So Trump’s being prosecuted for paying off a bimbo.
OK, fair enough, I assume there’s some law he’s possibly broken to do that.
So, was the same law broken by whoever dealt with Clinton’s bimbo eruptions?
And what about JFK?
It’s not unusual that an American President puts is about. And that there are salacious stories about such and that those might – might, obviously – lead to deals or possibly even, well, cash.
So, what’s different this time around?
It’s Trump.
That’s all that matters.
New York is inventing crimes solely to get at him.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/mar/21/how-bill-clintons-settlement-with-paula-jones-diff/
Politifact, well known for its fairness and impartiality, says it’s completely different because Paula Jones went public with her accusations against Clinton while Trumps payment was to prevent Stormy Daniels from going public.
(Holds head in hands).
I would have thought the fact that Daniels has always made clear that her alleged relationship with Trump was consensual as opposed to Jones’s interaction with Clinton which was alleged to have been coercive and violent might be worthy of note. But evidently not to politifact.
Incidentally in the pre Foundation/Global Initiative days the Clintons were not exactly known for their wealth so where did Bubba get the $850k from to pay Paula (along with what must have been some pretty serious legal costs)?
Well, Trump’s a far-right facist who is going to destroy democracy by…
Oh, wait…
John, Bill obviously had Michelle Obama advising him. Look what she did to enable Barry to splash(!) $20,000,000 on a stately home that will be 800 feet underwater next year. I know it cost a tad less, but I’m just guessing at all the modifications required to install the largest privately owned propane tank in the world.
The difference is that he has transgressed the ancient legal principle of “orange homo malus”.
Porn star Stormy Daniels, who has recently made headlines with reports that she had an affair with Donald Trump before he became president, has issued a statement denying that the affair took place.
In the statement, the authenticity of which has been verified with a representative of Daniels, states, “Over the past few weeks I have been asked countless times to comment on reports of an alleged sexual relationship I had with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago.”
The statement continues, “The fact of the matter is that each party to this alleged affair denied its existence on 2006, 2011, 2016, 2017 and now again in 2018. I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/stormy-daniels-denies-affair-donald-trump-never-happened-010513645.html
But the fact checkers tell us that as this statement was made in 2018 it is, in fact, false…..
Actually what he is not being prosecuted for is paying her off – that isn’t against the law.
There are multiple criminal charges related to how it was paid. It allegedly didn’t appear in his books as a payment to her, but as a payment to his lawyer for legal services – that’s false accounting which is a criminal offence. He’s also accused of using the payoffs to hide the affair in the run up to the elections – which is another criminal offence under election rules.
What is stranger is how he’s regarded in the bible basher belt. For some reason, ignoring the “thou shalt not commit adultery” commandment isn’t regarded by those who apparently otherwise consider the bible to be a book of absolute facts/truths.
Because OMB.
The case isn’t that he paid the woman off, he didn’t. If anyone did it was his lawyer.
The case isn’t that he signed off the 13 payments to his lawyer to cover the cost as ‘legal fees’.
The case isn’t that the acceptance, approval and cheque signing of each of the 13 (so 39 “crimes”). Those would be misdemeanors, lapsed for prosecution.
The case is that each of those 39 events was apparently a clear and obvious attempt to subvert an election. Making them still prosecutable now, although normally at a national level rather than a state level.
But the NY guy said he’d do everything he could to ‘get Trump’.
The case will present little evidence and a lot of witnesses saying what a horrible person Trump is.
OMB, and throw any mud you can. Save the USA by destroying the credibility of its institutions.
Swannypol @ 11.28, Michael Cohen is on record that Trump did not know of the payments Cohen made.
As it’s OMB, no doubt being unaware of something being done is obviously proof of guilt.
And all this kerfuffle choosing an ‘unbiased’ jury is a laugh when the Judge and DA are patently not so.
What is stranger is how he’s regarded in the bible basher belt. For some reason, ignoring the “thou shalt not commit adultery” commandment isn’t regarded by those who apparently otherwise consider the bible to be a book of absolute facts/truths.
It gets a lot less strange when you realise that American Christians are, for the most part, normal, red blooded humans who understand all too well how far we all fall short of God’s commandments. They’re also generally not complete morons so they understand the shitty banana republic games being played on Trump and his disenfranchised supporters.
Americans tried voting for pious, square jawed “conservative” twats such as Mike Pence and Dubya and all they had to show for decades of “conservative” rule was infinity immigration, forever wars and 50 million deaths from abortion.
Suddenly, when the guy who would shag a fag burn in a fur coat (not Bill Clinton), was elected, they saw concrete wins in the supreme court, in immigration enforcement, and in relief from excessive regulations and wars and Net Zero bullshit. Almost as if their votes mattered again.
If you believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, as I do, it should not surprise you that God can use bad men for good purposes. (If God had to wait for Good men to show up, we might be waiting until the end of the Universal Day). Even Simon Peter denied Christ three times, cut off a guy’s ear, and did time in prison. I doubt we’ll see any miracles ascribed to Donald Trump, but it will seem somewhat miraculous if he can get himself reelected in the face of the entire US establishment trying to put him in a cage and bankrupt him.
Source: am a bad man, trying to be a good one. If someone is truly Christian, he doesn’t think he’s better than you because you are a sinner or an unbeliever. We all sin. We are all in need of forgiveness. Trump is no worse than any of us, and better than many.
using the payoffs to hide the affair in the run up to the elections
So hiding information potentially damaging to the outcome of an election is a crime? (Unless of course, as in the case of hunters laptop, you can find 50 leftist spooks ready and willing to categorically confirm beyond reasonable doubt that it’s Russian disinformation).
To be fair, PolitiFact does refer to an “alleged affair” in the Trump and Daniels case whereas the Clinton and Jones case is referred to as “accusations of sexual impropriety”, a “sexual harassment lawsuit” and details the allegation “that Clinton exposed himself to her in an Arkansas hotel room in 1991”. It’s not like PolitiFact are going out of their way to paint Clinton in a good light here. Indeed it’s the fact the allegations against Clinton were more serious which explains one of the key differences in the cases – Jones was suing Clinton. What was essentially Clinton’s hush money to Jones was from a legal point of view just the settlement deal of public law suit. Often an ugly part of the US legal system, but definitely a part of the way the system works. (Though like John, I can’t help wondering whether PolitiFact would have de-emphasised the behaviour angle if the fact Jones had been suing Clinton was not legally relevant here.)
In terms of the alleged behaviour itself, in these two cases in particular, you might perfectly reasonably argue that Clinton ought to be the one in deeper trouble because what he was accused of, and apparently trying to cover up, was worse. And that is indeed the political manoeuvre Trump supporters are going for. Though the idea Clinton’s payment to Jones was not scrutinised rather forgets that it triggered the investigation of Clinton’s financial affairs that led to his impeachment. And Trump detractors are also well within their rights to point out separate allegations against Trump involving non-consensual behaviour – though hardly an end to the argument since Trump supporters do not find those allegations credible. I’m not sure even Trump supporters think it’s particularly presidential to say “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Or that it reveals an enlightened attitude to issues of consent. But they still have a defence of their man – locker-room talk, hidden recording. Two sides can chuck mud at each other until America runs out of dirt.
Timmy’s question is a lot more interesting than all that partisan mud-slinging. Comparing the Jones and Daniels cases probably isn’t the most instructive comparison here, and the PolitiFact piece actually does a decent job of explaining why. For one thing the Jones case was being dealt with after an election. One of the components that has got Trump into hot water was the timing – in essence paying Daniels to keep her mouth shut was part and parcel of an election campaign PR war so arguably comes within the ambit of campaign finance law. But I would have thought – and Timmy’s question suggests he is thinking the same way – that this is far from uncommon. Would womanising presidents, of whom there have been many, rely on the discretion of an ex-lover? Or would they prefer to pay them off, even get some legal paperwork in place? After all, election campaigns are the time a kiss-and-tell story would have maximum value if sold to the media. What about other people you might want to pay to shut up, like disgruntled former underlings? I’m pretty sure there has been a lot of spending along these lines over the years which wasn’t, but really ought to have been, declared under campaign financing rules.
As for why Trump is facing felony charges, that’s legally interesting in its own right… and the fact that it’s a bit of a legal stretch, or at least an innovation, does chime with those Trump supporters who see it as part of a political persecution of their man. The best short summary I have come across is in Politico: https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/trump-criminal-investigations-cases-tracker-list/
“In New York, the bare-bones crime of falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. But it becomes a felony if the defendant falsified the records with the intent of furthering a separate underlying crime. Prosecutors have charged Trump with felony-level falsifying business records and have three theories to show a separate underlying crime. The first two theories argue that the Daniels payoff constituted an illegal contribution to Trump’s campaign in violation of federal and state election law, respectively. The third theory alleges that Trump intended to violate New York tax law by inflating and falsely characterizing the reimbursement to Cohen to manipulate its tax consequences.”
Something Politico identify as a strength of the case, and relevant to Timmy’s question:
“Prosecutors have evidence of other hush money payments that Trump arranged to cover up damaging stories in the run-up to the 2016 election. That suggests a coordinated effort to help his campaign rather than merely to avoid personal embarrassment — a key issue that could determine whether the Daniels payoff violated election law.”
Politico also identifies two weaknesses relevant to Timmy’s question, one highlighting what’s so unusual about the prosecution and one why the campaign finance angle might fail:
“Elevating the business-records charges into felonies by linking them to an underlying federal election violation would be a novel legal theory that would test the interaction of state and federal laws.
Trump’s legal team may portray the Daniels payoff as a private matter and the charges themselves as technical bookkeeping violations, too insubstantial to justify criminal charges against a former president.”
Re the bookkeeping violations, PolitiFact summarises:
“In May 2018, Giuliani revealed that Trump had personally reimbursed Cohen for the payments, which Trump confirmed in a series of tweets. Trump described the arrangement as “a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement.”
In the federal case against Cohen, prosecutors said Trump’s company accounted for the reimbursement to Cohen as a retainer fee when there was “no such retainer agreement.” The reimbursement was unrelated to any legal services Cohen provided, according to prosecutors.”
More details are in the press release for the Cohen case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/michael-cohen-pleads-guilty-manhattan-federal-court-eight-counts-including-criminal-tax
Going back to Timmy’s question then, you have to wonder: if and when (and most likely, when) presidents or other candidates have been paying hush money to inconvenient people in their past, or arranging for it to be paid on their behalf, has it been a concerted effort as part of the run-up to an election? Was all that money properly declared? And if it wasn’t, did it at least have the bookkeeping in order? (Which if it’s a secret payment in violation of campaign finance law, might sound rather unlikely. But is nevertheless important because this is what can open up a new criminal angle. Indeed Trump would be in a better spot if his payments to Daniels and McDougal were from his personal account and their invoices clearly identified their purpose – this would have avoided allegations of falsifying business records, and regarding campaign finance law his lawyers could still argue these were personal payments made to facilitate Trump’s private family harmony rather than part of his election efforts.)
Paying hush money isn’t an offence in its right but going about it in way that leaves your ass covered is a tricky business. Clearly one of those things where “it’s the cover-up that gets you”. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if candidates in days gone by have had informal arrangements whereby wealthy associates have provided generous “financial support” to ex-lovers to keep them happy and quiet, without a dollar that’s traceable back to the candidate involved or whose accounting had to be falsified at any stage. Getting lawyers involved surely complicates things since that lengthens the money and paper trail.
One of the components that has got Trump into hot water was the timing
Wrong. The only reason he’s in trouble is because he’s Donald Trump. The guy could be a literal saint and it wouldn’t change his persecution one bit. Conversely, Joe Biden is a confirmed pedophile whose family of incestuous crackheads has been laundering American taxpayers money for decades, and will never be prosecuted.
TPTB hate and fear any politician who goes over their heads and appeals to the people. Americans are not allowed to have sovereignty, just as we’re not allowed to have sovereignty. The collective leadership class in the Western world is desperate to suppress and replace its own populations. Everything they want is mandatory, everything that might benefit you is illegal and racist.
1) Trump falsified business records, representing the (reimbursement of) payments to Stormy Daniels as being legal expenses.
2) The payments to Daniels were made to further Trump’s chances of election, and therefore count as election contributions.
3) It would be illegal under campaign finance laws for the Trump Organisation to make these election contributions.
4) Doing (1) to cover up (2) makes it a more serious crime.
Then add the next point which is important as the offence is falsifying the records not the payment and the legal point the case rests on is that the misdemeanour (records) was committed to further a large offence (conspiracy)
5) The accounting records in question were filed in 2017 at which point Trump had won the election so the records themselves had no influence on the election result
A minor inconvenience for the NY prosecutors that seems to be overlooked in a lot of the reporting
The election conspiracy is a federal offence and NY can’t prosecute on that and the Dept of Justice has previously said they aren’t pursuing charges so NY needs to link that to a state offence they can charge Trump under.
“Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I will find something in them which will hang him“
And of course the Hilary Clinton campaign characterised the payments made to Steele for his malicious falsehoods about Trump as “legal expenses” and paid Perkins Coie as such in their election returns. As a payment to specifically subvert not just an election but the following administration, one would expect that to be prosecuted, no ? The FEC did in fact find the false accounting and fined the campaign a trivial (in the context of the campaign expenses) sum for doing so.
What is different is that the world has moved on. Maybe if Clinton was running today he would be pursued.