CH chose to ignore....no surprise there!!!

What would the campaign finance vulnerability be for such a payment? Edwards was charged with felonies and was acquitted on one count and the jury deadlocked on others, but he was not retried. The charges were for “conspiracy, accepting illegal campaign contributions and making false statements,”

Although it all unfolded in the height of a presidential campaign, Edwards’ lawyers argued (successfully) that the payments were motivated by his desire to protect his breast cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, from learning about Rielle Hunter’s pregnancy. If the money exchanged hands as purely a personal matter, then it’s not subject to campaign finance rules.

“The funds, spent on private jet travel, luxury hotels and housing for Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter, never passed through campaign accounts,” noted Politico at the time.

Trump made a similar argument on Twitter, casting the payment as a private matter, although not mentioning Melania. “Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no (role) in this transaction,” the president wrote on Twitter. However, Giuliani did bring up the president’s marriage, saying, “It wasn’t for the campaign — it was to save their marriage — not so much their marriage so much as their reputation.”

The tricky part in the Edwards case and Trump situation when it comes to that angle: Both men were running for president. Trump – and Giuliani – have taken great paints to suggest that the Daniels payoff was also a personal matter. Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, a lawyer, tweeted this out:

In Trump’s circumstance, though, the “it was personal” argument would be complicated by the fact that the payment to Daniels was made less than two weeks before the election and with debate swirling in the news media about Trump and women. Furthermore, Giuliani made other comments on television that Trump wanted the Daniels controversy to “go away.”

However, Bradley Smith, former FEC chairman, told CNN he doesn’t think the Trump matter would constitute a campaign finance violation because “the standard is: It’s a campaign expenditure if it is an obligation that would not exist were it not for the campaign.”

Anonymous said...




“So Michael Cohen does not have information that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians beforehand or even after?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Davis.

“No, he does not,” replied Davis, a longtime Clinton insider who started representing Cohen earlier this summer.

Davis’s bombshell statement severely undercuts a July 27 CNN report that Cohen was willing to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that he was in a meeting when Donald Trump Jr. told his father about an offer to meet with a group of Russians who wanted to provide dirt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

According to CNN’s anonymous sources, Trump approved the meeting, which took place on June 9, 2016. Democrats seized on the CNN report as evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.


http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/22/lanny-davis-dispute-trump-tower-cohen/

Anonymous said...

Roger, you have it all. You have the Mueller investigation and now so many charges and convictions.
Do go wobbly now. Go for the King, Impeachment.

Anonymous said...

When does Mueller submit his report ?

The one with proof of Trump-Putin attacked the US Voting System?

commie said...

Blogger KD said...
Roger, you have it all.

Funny....asshole.....I don't see any posts from roger here....He obviously lives rent free in your pin head....LOLOLO

commie said...

Blogger KD said...
When does Mueller submit his report ?

Ask rudy asshole...he's got all the inside info that mueller has leaked.....idiot.

Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

Trump versus Trump

The lie shifts again: Trump ‘did know about the general arrangement’

April 26: The White House spin starts to shift after Cohen’s office is raided by federal prosecutors on April 9. Trump tells Fox News: “Michael would represent me, and represent me on some things. He represents me — like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me.”

May 2: Giuliani tells Fox News that Trump paid Cohen back for the $130,000 payment, but it could not be considered a campaign finance violation.

“They funneled it through the law firm, and the president repaid it,” Giuliani says, adding that it “is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money, no campaign finance violation.”

Giuliani suggests Trump was largely in the dark about what the money was used for. "He didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know about the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this,” he says.

May 3: Trump tweets about the supposed arrangement. “Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” he says, adding: “Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction.”

What we know now: This was a lie. Cohen did not get repaid through a monthly retainer. He sought reimbursement for the payment, and the Trump Organization agreed to pay $420,000, at a monthly rate of $35,000, according to court filings. The company then falsely listed the payments in its books as a retainer for legal work. “In truth and in fact, there was no such retainer agreement, and the monthly invoices Cohen submitted were not in connection for any legal services he had provided in 2017,” prosecutors wrote.

The lie unravels

May 4: Giuliani releases a statement in which he claims the payment to Daniels was intended only to “protect the president’s family” from painful publicity about an alleged affair and that “it would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”

Aug. 22: In a Fox News interview, Trump sought to reframe the issue. He insisted that the payments had not been a “campaign violation.” The payments “didn’t come out of the campaign,” he said. “They came from me.”

July 24: Cohen attorney Lanny Davis releases a recording that Cohen had secretly made of a conversation with Trump two months before the election, in which the two discussed the arrangement with the National Enquirer to pay $150,000 to McDougal.

Aug. 21: Cohen, in court, implicates Trump by admitting that the hush-money payments had been intended to help the campaign. The payment to Daniels was deemed an excessive campaign contribution by Cohen — and the McDougal payment from AMI violated a ban on corporate donations to campaigns.

Epilogue

After months of denial and deception, Trump was still not telling the truth.

Anonymous said...




stop stealing content, alky:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/23/not-just-misleading-not-merely-false-lie/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.97cce9db8b43


Epilogue

After months of denial and deception, Trump was still not telling the truth.



real epilogue - democrats still have absolutely nothing to nail trump on. posting timelines of innuendo doesn't change that fact, alky.


Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

Cohen said Trump told him to do it. There could have been an Edwards-style defense, that Trump needed to shield his wife, Melania Trump, and his children from embarrassment. But Cohen told the judge he arranged both contributions, at Trump's direction, "for the principal purpose of influencing the election."


Scott is always following orders from the President.

Anonymous said...

Roger, you have it all. You have the Mueller investigation and now so many charges and convictions.
Don"t go wobbly now. Go for the King, Impeachment.

2018 Socialist Fully End the Democrat Party.

Anonymous said...

Very cool.

"for the principal purpose of influencing the election."

"Impeach 45" they Rally Motto of 2018

commie said...

KD said...
Roger, you have it all.

Roger's finally got here troll cum in your pants asshole?????......Seems the only one talking about impeachment today is trump saying the economy will tank and you....too funny, idiot...

Anonymous said...




But Cohen told the judge he arranged both contributions, at Trump's direction, "for the principal purpose of influencing the election."


Scott is always following orders from the President.



no, just following the law, alky.

first of all, whatever cohen said is hearsay and without collaboration.

second, the payment to the whores was not a crime, alky. he could've paid them with explicit written instructions to shut the fuck up because of the election, and it's STILL not a crime, alky.

cohen has some significant legal problems, and he thinks he can lessen his sentence by making these claims. but it's not damning to trump.



A few things are clear. A candidate is free to contribute to his or her own campaign. It also is not criminal for a candidate to pay hush money to women whose disclosures might endanger his campaign. So if candidate Trump paid hush money to his two accusers, there would be no violation of any campaign or other laws. To be sure, if he did so for the purpose of helping his campaign — as distinguished from helping his marriage — his campaign would have to disclose any such contribution, and failure to do so might be a violation of a campaign law, but the payments themselves would be entirely lawful.

If, on the other hand, Michael Cohen made the payments by himself, without direction from the president, that would constitute an impermissible campaign contribution from a third party. But if Cohen was merely acting as Trump’s lawyer and advancing Trump’s payments, with an expectation of repayment, then it would be hard to find a campaign finance crime other than failure to report by the campaign.

Failure to report all campaign contributions is fairly common in political campaigns. Moreover, the offense is committed not by the candidate but, rather, by the campaign and is generally subject to a fine. Though it is wrong, it certainly is not the kind of high crime and misdemeanor that could serve as the basis for a constitutionally authorized impeachment and removal of a duly elected president.

Moreover, prosecutors should be reluctant to rely on the uncorroborated word of a guilty defendant who pleaded guilty to lying and defrauding. Thomas Jefferson once observed that a criminal statute, to be fairly enforceable, must be so clear that it can be understood by the average person who reads it “while running.” Jefferson did not mean while running for office; he meant that a criminal statute should not be subject to varying reasonable interpretations.


http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/403072-did-president-trump-violate-campaign-finance-laws



like it or not alky, the law is on trump's side. cohen has a plethora of problems, and he thinks he can lie about trump to solve them.

if you REALLY want to talk about a SERIOUS breach of campaign finance law, let's discuss the $$$ hillary laundered through the law firm to pay for the phony dossier. now THERE'S a situation worth exploring, but we won't. because she was supposed to win, and where we are today is because she lost. plain and simple.



Anonymous said...

Wobbly alky and Denise.

Darn, empeachment is no longer an issue to them. Ok.

commie said...

Darn, empeachment is no longer an issue to them. Ok.

You are still the only jag off talking about it....OK????? You must have a rally guilt complex since you keep brining it up! You must realize how fucked you and trump are as his poll numbers sink to the lost years of nixon.....LOLOLOL

caliphate4vr said...

Winning Bigly

Target CEO raves about the state of the economy: This is the best consumer environment 'I've seen in my career'

Target sees unprecedented growth in same-store sales and foot traffic during the second quarter.

CEO Brian Cornell credits the strongest consumer environment he's ever seen for the retailer's solid results.

This follows similarly strong results from companies like Walmart, Kohl's and TJ Maxx owner TJX.

commie said...

Target sees unprecedented growth in same-store sales and foot traffic during the second quarter.


That and no more mandate will cause and effect the GDP to soar,,,,,as long as trump doesn't get impeached....LOLOLOL!!!

Anonymous said...

"Biden Owes $219,000 for Campaign Violations
By ROBERT PEARJULY 17, 2010
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page
WASHINGTON — The Biden for President campaign committee owes the Treasury more than $219,000 because it accepted excessive campaign contributions and understated the value of a trip taken on a private plane in the 2008 campaign, the Federal Election Commission said in a new report.

Auditors from the agency found numerous violations of campaign finance rules by the committee that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. used in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination."

OH well.
I wonder if he retired the debt?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Opie what states do you live in?

Anonymous said...

Target sees unprecedented growth in same-store sales and foot traffic during the second quarter."

Good news is the Garlic of Socialist

American Voters said...

Dershowitz is on TV today crushing all the trump crimes rhetoric, pointing out that he could have paid stormy a billion dollars and it would not be illegal as long as he paid it himself.

This impeachment thing is already falling apart quickly.

Meanwhile, black approval of trump is up to 36%.

Loretta said...

"Winning Bigly"

Hence fatty's meltdown, lol.

Anonymous said...

This impeachment thing is already falling apart quickly."

It is a poorly made shoe.

Anonymous said...

"Seems the only one talking about impeachment today is trump saying the economy will tank and you."

"
Maxine Waters
Twitter › RepMaxineWaters
Cohen admitted Trump instructed him to break the law. If it's a crime for Cohen, it's a crime for Trump. Debates about whether you can indict a president do not excuse Congress from its responsibility to impeach Trump for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes & misdemeanors."
22 hours ago"

caliphate4vr said...

Opie what states do you live in?

Cray cray and delusional, i think they are the 58th and 59th states admitted to Obumble's land and i think he may supposedly have land in the state of overly impressed with oneself

LMAO

Anonymous said...

Funny stuff.

commie said...

n the state of overly impressed with oneself

You mean like you do, MR. Cause and effect bullshit artist....BWAAAAAA!!!!!!!!! You really need to stop talking to yourself, jag off......losing bigly again. Most amusing...

commie said...

No need to answer you douche nozzle....I have posted my residences many times and it seems I also live free in you and paulies head.....LOLOLOLOLOO!!!

caliphate4vr said...

You had to respond didnt you fatty, you’re so easy

LMAO

commie said...

You had to respond didn't you fatty, you’re so easy

Trolling the troll is most amusing.....Loser.....go watch your loser football team play...RAH RAH have another beer!!! Sure wanna piece of that....BWAAAAAAAA!!!!!

anonymous said...

Thanx CH for including this prescient note from your write up

Cohen also brokered an arrangement to purchase the rights to a story from the National Inquirer regarding another affair with former playmate Karen

Now the national enquirer owner has been granted immunity from prosecution of a potential felony.....I hope donnie sleeps well tonight knowing all his friends have information that they can impugn the lies of trump.....Sucks to have money and no friends....just like KD....the worthless leech.....LOLOLOL!!!!

Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

Trump unhinged.
The National Enquirer owner has been granted immunity.

Sessions refused to turn the us banna republic.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back forcefully Thursday against fresh criticism from President Trump, saying the Justice Department would not be “improperly influenced by political considerations.”

The extraordinary statement came hours after Trump lashed out anew at Sessions, saying he had failed to take control of the Justice Department and was given his job only because of his loyalty during the 2016 campaign.

Following Trump’s comments in a morning television interview, two leading Republican senators suggested he could be replaced following the November elections.
Sessions said in his statement: “I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in, which is why we have had unprecedented success at effectuating the President’s agenda—one that protects the safety and security and rights of the American people, reduces violent crime, enforces our immigration laws, promotes economic growth, and advances religious liberty.”

commie said...

Sessions refused to turn the us banna republic.

Hey Roger, as much as I think of sessions as an Alabama Alfred E Neuman, I give him credit today for standing up to the bully in the pulpit and stood up for the workers trump maligns constantly....They do say pay backs are a bitch and the latest rat Pecker who is also looking out for himself rather than the donnie has a major role....Good!!!

Anonymous said...




Sessions refused to turn the us banna republic.


"banna republic"


LOL.

alky, the wheels are coming off your walker.

where you live - mexifornia - is more of a "banna republic" then the rest of the US ever will be.


Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

He was tweeting at 1:00 AM

WITCH HUNT HOAX

Coldheartedtruth Teller said...

Sessions swore the aligence to the Constitution not the wannabe dictator.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Roger. You're right.

Anonymous said...

"banna republic" do they have "milk cattle"?