The Ornery American Forums
General Category => General Comments => Topic started by: Seriati on March 27, 2018, 01:23:14 PM
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Anyone else finding themselves flustered by the current reality? We literally have a porn star and a playboy centerfold, both very attractive, suing to be able to talk about having sex with Donald Trump. In what world does that make sense? I honestly, can't imagine that isn't flattering his ego.
Where exactly does CNN see this going? If I understand the argument correctly, CNN seems to think that by reporting on behavior they don't think is wrong (ie voluntary sexual encounters), that conservatives should decide en mass to vote for other people who don't think that behavior is wrong and who don't support the views of the conservatives on any issues, rather than Trump who is at least arguably achieving the goals they think are important. I think that would fall in the category of not taking advice from people who don't have your best interests at heart.
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This breaks down to a few pieces.
First, Trump is more celebrity than president. This is exactly the type of scandal you expect from reporting on some famous celebrity. And, to one of your points, yes I expect Trump does find it flattering.
Second, there are huge swaths of liberals or the left who cannot grok how conservative christian values can tolerate this stuff. Hypocrisy IS the story. YOU claim X yet you voted for Y, how is this not insane?
Third, I doubt you'll find many who don't think it's wrong to cheat on your wife who just had your child. Shockingly, you'll find many on the left/liberal side of the aisle who DO think marriage is sacred.
As to where they think this is going? No clue. These stories only confirm what we knew strongly suspected about the man already. As to who it may convince of what, no clue.
Flustered doesn't even begin to explain how I feel about current reality. I've hated "reality TV" since the moment it landed. To see the *censored*ing White House set as the venue for some low brow "locker room" humor serialized production makes me nauseous. As if the partisan divide wasn't enough in this country, now we got to put up with this buffoonery. And the "left wing media" is eating his *censored* up with a spoon and begging for more. God help us all.
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Second, there are huge swaths of liberals or the left who cannot grok how conservative christian values can tolerate this stuff. Hypocrisy IS the story. YOU claim X yet you voted for Y, how is this not insane?
Same way that people on the left could vote for Obama after he stated he believed marriage was between a man and a woman. The alternative is no better on that issue, and is worse on many many others. At best, CNN is engaging in voter nullification by trying to convince conservatives not to vote at all (which -by the way- puts to the lie the idea that the left really wants every vote to count, and the whole message of the rock the vote campaign being pro-democracy).
Third, I doubt you'll find many who don't think it's wrong to cheat on your wife who just had your child. Shockingly, you'll find many on the left/liberal side of the aisle who DO think marriage is sacred.
Sure, in their personal lives. But how many on the left would insist on eliminating a liberal candidate because they were a cheater? Or removing one from office?
As an interesting tidbit (unverified), I saw that the interview set some kind of ratings record for CBS in the last 10 years. What would the media do without Trump?
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But how many on the left would insist on eliminating a liberal candidate because they were a cheater? Or removing one from office?
Are there many (even on the left) insisting that Trump is ineligible for office, or that he should be removed from office, because they think he had sex with adult entertainers? Is that really the only purpose left to media, nowadays? Or maybe there is just the desire to shame him, and tarnish those Republicans who gladly associate with him and would ride his coattails...
At any rate, the story is no longer that Trump may have had sex with random people while married to other people ("dog bites man") but rather, all the shenanigans around hiding what may have happened (payoffs, for sure. Children threatened? Pattern of behaviour?) shaming the hypocritical family values team, and giving second thoughts to the honest family values team.
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Obama on SSM: pass
Want everyone to vote = lie: agree
CNN = voter nullification?: don’t shoot the messenger
Insist on elimination or removal?: the left hasn’t branded themselves with the “family values” label
Media thrives on Trump: Duh (I fear that ALL media will conspire to give us 4 more years of this guy. A true bipartisan effort!) :(
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While the salacious details are interesting (and the Right's attempt to minimize the significance of them makes me smile when I think of WIOHDI*), it misses the really significant point of the scandal.
Trump apparent broke elections laws.
As Electorial-vote.com nicely summarizes (http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2018/Senate/Maps/Mar26.html#item-1):
He believes the money paid to Daniels was very likely an illegal campaign contribution, particularly given the timing of the payment (two weeks before the election). That will make it hard for Trump to borrow the argument that John Edwards successfully used, namely that the payment to his mistress was meant to save his marriage and not his political career, and so was a private business transaction.
Meanwhile, Avenatti dropped a minor bombshell (and one that's probably not getting quite as much attention as it should). We already knew that while Trump lawyer Michael Cohen claimed to be negotiating with Daniels on behalf of a non-Trump shell corporation called "Essential Consultants," he was using his Trump Organization e-mail address. What Avenatti added on Sunday night was a copy of the letter that Daniels' then-attorney Keith Davidson sent to Cohen to complete the transaction. That letter was sent to Trump Tower, and addressed to "Michael Cohen, Executive Vice President and Special Counsel to Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization." In short, it is now almost impossible for Cohen to argue that he was not working in an official capacity on behalf of the then-candidate.
So, a criminal violation of election law almost certainly occurred. If that is not enough, Cohen has also exposed himself to significant liability, and to possible disbarment. Consequently, as Potter observed, a "wild card" in all of this is that Cohen might well have some knowledge of Trump's dealings with the Russians. And as everyone knows by now, special counsel Robert Mueller loves to nail someone on a slam dunk criminal offense, so as to get them to squeal on their bosses in order to save themselves. Thus, Cohen might soon be traveling the same path that Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos have traveled. And depending on exactly what Cohen did, and in what capacity he did it, attorney-client privilege may not apply. Or, if Cohen's law license is dead in the water anyhow, and his goal is to avoid prison, he might choose to waive privilege. Either way, it's yet another headache for the President.
Then there is the little matter of physical threats against Stormy:
As Daniels explained, just weeks after she told her story to In Touch magazine in May 2011, she was approached by a man in a Las Vegas parking lot. "Leave Trump alone. Forget the story," he reportedly demanded. "And then," Daniels explained, "He leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, 'That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom.' And then he was gone..."
[If this is true], this represents an egregious abuse of power and privilege by Trump, from a man and a President who has a long history of abusing his power and his privilege, particularly when it comes to women. Oh, and he also has documented dealings with the Mafia, who seem like the folks that might have been charged with this particular task.
And while you might write-off this facet since there is no proof that she is telling the truth, that kinda assumes that this was the only time it happened, (http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2018/Senate/Maps/Mar27.html#item-5) and proof from some other incident may not emerge.
There's also the little matter of whether there were other such affairs that Trump wants to remain quiet, and who knows about them:
Finally, as Vox's Matthew Yglesias astutely points out, whatever else Daniels might know, there are two things she couldn't possibly know: (1) How many other women have been paid (or threatened) for their silence? and (2) What foreign intelligence services know about these arrangements? It is possible that Daniels and McDougal are the only affairs Trump ever had, and nothing like this happened ever again. However, that is not consistent with what we know about human behavior, nor of what we know about Donald Trump. Similarly, it's possible that the Russians, and the Chinese, and the Saudis, and the Israelis, and all of the other highly-skilled intelligence agencies that would like to have leverage over the United States have not managed to dig up a single shred of information about this, but it's not likely. And all of this is before we consider the fact that there's already evidence that America's enemies have dirt on The Donald, namely the Steele dossier. Not to mention Steve Bannon's claims that there are "hundreds" of other women.
So, to review: That's a creepy spanking, an almost certain violation of campaign finance law, the potential for the President's counsel to be indicted and to flip, an abuse of power, the possibility that more dirt is coming, and the likelihood that all of this is a budding national security crisis. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is definitely going to earn her paycheck this week.
On top of all that is Melania (http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2018/Senate/Maps/Mar27.html#item-1):
But the biggest unknown unknown is how Melania is taking all this. She can't be happy, but will she take any action? It is virtually certain that Trump forced her to sign a pre-nuptial agreement when they got married, but did he also force her to sign an NDA? What happens if she has had it and decides to file for divorce? Since Trump is known to be a tightwad, most likely the pre-nup gives Melania several million dollars in the event of a divorce, but not tens of millions. Suppose she threatens to write a tell-all book to supplement the settlement in the pre-nup? So far she has not given any sign of wanting a divorce, but she is surely feeling totally humiliated by now.
So the affair--which would have been front-page news for any other President--is only the tip of the iceberg. This could easily evolve into a Presidental-toppling scandal. Much like a small break-in at Democratic headquarters a few years back. ;)
*What If Obama Had Done It.
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CNN wants ratings, obviously. The salaciousness is enough of an explanation for why they are giving it airtime.
But how many on the left would insist on eliminating a liberal candidate because they were a cheater? Or removing one from office?
Remember Anthony Weiner?
In fact, Democrats have done a lot of navel gazing over how they defended Bill Clinton, and there's been a lot of acknowledgement that what he did was indefensible.
Hint: the left isn't amoral. Certainly a business entity like CNN might be, but you were painting with a broader brush. And of course Democrats are partisan and it sometimes blinds them, but that is not nearly as extreme a claim as "they don't think cheating is wrong".
Did you intend your mention of "voter nullification" as a joke? Because it is one either way. That's CNN you're talking about.
As for whether the affairs are newsworthy, yes.
1) The integrity of the President matters. It's been clear to most for some time that he has none, but some remain unconvinced. Blatantly lying about the affairs and the coverups might help convince some people that they misjudged him as having some decency. (His wife had a newborn baby, for goodness sake.)
2) The corruptibility of the President matters. He's got a history of paying hush money. How extensive and varied the reasons for this is a matter of national interest. Who else has leverage on him?
3) Campaign finance laws might have been violated.
I'm not going to deny that there's a substantial amount of schadenfreude involved in finding this whole matter interesting. And because Trump is doing a huge amount of damage, and because his tenure is likely to further entrench the oligarchic trend in our government, and because the GOP in general is likely to continue much of what he's doing, yes, it would be great if embarrassing him, exposing his venality and dishonesty and hypocrisy, and shining a light on how he has debased the office had the side effect of depressing voter enthusiasm among the classes of voters who were stupid enough to think he would be a good President.
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Hint: the left isn't amoral. Certainly a business entity like CNN might be, but you were painting with a broader brush. And of course Democrats are partisan and it sometimes blinds them, but that is not nearly as extreme a claim as "they don't think cheating is wrong".
Why did you put that in quotes? I didn't say that. I only mentioned CNN, granted as a proxy for the media, not every Democrat on earth. I also literally wrote "(i.e., voluntary sexual activity)."
In fairness, the media has already established that voluntary affairs are not a grounds to disqualify a politician in their view.
Did you intend your mention of "voter nullification" as a joke? Because it is one either way. That's CNN you're talking about.
Unfortunately it's not a joke. I can't see how it could be read any other way. There's no chance fundamentalist Christians are switching parties.
3) Campaign finance laws might have been violated.
This seems a soft claim, not sure it doesn't have legs as technical matter. I am to the point where I think the campaign finance laws are a gross miscarriage of justice and designed solely to advantage career politicians.
And because Trump is doing a huge amount of damage, and because his tenure is likely to further entrench the oligarchic trend in our government,...
Yes, the horror of Trump increasing Buffet's power.. oh wait! Or him endorsing the Hollywood power brokers... again.
And all the damage he's doing by increasing the power of the unelected regulatory state... oh again no.
I'm not seeing this claim about Trump as legit. Obama was far more an autocrat than Trump, and there's no question that Hillary was deep deep deep inside the entrenched power scheme.
...and because the GOP in general is likely to continue much of what he's doing, yes, it would be great if embarrassing him, exposing his venality and dishonesty and hypocrisy, and shining a light on how he has debased the office had the side effect of depressing voter enthusiasm among the classes of voters who were stupid enough to think he would be a good President.
And didn't you say that was CNN? And now you're hoping for voter suppression. Oh well, it's a pretty slogan about making every vote count even if its a lie.
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I am to the point where I think the campaign finance laws are a gross miscarriage of justice and designed solely to advantage career politicians.
I can see how one might come to this conclusion, but I don't think that's the larger problem. Politician benefits are surprisingly meager in legal political bribery. Sure, they get the main benefit, which is being in office, but the actual benefits it took to get them there are paltry compared to how their special interests benefit. The insertion of a measly few million can greatly help secure a Congressional win, for instance, and put that person squarely in the pocket of a special interest, and yet the payoff for having a few Congresspeople vote correctly on specific matters can yield billions or even tens of billions in extra profits. The scaling of what they have to pay versus what they get in return is quite astonishing and whenever I see figures of how much various companies contribute (legally) to individual campaigns the numbers are so small compared to what I know they're getting from it. These people are bought so cheaply, it's almost embarrassing. It doesn't take that much in the way of campaign contributions (in the grand scheme) to carry off a good campaign. It's only the Presidential election where the campaign costs get into the billions, but for anything else these 'small' donations go a long way.
I'm only pointing this out because in my view the campaign finance laws very clearly benefit the special interests, who get the vast proportion of the material benefit from the legal (and no doubt illegal) corruption that results. The politicians get a tiny slice of that but in comparison not very much, but it's enough because, again in comparison, they don't need very much. Big pharma and the military companies have GDP's the realm where they dwarf small countries, whereas people in Congress have teeny-tiny budgets and need only a little to then propel the big companies very far.
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Lest there be continued confusion, I'm not rejecting the idea of reform of campaign finance laws, just stating that having politicians draft them has led to the worst form of design, where they entrench their own interests and create loopholes that they can exploit. We need an independent commission of some sort.
I also note that the penalties rarely equal the scale of the crime. Sending a bundler to prison for two years but leaving the illegally supported candidate in office? Removal of candidates potentially frustrates the democratic will, but so does leaving them in office.
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Lest there be continued confusion, I'm not rejecting the idea of reform of campaign finance laws, just stating that having politicians draft them has led to the worst form of design, where they entrench their own interests and create loopholes that they can exploit. We need an independent commission of some sort.
I also note that the penalties rarely equal the scale of the crime. Sending a bundler to prison for two years but leaving the illegally supported candidate in office? Removal of candidates potentially frustrates the democratic will, but so does leaving them in office.
Or the electorate could smarten up to the point where their decision to go to the polls and which candidate they support isn't driven by how many yard signs and 30 second spots they are saturated with.
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Unfortunately it's not a joke.
It makes a mockery of the concept. Voter nullification suggests that people's votes are being blocked or discounted. Feeling discouraged because the president you voted for is a scumbag, which you somehow only figured out because of coverage on CNN, is not an example of disenfranchisement.
Oh well, it's a pretty slogan about making every vote count even if its a lie.
You might want to clearly identify your targets. I've never said that I want all stupid people to vote for stupid reasons.
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Well not sure that "voter nullification" is the right term, was trying to convey the idea of coverage that isn't designed to persuade or inform but to discourage. What term would you use?
In any event, if you were a conservative voter and listened to CNN all you'd end up with is a worse overall result by getting discouraged. I said it real time in the last election, a ethics voter had no candidate in the last election. Luckily most people are not single issue voters.
I will say the extreme negativity is making me very excited to vote, and I'm not the only one.
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Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) cited a poll that was taken before the Stormy news and after. The approval rating (or I think it may just have been generic R vs D choice %) was significantly higher AFTER the “scandal”. This led Adams to ask “how many porn stars does he need to sleep with in order to lock up his reelction?”
I’ve never seen a president so teflon coated, or a media so stymied as to how to bring him down.
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Did anyone, of any political persuasion, think the Stormy scandal would make any difference at all? Even if 100% true, what does it tell us we didn't already know about Trump? The only catch is if it was bungled in such a way as to make it criminal.
This isn't so much about him being teflon coated, but rather someone who was elected despite (or who knows, perhaps even because of) his flaws. But the media is stymied. Everything they thought of as being "presidential" has been thrown out the window. It's being treated as any other high profile, low class, CEO position, and a large swath of the country seems cool with that.
Judging by Crunch and often Seriati's reactions and defense, this guy is getting the results they wanted, and nothing else matters. The ends justify the means. (and the stupid, and the petty, and the wasteful) :P
Other than criminal wrongdoing 'the media' can't 'bring him down', because he exists down there. He thrives on being down. He is perfectly content being hated by most, as long as he's "winning" personally.
The real dilemma is should the press keep reminding people who he is (as if he'd ever let us forget), or just get numb to it? Is this some sort of "boy who cried wolf" scenario where they should save their outrage for... who the hell knows what at this point?
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Did anyone, of any political persuasion, think the Stormy scandal would make any difference at all?
Well it's an odd attack vector, the guy ran on being a super alpha. How does a porn star and playboy model suing to be able to talk about having sex with him work against that image? The point of this thread was that it was a very bizarre tact to take. Maybe the media can't help themselves, in the metoo era they just can't accept that this isn't a paramount concern to everyone (much like the religious right wastes times trying to convince the left that their candidates are "godless," which literally no one on the left cares about, or if they do care, they would not trust the religious right's opinion on the topic).
Judging by Crunch and often Seriati's reactions and defense, this guy is getting the results they wanted, and nothing else matters. The ends justify the means. (and the stupid, and the petty, and the wasteful) :P
I think that's a bizarre interpretation. I'm not aware that Trump's used any improper means to achieve the goals I favor. He's cut back on executive abuse and regulatory abuse to achieve most of his goods. Literally the correct means to an end.
I'm not a moral fundamentalist. Not a religious fundamentalist. I'm not seeing Trump's personal issues as terribly relevant to the job he's doing, and I'm also aware that a media that has been 90% plus negative from day one (a total record by the way), can distort how someone's perceived dramatically. Heck if they'd been like this for Obama he'd never have had a second term.
Other than criminal wrongdoing 'the media' can't 'bring him down', because he exists down there. He thrives on being down. He is perfectly content being hated by most, as long as he's "winning" personally.
If the media hadn't sold out, they'd have a credibility to make claims. But when, for example, they decide to spend dozens of minutes of on air time criticizing the President's diet coke intake, it's kind of hard to trust they are actually being objective on other issues. When they praise the Obama economy, and declare sub-standard growth the "new normal" despite an enormously depressed business climate, and can't find anything nice to say about a much better Trump economy, I'm left wondering what they actually do report on accurately.
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Don't normally quote Fox News, but this was just too on point, about how surreal this is for CNN.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/04/02/cnn-mocked-for-glorifying-jfks-legendary-infidelity-after-harping-on-sex-allegations-against-trump.html (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/04/02/cnn-mocked-for-glorifying-jfks-legendary-infidelity-after-harping-on-sex-allegations-against-trump.html)
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The only thing I find strange about this is the NDA. Only the most anti-Trumpers care about an affair years ago. With his history it would be surprising if there had not been affairs. Why the pay-off? His base was not going to vote for Hillary no matter how despicable Trumps behavior.
On a side note: Liberals do care about individuals who cheat on their wives (at least under certain circumstances). When was the last time you heard anything about John Edwards?
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I'm not aware that Trump's used any improper means to achieve the goals I favor.
A far distinction. I wasn't thinking in a compartmentization way. Trump the person being a non related issue to Trump's (important) presidental/political agenda. (as opposed to the smokescreen / trivialities where we just let Trump be Trump)
He's cut back on executive abuse and regulatory abuse to achieve most of his goods.
Jury's still out on the first IMO. Something I agreed with you on when it was Obama in the hot seat. As to the regulatory abuses... That's very much a pick your poison ideology. Abuses in regulation or abuses due to lack of oversight. I tend to favor the former if I have to pick one of those evils (and I feel we must pick).
I'm not seeing Trump's personal issues as terribly relevant to the job he's doing
I do feel for you (and voters like you) who have legitimate non-Democrat political views/objectives. I'm glad you're seeing some results you like. That doesn't do much to change my view that Trump (and current day Republicans in general) rode to where he is on the backs of the religious/moral fundamentalists. I felt much the same way about Bill Clinton durring his scandal. That's between him and his wife I thought, but it is a mark on the dignity of the office. With Trump, we seem to have (or rather he has) discarded the idea that the office should be dignified at all. :(
If the media hadn't sold out, they'd have a credibility to make claims.
They aren't being objective. I do worry about phrases such as "make claims" though. Biased reporting of actual events IS still reporting. Asking for unbiased reporting is like looking for endagered species...
As for credit and blame of the economy, I've always found it silly to give the president himself much credit. Maybe they are helping the legislative branch come to agreements, or motivating them. Or maybe they are making executive decisions that move things. Watching the stock market fluctuate wildly on the off hand tweets of POTUS doesn't inspire me with confidence, but who knows, maybe with enough deregulation someone else's 401k or stock options will be looking up!
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The only thing I find strange about this is the NDA. Only the most anti-Trumpers care about an affair years ago. With his history it would be surprising if there had not been affairs. Why the pay-off? His base was not going to vote for Hillary no matter how despicable Trumps behavior.
The NDA angle is bizarre. Only makes sense to me in the context of serial cheater who has to be cautious of his pre-nups.
On a side note: Liberals do care about individuals who cheat on their wives (at least under certain circumstances). When was the last time you heard anything about John Edwards?
That's interesting thing to bring up. You mean the same John Edwards whose story broke in the National Enquirer and got almost no traction for almost a year in the same mainstream media that is breathless reporting on anything they can find whether or not verified? Seems to me to be a literal case study in how similar conduct is reported completely differently based on party (Edwards, conduct by the way, was both better and worse, depending on point of view, and the cover up was at least equally as bizarre).
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The only thing I find strange about this is the NDA. Only the most anti-Trumpers care about an affair years ago. With his history it would be surprising if there had not been affairs. Why the pay-off? His base was not going to vote for Hillary no matter how despicable Trumps behavior.
The NDA angle is bizarre. Only makes sense to me in the context of serial cheater who has to be cautious of his pre-nups.
It is also worrisome. If Trump is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep these women (I believe there is more than Stormy) quiet, and to threaten them with million-dollar lawsuits if they don't, what else is he willing to do to keep these stories under-wraps?
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On a side note: Liberals do care about individuals who cheat on their wives (at least under certain circumstances). When was the last time you heard anything about John Edwards?
That's interesting thing to bring up. You mean the same John Edwards whose story broke in the National Enquirer and got almost no traction for almost a year in the same mainstream media that is breathless reporting on anything they can find whether or not verified? Seems to me to be a literal case study in how similar conduct is reported completely differently based on party (Edwards, conduct by the way, was both better and worse, depending on point of view, and the cover up was at least equally as bizarre).
And on a related note: That "it came to light" for the MSM after he turned out to be a major contender in 2008 against both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama.
More likely than not, Edwards was run through the coals because he challenged the Clinton Political Machine.
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There was also Gary Hart in 88 found fooling around with a model on the improbably named "Monkey Business" yacht.
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There was also Gary Hart in 88 found fooling around with a model on the improbably named "Monkey Business" yacht.
While many of the same people are still around, most of them were still bit-players on the larger stage. Different rules applied in the 1980's.
Which isn't to mention that was pretty much the apex of "the religious right" and they had enough influence that the Dems couldn't just shrug that off.
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Both the right and left are being hypocritical on the matter of character traits that still matter.. does lying, sex, family values, cheating, racism, misogyny…still matter? I think stealing, murder, treason… still matter.
With regards to character of a Leader, what is your line in the sand?
What failure of character would stop you from supporting someone?
What failure of character would stop you from supporting a political leader that in all other ways matches your ideology, policies, goals?
Are the lists the same?
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Both the right and left are being hypocritical on the matter of character traits that still matter.. does lying, sex, family values, cheating, racism, misogyny…still matter? I think stealing, murder, treason… still matter.
This is actually a fair criticism, these things do matter. The problem is that in a binary two party system there is no solution. A responsible voter can't just throw up the their hands because "their" candidate is a bad person, when the other person is worse for the country.
I'm still of the view that Hillary was a far worse choice than Trump. A year in, I think Trump was a better choice than I realized. I even think he's been better for the positions of the people on the left, though they've absolutely refused to acknowledge it, than another more typical Republican would have been.
With regards to character of a Leader, what is your line in the sand?
What failure of character would stop you from supporting someone?
Why don't you answer this question? What personal failure in the Democratic candidate, with whom you agree on 75%+ of the issues, would cause you to vote for Trump for reelection, or even to stay home?
Is there any such thing? Or do you acknowledge that getting 75% of what you're looking for, as opposed to what seems to be 100% what you hate, is worth overlooking even major defects?
What failure of character would stop you from supporting a political leader that in all other ways matches your ideology, policies, goals?
Are the lists the same?
I think your real options are to influence who ends up as the party's candidate.
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To be honest I'm not sure what my lines in the sand are.
I do think we deserve better then have to choose to compromise our own values in order to support someone that does not measure up.
To support and defend such a person that does not meet our own standards, to me anyways, suggest they are not really our standards, or wont be for long.
Personally I struggle with this which is why I asked the question. Not to trap anyone.
Ok my lines in the sand will be (I will not support any leader - even if that means spoiling my vote)
- Intentionally, knowingly, criminally manipulation of the of the facts in order to create division, anger and hatred.
- A reliance on Fear as a means to motivate.
- Hypocrisy i.e. promoting Values while intentionally not trying to live up to them.
- Racism
- Murder
- Treason
- Intentional cheating, stealing - level of criminal action
- Allowing lobbyist to overly control them - To such a point its obviously they are puppets.
Putin, Trump, Hillary would not get my vote
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A reliance on Fear as a means to motivate.
Crap, that's going to eliminate a lot of candidates.
Aren't about 90% of political ads and speeches all about fear? Fear of what it would mean if <insert opponent> gets to nominate a Supreme Court Justice? Fear of what will happen to your job/economy? Fear of the removal of public safety nets? Threats, threats, threats outweigh Opportunity 3:1.
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Ok my lines in the sand will be
<This is where I would find a good Kang and Kodo gif of them laughing at you to insert>
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Ok my lines in the sand will be (I will not support any leader - even if that means spoiling my vote)
- Intentionally, knowingly, criminally manipulation of the of the facts in order to create division, anger and hatred.
- A reliance on Fear as a means to motivate.
- Hypocrisy i.e. promoting Values while intentionally not trying to live up to them.
First all, kudos on trying to have a line in the sand. I'd suggest you rethink it though. We live in a two party system, if you fit within the great mass on the political spectrum one of the two candidates will almost certainly better align with your goals than the other. Unless you're to the point where you reject the legitimacy of the system itself and no longer wish to record your support of it by voting at all.
But in particular, the 3 items listed above eliminate virtually every candidate possible. Though the first is far more common in a non-criminal contest, it's not clear if you meant that reference to by hyperbolic or literal.
- Racism
Agreed, virtually no one would vote for David Duke.
I do draw a big distinction between racism, and accusations of racism.
- Murder
- Treason
Hard to imagine a politician recovering from these, though it's pretty easy to show that they can recover from accusations if they can throw enough doubt on the matter.
- Intentional cheating, stealing - level of criminal action
We've had more than one Congressman caught doing this and remaining in office or even being reelected.
- Allowing lobbyist to overly control them - To such a point its obviously they are puppets
Tough to be sure on something like that. Seems more an accusation you can throw at the other side's politicians (ie, "He's controlled by the NRA") than say (I won't vote for him cause he's a pawn of the teacher's union).
Putin, Trump, Hillary would not get my vote
Putin wouldn't get my vote. I have a real problem supporting autocrats in any context.
Hilary is autocratic, but could certainly be the lesser of two evils in some circumstances.
Trump, was definitely a tough one to vote for, the last election had two horrible candidates. That said, he's actually been better than I expected. I even think, objectively, he's been better from the left point of view than another traditional Republican would have been (though there's zero chance anyone on the left is going to acknowledge it).
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I gladly withheld my vote from both major party candidates in 16, as I considered them fatally flawed. I don't care about a lesser of evils, because I take a long term view. If my vote for a third party is added with enough other votes to be more than the margin of difference between the two major parties, it will affect whether a party asks a candidate to step aside on character issues, whether they will collude with a candidate during primaries, whether they back candidates under indictment with pac money, or brag about how they could murder someone and still get their candidate elected.
Legislation and policy isn't the only thing that matters about a politician. Leadership, example, attitude, diplomacy, and other qualities also shape the world around us in profound ways.
I would have voted for Sanders based on his integrity, even though I'm not very well aligned on policy.
And, by the way, the "virtually no one" who would vote for David Duke were 8500 and sufficient to win a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. According to wiki, they cared more about their property taxes than his character - although they might well have had no conflict at all.
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For me the point about character is that if one is going to overlook character flaws for their party’s candidate then they can’t use the same characters flaws as arguments against others… And really at your core you must me ok with those flaws at some level.
With regards to infidelity (topic of this thread) I had in the past held leaders to that standard but today I don’t. What does that say about me? I don’t expect people in power to keep it in their pants and that’s ok??? (I hope their partners leave them)
I get making a choice between what one views as the better of two “evils” but such a choice changes us when we make it. Though I may agree with most of the policies of the better of two “evils” I most definitely will not defend or excuse the “evil” (character traits I find distasteful). Character must matter or what’s the point.
I know my list is subjective, (and quickly compiled) its why I included the judgment of intentional. I don’t expect leaders to be perfect but there must be a point I say - to far.
For me the ends do not justify the means. If I made the choice between what I felt was the better between of two “evils” then fine, man up, the policies matter more to me then character flaws, don’t pretend otherwise. I don’t want to pretend so no more. If the leader does not deserve my support they will not get it, even if I agree with 100% of the policies they represent. No more.
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I'm not as hung up over personal character flaws if they are merely personal. Like, if a candidate's personal life is a mess but they take the job seriously I'm not hung up about their imperfections. It could be a messy divorce, or even a drug problem, and I would just want to know if it will interfere with their work. But if the work ethic is there then I'm fine. I daresay that even a criminal record wouldn't bother me, so long as it was behind them and not pertinent to their current work status.
What I consider an unacceptable 'personal flaw' is that the person lies for their special interests, or steals using their government position, or otherwise abuses the office or doesn't do the job as stated. Being beholden to special interests, for instance, is not only corrupt in a general sense but specifically also means they refuse to do the job they're hired to do. It's like if I went to work for Google but I spend most of the time there soliciting Microsoft for funding. You're fired!
To me a candidate who I don't trust to represent the best wishes of the majority of Americans is unacceptable. If I think they want the office to help only their party, or worse, only themselves and their allies, then forget it. At this point I'd have to be pretty convinced that there was no hidden master behind a candidate to think positively of them. I might perhaps vote for someone merely unobjectionable, but I wouldn't be happy about it unless I thought they actually cared about the office or at least the causes they claim to espouse. Basically the thing I find most unacceptable in politics is lying. I would have greater respect for a war-hawk who came out and said "I think blowing up dark-skinned people is great" than someone who mouths liberals buzz words and then proceeds to do the same as the former anyhow. I wouldn't have much regard for either, but at least you'd know where you stand with the first one.
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I think the only reason I care about an infidelity is whether it represents a betrayal or if it could leave the politician compromised by blackmail.
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I even think, objectively, he's been better from the left point of view than another traditional Republican would have been (though there's zero chance anyone on the left is going to acknowledge it).
Other than energizing the Left and starting what looks like to be a wave election this November, I can't really imagine what you're talking about. :)
You should start a thread talking about this. I, for one, would be interested.
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I think the only reason I care about an infidelity is whether it represents a betrayal or if it could leave the politician compromised by blackmail.
Or, you know, taken out before the secret service could have a chance to stop it. :P
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Hilary is autocratic, but could certainly be the lesser of two evils in some circumstances.
Trump, was definitely a tough one to vote for, the last election had two horrible candidates. That said, he's actually been better than I expected. I even think, objectively, he's been better from the left point of view than another traditional Republican would have been (though there's zero chance anyone on the left is going to acknowledge it).
I didn't vote for either one. But then, that was due to the Electoral College and my(and everyone else) deciding that it was a "safe win" for Trump so I threw my vote to a third party candidate.
Hopefully if he is the General Election candidate in 2020, I'll have that option once again.
His impact on 2018 in my state is likely to be minimal at best or worst depending on point of view. I doubt they're going to make much headway into my state. Other states, that's another matter. But I still think the polling for 2018 is likely to miss the mark in many ways. Of course, I haven't checked to see what Nate Silver is tracking at this point, but I think we're still too far out to really have any solid indications of what's going on.
Most of the "modern polling" methodology is likely to end up polling in districts that were likely to vote Democratic anyway, so they're going to have a strong pro-democrat bias. What isn't so clear is what is going to be happening in the more rural/less urban districts.
A number of "purple" and even "light-red" districts a potentially going to flip, but I think it's still highly probably(as Nate Silver suggested a couple months ago) for the aggregate vote tally to go heavily in favor of the Democrats, but for them to end up with "a split decision" in regards to control of Congress.
I'd almost bet on a Democratic House and a Republican Senate right now except things are so in flux right now it would be an insane bet to make when the final candidates are unknown.
Republican controlled House is still theoretically possible, even though the odds are getting increasingly bad on that count.
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I'd almost bet on a Democratic House and a Republican Senate right now except things are so in flux right now it would be an insane bet to make when the final candidates are unknown.
After last election cycle, I don't think I'd bet on politics, ever. :P
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Things are heating up, now that Trump has denied knowing about the hush-money to Stormy. (https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/05/politics/donald-trump-stormy-daniels/index.html)
As Electoral-vote.com summarizes (http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2018/Senate/Maps/Apr06.html#item-1):
If Trump is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that means that Cohen, of his own volition, borrowed money on a line of credit against his house to pay off the adult actress without any expectation of being reimbursed. The ethical issues this creates are staggering. First, lawyers are not supposed to make major decisions (like paying hush money just before an election) without even informing their clients what they are up to. Cohen could be disbarred for that. Second, if the purpose of his gift to Daniels was to influence the election, it would be an illegal unreported campaign expense, which could land him in prison. Third, Trump's name was printed on the NDA, but how can a contract be valid if one party to it doesn't even know it exists? If Avenatti wins the first round of his case and gets it to be handled in a public courtroom rather than in arbitration, he will certainly ask the judge for permission to depose both Trump and Cohen, which could get interesting.
(Emphasis mine.)
Odd that one of the best lawyers in the country (after all, Trump only hires the best ;) ) would so blatantly break the law on his own volition.
Of course, if Trump did know about the payment, then he did not report the campaign expense, (https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805368/payment-to-stormy-daniels-may-have-broken-campaign-finance-law) which is also illegal.
And the pot begins to simmer...
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after all, Trump only hires the best
And fires them after a few months.
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Of course, if Trump did know about the payment, then he did not report the campaign expense, (https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805368/payment-to-stormy-daniels-may-have-broken-campaign-finance-law) which is also illegal.
Or someone reached the reasonable conclusion that this wasn't a campaign contribution, which is all the more credible if there was a history of paying settlements established by Trump in his pre-campaign days. After all, there are legitimate reasons for any celebrity to enter into such arrangements.
Do the Congressional settlements paid for by the federal government also constitution campaign contributions? If you really want to strain it there are any number of things that could be shoe horned into such an analysis. How sure are you about this interpretation?
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Well, this particular "settlement" was paid about 2 months before Election Day, and I have not heard that there were extended negotiations (that took, say, months) prior to that. So it very much looks like this was a payoff to prevent a possible "October surprise" which might influence the election results, therefore making it a campaign expense.
It's also odd that this was handled entirely by his lawyer, who said he used his own funds, and that Trump denies the affair or knowing about the payoff. It makes it look like he was trying very hard to hide the whole thing, and not necessarily to shield himself just from Melania's wrath. :)
One can't be completely certain about this until all the facts are out, of course. But the circumstances we've seen so far certainly point in that direction.
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"An expenditure made by any person or entity in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate’s campaign is also considered an in-kind contribution to the candidate."
So Trump's knowledge (or anyone else in the campaign) might make it an issue, although I think it is hard to prove that Trump is cognizant of his immediate surroundings at any given time.
Either way, I think that whole line of inquiry is quibbling and stupid. The intent of these laws is to prevent undue influence, but Trump's lawyer "giving" him $130k is kind of irrelevant considering his general cash flow, and certainly less influential than mountains of PAC money. Prosecuting on a technicality that could probably be made against any candidate is an act of distracting desperation. I doubt we ever see anything come of this.
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Well, this particular "settlement" was paid about 2 months before Election Day, and I have not heard that there were extended negotiations (that took, say, months) prior to that. So it very much looks like this was a payoff to prevent a possible "October surprise" which might influence the election results, therefore making it a campaign expense.
If Trump's campaign had paid this as a "campaign expense" I'm pretty sure we'd be on here with people asserting that it was illegal for Trump to misappropriate campaign resources to settle his personal issues.
By this logic, if Trump reached a settlement with the IRS two weeks before the election, to prevent a public filing by the IRS of a tax fraud claim, that would be a legitimate "campaign expense."
Honestly, you don't see a difference between a campaign expense and something that benefits a politician in their personal life?
It's also odd that this was handled entirely by his lawyer, who said he used his own funds, and that Trump denies the affair or knowing about the payoff.
That is odd to me too, not aware of any lawyers who make such payments out of their own funds. But the lawyer actually claimed that first, didn't he? Would love understand why he did so.
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The whole thing is odd. What possible impact would a story coming out about an alleged affair years before have on the election when we are talking about Trump's history? He has admitted to affairs and cheating on his wives. His "prolife" stance had already won over the majority of Evangelical voters and they are the only group that might have cared.
Why would his lawyer fork out 130K of hush money if that was all there was? That is what stinks to me. I'll let the lawyers and partisans fight about the legality of the money. I am more interested in the why.
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Well, you may get your wish, Mynnion, since the legality of the money is going to become an issue.
Trump has admitted that he paid Cohen to pay Daniels. (http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2018/Senate/Maps/May03.html#item-2) Both Giuliani and Trump via Twitter (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/03/trump-acknowledges-stormy-daniels-payment-denies-affair/576135002/) has said so. (Notice that someone else wrote the tweet for Trump. ;) )
Of course, Giuliani says it "is going to turn out to be ... a fact now that ... It's not campaign money. No campaign finance violation." Mainly because the money was "funneled through a law firm." Uh-huh. As Electorial-vote.com said, "If all a politician had to do in order to engage in de facto laundering of campaign contributions was to hand over said contributions to their lawyer, then surely a Dick Nixon or a Bill Clinton or one of the Bushes' cronies would have figured that out long ago." :)
They could argue that such payments are quite regular for Trump, but that runs into at least two little problems. One is that Trump would have to disclose all the other such payments of NDA to make his case, which kinda defeats the purpose of said payments.
The other problem is the timing of this particular payment. The alleged sexual encounter happened in 2006. But it wasn't until 2016, two weeks before the election, that hush money was paid. If Trump was so very concerned that this story would cause him personal, not political, harm, why did he wait 10 years to squelch it? Didn't he have a personal life before then? ;)
So if this does go to court, the court is going to be asking Trump a lot of questions about it. Like why he made the payment, and why he lied about it. And even Bill Clinton, who is obviously more intelligent than Donald, had to resort to the definition of what "is" is to squirm his way out of admitting an affair. We'll see how well Donald does. :)
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I understand why there's an issue in whether Trump's lawyer did something he wasn't supposed to. But I don't really see how it's a violation of the law to use campaign money on PR for the candidate, even if that PR amounts to quieting people who would publicly make him look bad. How is that not real PR for his campaign? I don't see how it's possible to logically disconnect Trump's "private" image with his image as a candidate. It's simply a reality now that the two are always the same; there's no such thing as the candidate as professional as opposed to the candidate as private citizen. Trump didn't invest the President being a celebrity, he's just the only one in recent memory who was already a celebrity before running.
I'm not even addressing whether it's good or bad to have had an affair, or what the ethics are of handing people money in exchange for silence. But strictly on a "will this help get me elected" axis what exactly is the problem of spending campaign money on an action that will help win the election, and that doesn't break the law?
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Wayward, you missed the key point of the revelation. Trump's payment came from his personal funds, not campaign resources, which pretty much eliminates any possible violation here. There's nothing illegal about paying someone to enter into an NDA, even the campaign could have done it, they'd just have had to make filings about it. If Trump used his personal funds, there's only a poor argument that this was a campaign expense - especially given his past practices and celebrity status.
In fact, if this was the basis of the FBI's raid on Michael Cohen, this may completely invalidate its validity, as there would be no crime and every thing seized could be off the table.
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Intent to influence the election = in-kind campaign contribution.
Loan from Michael Cohen to the campaign required filings (he was paid back in installments over time).
So no, this doesn't clear the air.
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"But I don't really see how it's a violation of the law to use campaign money on PR for the candidate..."
You have to account for campaign money regardless.
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Wayward, you missed the key point of the revelation. Trump's payment came from his personal funds, not campaign resources, which pretty much eliminates any possible violation here. There's nothing illegal about paying someone to enter into an NDA, even the campaign could have done it, they'd just have had to make filings about it. If Trump used his personal funds, there's only a poor argument that this was a campaign expense - especially given his past practices and celebrity status.
In fact, if this was the basis of the FBI's raid on Michael Cohen, this may completely invalidate its validity, as there would be no crime and every thing seized could be off the table.
Which isn't to mention, last I heard, campaign finance laws have never capped the contributions the person running for office can contribute to their own campaign fund. So even if Trump paying out of his own pocket somehow qualified as a "campaign expense" it circles back to he paid for it personally, and he is allowed to contribute an infinite amount of money into his own political campaign.
The only "complication" in all this was his Lawyer paid Stormy, then Trump paid the Lawyer. Which means any investigation in regards to this would be in regards to the process involved in Trump providing reimbursement to his lawyer, and if anything with respect to that violated a law somehow.
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The mysteries of campaign finance laws are beyond me, but unless it turns out Trump is that damn broke that he had to make the pay-off with other people's money, I don't see how that's the issue. :-\
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Of course, if Trump did know about the payment, then he did not report the campaign expense, (https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805368/payment-to-stormy-daniels-may-have-broken-campaign-finance-law) which is also illegal.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But if he's saying that it's his personal funds, does that make a difference?
NOBLE: Well, it makes a difference in the sense that, if it was his personal funds, it was an individual campaign contribution. If it came from another company or if it did come from the Trump Organization, it was a prohibited contribution. And we don't know what the source could have been. The source could have been another company, could have been another individual. We just don't know. And one of the purposes of the campaign finance laws to allow us to know where the campaigns are getting financed.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's talk a little bit about this idea of it being 11 days before the election. Why is that so important?
NOBLE: It suggests that the election was on their mind. Now, she allegedly had the affair about 10 years before. There was a potential article that was going to come out in 2011. But they did not enter the agreement until right before the election. And that is evidence that the purpose of this was for the purpose of influencing the election.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And if that is the case, why is that problematic?
NOBLE: If it's for the purpose of influencing the election, the federal campaign finance laws come into play. So that's where you have the violation of the contribution limits by whoever paid for this - and that you also have the campaign's failure to report this. Everything a campaign does for the election is supposed to be reported and is subject to limits. And that includes even things like this, even though they are things that may be salacious, that people don't want to know about. They are supposed to be reported if they're for the purpose of the campaign.
(Emphasis mine.)
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Intent to influence the election = in-kind campaign contribution.
There's literally no way to establish that where you have a celebrity that has a practice of paying for NDAs that predates his campaign. In fact, it's almost certain that the opposite conclusion would be held.
This can not be an "in-kind campaign contribution" if it's not a campaign contribution, ergo if Trump repaid this as an expense, or even as a general draw down versus a standard retainer, it pretty much moots the point. By the way, this is exactly why Rudi disclosed it, because it completely invalidates the premise.
To get to a contrary place is NOT an easy legal argument. I grant you it can be made, but then you're back to my prior questions above, about how the Congressional settlements are not "campaign contributions," how favorable insider media write ups are not illegal campaign contributions, heck how FB assisting the Obama campaign is not an illegal campaign contribution.
I get it, you guys are looking for a crime for Trump to be guilty of, no matter how implausible, but this isn't likely to be it.
Loan from Michael Cohen to the campaign required filings (he was paid back in installments over time).
Legal services and expenses are routinely billed after the expense is incurred, this is not a "loan." By this interpretation every campaign in history has violated the campaign finance laws by failing to report the services they received and later paid for as "campaign contributions."
So no, this doesn't clear the air.
No it doesn't clear the air. This raises the likliehood that Trump lied, but that's not illegal, and even there its entirely possible he wasn't aware of the details if this was a common enough occurrence. I mean if Cohen had settlement authority of up to $250k, for example, which is not unheard of, then its entirely possible this is fully legal and no one lied about it.
What this does is virtually destroy a criminal charge of a campaign finance violation.
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Wayward, that presumes this is a campaign contribution, which this revelation most certainly undermines as a legitimate conclusion. Basic rule of debate requires that you explain away a major flaw before you carry on as if your assumption is true.
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This whole line of inquiry is stupid. So if he weren't campaigning, does Trump do anything differently?
Just like Clinton, however, he's stuck his foot in it up to his hips with his repeated denials followed by the eventual Truth. Makes you look guilty as hell. Had he simply come out and said, "Yes Stormy was paid off by my attorney/handler, whom I reimbursed in full, to squash negative PR - just like I've done on a regular basis for years." Then there's not much to talk about. But no, first it was "I never heard of this woman. I had no idea that she was paid hush money. She's in violation of the agreement that I deny having ever seen."
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The only 2 scenarios that make any sense to me (and I concede that it is very likely there is a 3rd actual scenario that will never make sense to anyone but Trump) is that A) he did something illegal here and he's trying to cover it and now we see the game of, what lesser things must he confess to to avoid the "big" issue he needs to keep hidden? OR B) He's afraid of his wife or the repercussions of having his marriage implode with the national spotlight on him.
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Of course, if Trump did know about the payment, then he did not report the campaign expense, (https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805368/payment-to-stormy-daniels-may-have-broken-campaign-finance-law) which is also illegal.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But if he's saying that it's his personal funds, does that make a difference?
NOBLE: Well, it makes a difference in the sense that, if it was his personal funds, it was an individual campaign contribution. If it came from another company or if it did come from the Trump Organization, it was a prohibited contribution. And we don't know what the source could have been. The source could have been another company, could have been another individual. We just don't know. And one of the purposes of the campaign finance laws to allow us to know where the campaigns are getting financed.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's talk a little bit about this idea of it being 11 days before the election. Why is that so important?
NOBLE: It suggests that the election was on their mind. Now, she allegedly had the affair about 10 years before. There was a potential article that was going to come out in 2011. But they did not enter the agreement until right before the election. And that is evidence that the purpose of this was for the purpose of influencing the election.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And if that is the case, why is that problematic?
NOBLE: If it's for the purpose of influencing the election, the federal campaign finance laws come into play. So that's where you have the violation of the contribution limits by whoever paid for this - and that you also have the campaign's failure to report this. Everything a campaign does for the election is supposed to be reported and is subject to limits. And that includes even things like this, even though they are things that may be salacious, that people don't want to know about. They are supposed to be reported if they're for the purpose of the campaign.
(Emphasis mine.)
Entrapment probably comes into play.
The relationship with Stormy, whatever form it took, happened 10 years previous, and didn't "become an issue" for the Trump campaign until the weeks immediately before the election. Once Stormy started to make it an issue, the Trump legal team addressed it.
So do we need to file charges against Stormy for attempting to influence the outcome of an election because she sat on information for 10 years before making noises about going public with it?
EDIT: To be fair and unbiased on this. You cannot Accuse the Trump team of "trying to influence the election" on this issue because "Trump knew about if for 10 years" without likewaise making the same accusation relevant to Stormy as well, as she likewise "knew about it for 10 years and did nothing."
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On the other other hand...
Letting some scummy celebrity entrepreneur hide an affair/relationship/encounter from his wife is one thing. Seeing that man become POTUS? Something else entirely. Granted the possibility of increased financial gains seems more likely than any form of civic duty; but who knows?
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This whole line of inquiry is stupid. So if he weren't campaigning, does Trump do anything differently?
Just like Clinton, however, he's stuck his foot in it up to his hips with his repeated denials followed by the eventual Truth. Makes you look guilty as hell. Had he simply come out and said, "Yes Stormy was paid off by my attorney/handler, whom I reimbursed in full, to squash negative PR - just like I've done on a regular basis for years." Then there's not much to talk about. But no, first it was "I never heard of this woman. I had no idea that she was paid hush money. She's in violation of the agreement that I deny having ever seen."
What would be the logic of Trump coming out and saying "Why yes! I just paid hush money to a porn star so that she wouldn't boast about OUR TORRID LOVE AFFAIR!!!" Admitting it would basically mean they wasted the money. If it's not illegal to lie about it then it sort of jives with wanting it under the carpet that he should deny it happened. Denying it...is exactly why you'd pay hush money in the first place. Duh.
I thought the issue here was perhaps some illegal conduct on the part of his lawyer. But if this is just about trying to 'catch' him having spent personal hush money for his campaign then my opinion of these attempts to sink Trump is getting even lower than it was before. I mean, it does sort of resonate as good old karmic payback from the Democrats from when Bill was basically dragged through the mud for cheating on his wife. So it feels like that's all this is; Trump having a finger pointed publicly at an affair he had. "Ha ha! Cheater!" That's ok, I guess, as a random tactic in trying to make him look bad but if that's all it is then it's going to amount to nothing because I think the public's image of him was already below "affair level" before this. If he killed a guy or something that would be a new level. But payouts, affairs, and general scuminess? That's old news.
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On the other other hand...
Letting some scummy celebrity entrepreneur hide an affair/relationship/encounter from his wife is one thing. Seeing that man become POTUS? Something else entirely. Granted the possibility of increased financial gains seems more likely than any form of civic duty; but who knows?
I would agree.
But you cannot have it both ways.
IF Trump's legal team "buying her silence" is "an attempt to influence the election." Then her (threat of) speaking out also is "an attempt to influence the election." Which in turn means we need to assign a dollar value to her (potentially) having spoken out about it(in time to influence said election), and it then needs to be attributed somewhere as "a political campaign contribution."
After all, your whole basis of argument is that the event in question happened 10 years previous. Right? The knife cuts both ways on this.
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Wouldn't that end up like one of those adds from a group "not associated with the X campaign", yet obviously an attack add targeting a candidate? I suppose you'd still have to assign a value to it. And if it was just a single individual, she may have exceeded allowable amounts. :P
Mostly, I think the whole issue is stupid. And agree that lying about hush money, as long as you aren't under oath, should be expected, until such a point that everyone knows it's a lie. Maybe it's just morbid curiosity at this point from the president's detractors. Where IS that line, where his supporters can't help but concede the president lied?
It wasn't my argument about it being 10 years ago. I was just attempting to explain why that time frame is irreverent. The circumstances, not the time past made the information relevant/valuable/more-damaging.
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IF Trump's legal team "buying her silence" is "an attempt to influence the election." Then her (threat of) speaking out also is "an attempt to influence the election." Which in turn means we need to assign a dollar value to her (potentially) having spoken out about it(in time to influence said election), and it then needs to be attributed somewhere as "a political campaign contribution."
I think this misses the point being made, that actual money was paid by one side, whereas the other side did not spend any money. I don't remember anyone ever suggesting that there should be a campaign dollar value associated with voicing an opinion or making a statement of fact... although I have heard that campaign dollars should be treated as if they were equivalent to voicing an opinion...
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It wasn't my argument about it being 10 years ago. I was just attempting to explain why that time frame is irreverent. The circumstances, not the time past made the information relevant/valuable/more-damaging.
The circumstances did arguably "make it relevant to the campaign" but as I said, if it is "relevant" to shut her up, her speaking out also would be "relevant" as well. (Hence why it could have damaged his election campaign)
That she sat on it for 10-ish years and waited until October 2016 speaks more to her seeking to either blackmail Trump into giving up a wad of cash, or to "Influence the election."
Obviously, she has since been "enlightened" that both her lawyers and herself could potentially make a lot more money by shredding the NDA(which they've essentially done), and going out to pursue further actions against Trump at this point. (And maybe get some paid Anti-Trump speaking engagements as well. After all, it seems those speaker fees seem to be able to run upwards of a quarter Mil per speech if you "hit the big time." Which I understand is about how much she settled for initially.)
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Wayward, that presumes this is a campaign contribution, which this revelation most certainly undermines as a legitimate conclusion. Basic rule of debate requires that you explain away a major flaw before you carry on as if your assumption is true.
I don't see how "this revelation most certainly undermines" it "as a legitimate conclusion" when the excerpt starts with the question, "If he's saying it's his personal funds, does that make a difference." ???
If the purpose of paying off Stormy was to prevent her story from affecting the campaign, then it is a campaign contribution, regardless of whether it comes from Donald, Michael, or my great aunt Matilda. And all contributions are legally required to be reported.
The relationship with Stormy, whatever form it took, happened 10 years previous, and didn't "become an issue" for the Trump campaign until the weeks immediately before the election. Once Stormy started to make it an issue, the Trump legal team addressed it.
The fact that his alleged relationship with Stormy didn't "become an issue" until the weeks immediately before the election is just another indication that this was a campaign contribution, not a personal expense.
So do we need to file charges against Stormy for attempting to influence the outcome of an election because she sat on information for 10 years before making noises about going public with it?
And Stormy did not "sit on the information for 10 years." According to the timeline in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormy_Daniels%E2%80%93Donald_Trump_scandal), Stormy discussed the affair back in 2011. So the payment was not to prevent the knowledge of the alleged affair from becoming public, but to prevent her from discussing it just before the election.
Besides, there is nothing illegal about an American citizen trying to influence an election. It is campaign contributions that must be reported.
Since she didn't say anything, there was nothing to report. ;)
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There's literally no way to establish that where you have a celebrity that has a practice of paying for NDAs that predates his campaign. In fact, it's almost certain that the opposite conclusion would be held.
In theory there certainly is a way to establish this, such as if the people involved made statements that the purpose of the payoff was to influence the outcome of the election. Giuliani has now suggested this was the case. Who knows what else lurks on Cohen's seized devices? If coupled with an admission that they want to keep this off the campaign books, you even get a crime-fraud exception.
I get it, you guys are looking for a crime for Trump to be guilty of, no matter how implausible, but this isn't likely to be it.
Indeed, we're watching closely, and Trump's constant telegraphing that he's worried about what the investigations will find helps hold our attention.
Note that I didn't make a claim about how likely it was that Trump would be guilty of a crime here. I was responding to your claim that if Trump used his own funds then the possibility of violations was pretty much eliminated. However the funds were accounted for, if the intent to influence the election can be established it's still arguably in violation of campaign finance laws since it wasn't reported. I'll grant that Trump's (no doubt extensive) history of paying off people with dirt on him will help his argument on THIS particular hush operation.
Loan from Michael Cohen to the campaign required filings (he was paid back in installments over time).
Legal services and expenses are routinely billed after the expense is incurred, this is not a "loan." By this interpretation every campaign in history has violated the campaign finance laws by failing to report the services they received and later paid for as "campaign contributions."
You're off track. If it was a campaign expenditure then it had to be reported, whether it was a "loan" or a "service" or an "expense". The question is whether it was a campaign expenditure, which depends on facts that we don't know (but investigators might know). Certainly Giuliani has suggested that it was by asking us to imagine if [Clifford's story] had come out during the final debate, in order to understand Cohen's motivations at the time.
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The Washington Post spells it out. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/02/trump-repaying-the-stormy-daniels-money-doesnt-mean-there-were-no-campaign-finance-violations/?utm_term=.b84062260bd0)
We still have the same question: What was the purpose of this,” Noble said when we spoke by phone Wednesday evening. We’ve noted in the past that the question of whether the payment was meant to aid Trump’s candidacy is central to campaign finance considerations — and that it’s hard to argue that this payment wasn’t related to the campaign.
“If the purpose of this was to stop [Daniels] from hurting the campaign,” Noble continued, “then what you have is Cohen made a loan to the campaign. And it was an excessive loan because lending the campaign money is a contribution. It was an excessive contribution until it’s repaid...”
Trump, Noble said, could make contributions of any size to his own campaign. (Giuliani alluded to this, too.) But the campaign can’t just take loans of any size from anyone without reporting them as long as Trump pays them back later. If that were legal, there would be no point in having campaign finance laws: Candidates could accept giant loans, not report them, and pay them back after the election. (The Wall Street Journal reports that the repayment occurred after the campaign.) By not reporting a loan from Cohen meant to aid Trump’s election, the campaign would have violated the law. Had Cohen not been repaid, the violation was his own, as an agent of the campaign making a contribution to it of that size...
What’s more, even if the loan didn’t have anything to do with the campaign — again, a questionable premise — Trump may have had to report the loan on his ethics forms as a federal officeholder.
In an interview with The Post’s Robert Costa, Giuliani went further.
“The repayments took place over a period of time, probably in 2017, probably all paid back by the end of 2017,” Giuliani said. “That and probably a few other situations that might have been considered campaign expenses.” Here he’s trying to say that the Daniels payment was different from campaign expenses — but he also admits that Cohen lent the campaign money in the form of expenses that Trump later repaid. Cohen isn’t listed in the campaign’s contribution or expenditure disclosures...
“Giuliani suggesting it was funneled through the firm as legal fees,” Noble said, “is evidence of an intent to hide the source, which could make it knowing and willful, which is criminal.” There could also be tax violations, he added...
If Cohen lent Trump $130,000 by making the payment to Daniels so that her story wouldn’t come out before the election, that loan would have had to have been reported.
And it would have been reported before Election Day.
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Certainly Giuliani has suggested that it was by asking us to imagine if...
Did Giuliani actually suggest that?? Ummm... wow.
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When asked why Cohen paid Daniels the money, Giuliani said Cohen made the allegations against Trump go away, saying "he did his job."
“Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton?" Giuliani asked.
"Cohen made it go away," he added. "He did his job."
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/386035-giuliani-imagine-if-that-came-out-in-the-middle-of-the-last
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No matter how you slice it, the "declaration of contributions" is so ticky-tack considering that the campaign spent over 600 Million dollars. It's rounding error.
I guess he should have established a GrabEm Super PAC and just laundered the money trail. He should know how to do that, he can just ask his Russian banker friends.
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Note that I didn't make a claim about how likely it was that Trump would be guilty of a crime here. I was responding to your claim that if Trump used his own funds then the possibility of violations was pretty much eliminated. However the funds were accounted for, if the intent to influence the election can be established it's still arguably in violation of campaign finance laws since it wasn't reported.
But...this is such small potatoes. Even if you knew with 100% certainty that this was the case and he had failed to log it as a contribution (of his own), do you personally feel like that's something that should be pursued with a vengeance? To me it sounds like the political equivalent of jaywalking. We're talking about an era where it's been suggested that Hillary literally took all of the DNC's finances and diverted them to her campaign, and where it's being argued that Trump was illegally colluding with Russia, and here we are trying to catch him on having undeclared money spent on hushing up an affair? In Europe they would laugh at people who care about this kind of thing. The difference in scope between what happens in politics in general and this is so staggering that it almost feels like a drunken fantasy that Trump would somehow be buried by a triviality like this. I'm not saying it's good or that he's innocent of wrongdoing in any sense, but as an attempt to basically oust the President this is a really weak approach.
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This is interesting. Stormy Daniels has told the world tgat she’s not the one paying for her lawyer. Someone else is covering her legal costs. Who?
So exactly who is paying Michael Avenatti? And is he a lawyer, an opposition researcher, a journalist, or a campaign operative?
He wants to make the discussion all about where Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal attorney, got his money but, to have clean hands, Avenatti needs to come forward with exactly who is financing his operation, who his sources were for detailed banking information, and whether he really is an attorney solely representing Stormy Daniels or just using her as cover to wage a political operation.
From the beginning, this has been fishy. Daniels's previous lawyer advised her to stick to her agreements. In contrast, Avenatti okayed her violating with impunity her non-disclosure agreement on "60 Minutes" despite a binding arbitration judgment against her. She acknowledged on Twitter that she is not paying for her lawyer. So who is? And did he indemnify her against all multimillion-dollar penalties?
It took a long time and even a court battle to find out that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the Fusion GPS dossier, a fact that was disclosed only after the damage was done, as former British spy and the dossier's compiler, Christopher Steele, had already created a vast echo chamber as though the material he was peddling had been verified in some way, which of course, it never was. Now Avenatti is being allowed to repeat this same process, mixing truths with half truths and evading accountability.
Stormy Daniels has to pay Trump the money back plus more (I think) if she breaches. Her first lawyer told her not to breach. This one says "Yeah, breach." This only makes sense as legal advice if he was willing to personally cover her losses for breaching, or if there was some deep-pocket backer willing to do so.
But it can’t be Avenatti. He’s in hock for $5+ million in federal taxes. That guy doesn’t have the cash to cover Stormy’s looming payback.
Avenatti has averaged slightly more tgan one appearance a day on CNN the last 55 days or so, he can’t have very many clients paying him right now. Who’s funding this crapshow?
By the way, you know who else was in the habit of confusing their target Michael Cohen with other Michael Cohens, just as Avenatti has? FusionGPS.
This week, Avenatti released to the media a report detailing consulting payments to Cohen, and much of it, despite a few errors, has been verified. AT&T, Novartis, et al.
But this release of a “report” by Avenatti also raises the question of where and how did he get this detailed financial information because he didn’t find it on Google. This is the kind of information that would have been known only by the Treasury Department, his banks or by prosecutors, raising some serious questions about what kind of operation Avenatti is running.
A “report” , you mean like a dossier?
Avenatti has been given a free, unfettered media perch on TV to spread his stuff without the networks forcing him to meet any disclosure requirements, saying that he is Daniels’s attorney when someone else entirely is paying for this operation is not true disclosure that allows the viewer to evaluate the source and potential conflicts. He is now being given deference as though he is a journalist interested in protecting unverified sources while he makes headline-grabbing pronouncements. Lawyers need to disclose the source of their evidence.
Just like the faux Russia collusion story drafted by Hillary Clinton and pushed by her minions in government and the media, this whole thing appears to be an op by deep state factions.
I'm not saying it's good or that he's innocent of wrongdoing in any sense, but as an attempt to basically oust the President this is a really weak approach.
This is not designed to oust him, merely hurt him and reduce his approval rating so that impeachment can go forward.
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Just had to comment on this:
Well it's an odd attack vector, the guy ran on being a super alpha. How does a porn star and playboy model suing to be able to talk about having sex with him work against that image?
They want to talk because they want to be paid for their stories. Trump was a balding, overweight, boorish 60 year old multimillionaire claiming to be a billionaire. Is the reason they are suing that they want to tell everyone how lucky they were to be able to sleep with him? That seems to be what the quote is implying. And it is almost certainly wrong. Why say it?
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Sigh, Avenatti is most definitely not personally owing any $5 million in taxes. He was an investor in a company that does, a position that he liquidated. I'm not even going to bother with the rest of the rant, conspiracy theories, and speculation.
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Defending Avenatti?
In a complaint submitted to the California State Bar Association — and cc’d to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle — Bellevue attorney David Nold asserts Avenatti carried out an illegal “pump and dump” scheme through his Washington state-registered Tully’s ownership firm, Global Baristas US, LLC.
Nold’s complaint contends that while Avenatti ran the company, he fleeced nearly $6 million in federal and state tax withholdings — money meant to be held in trust for payment of quarterly taxes — from the paychecks of Tully’s employees.
He’s exactly who you think of when you hear the word “shyster”. He is the poster child for it. He’s got millions, both personally and professionally, in debts that only a weaselly lawyer can avoid paying.
By all means, defend that guy.
While you do that, consider how Stormy found this guy and who’s footing his bill. Doesn’t take much to realize that Avenatti will do anything for a price and 2 interviews a day on CNN.
Who is funding this deal?
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Crunch, what's your "most damning answer" to your own question?
If that turned out to be the case, how does it matter? Or do you believe that this NDA was to stop a false allegation, as I assume Trump still contends?
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Who funds any lawyer? Somebody super pissed off at the the other guy, the other lawyer, the other guy who is a lawyer, or the other guys friends and family. Maybe Soros himself is paying him. Would it make anything he says more or less true than if he was spending his own money, working on contingency, or working to gain notoriety that he can turn into book deals, speaking engagements, more porn star clients?
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Who funds any lawyer? Somebody super pissed off at the the other guy, the other lawyer, the other guy who is a lawyer, or the other guys friends and family. Maybe Soros himself is paying him. Would it make anything he says more or less true than if he was spending his own money, working on contingency, or working to gain notoriety that he can turn into book deals, speaking engagements, more porn star clients?
Actually I do think it matters quite a lot who's doing the funding. Something Robert Anton Wilson once said which stuck with me is that the way politics is designed now each party/candidate is guilty of so many actually bad things - that were required of them to get where they got - that the other side can always truthfully point at their guilt and create the partisan wedge. You end up with a scenario where the fact that the accusations are true actually isn't so relevant; of course they're true, there's lots of blame to go around for bad actions. What's more important in the grand scheme is what's the motive of those creating the wedge.
And I think that down here on the ground I'd have a similar mindset. If some guy on the street was being accused of being immoral in some way, the first question I'd probably have isn't "oh yeah? What did he do?" but rather "what's it to you? Why are you trying to have him tarred and feathered?" Now, if the answer is "he just robbed my store!" then we have a real case of a wrong being committed and someone asking for help to right it. But if it's some third party trying to make themselves look good by pointing fingers at 'bad guys' I'm not going to be so interested in entertaining that. The motive matters a lot to me.
It's hard for me to say exactly what I think about the President behaving poorly, and so I don't have a firm stance on whether I'd like to hear about his potential wrongdoings or not. But offhand I do agree with Crunch that I would be leery about a public spectacle being put on by interested parties like Soros. I absolutely have no desire to feed into their schemes.
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omething Robert Anton Wilson once said which stuck with me is that the way politics is designed now each party/candidate is guilty of so many actually bad things - that were required of them to get where they got - that the other side can always truthfully point at their guilt and create the partisan wedge.
What bad thing was President Obama guilty of before his election? And to calibrate your standard of justice, I'd also like to know that if you apply the same standard to yourself, you come out having been "guilty" of fewer "bad things" than Obama.
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omething Robert Anton Wilson once said which stuck with me is that the way politics is designed now each party/candidate is guilty of so many actually bad things - that were required of them to get where they got - that the other side can always truthfully point at their guilt and create the partisan wedge.
What bad thing was President Obama guilty of before his election? And to calibrate your standard of justice, I'd also like to know that if you apply the same standard to yourself, you come out having been "guilty" of fewer "bad things" than Obama.
I agree that the general principle as he stated it is more about the party lines than about individuals. So while it could be argued (although I know you disagree to an extent) that both parties have done bad things, have faults, and answer to questionable interest groups, it wouldn't follow from that to make the fallacy of division and assume that literally every individual in each group possesses the precise properties of the group in general. For instance if we take the generality that the GOP caters to the NRA, it doesn't automatically follow that if you name a particular senator that they cater to the NRA. So if you take Obama as an example of someone who doesn't seem objectionable in the way I suggest (and you may be right) it's sort of tangential to the issue that the right can still point at the left when convenient to do so and correctly accuse them of various bad things. Cherry picking is certainly part of the game here. So if Obama is clean as a whistle that's ok, because under his auspices the right had Hillary to pillory. If Bernie Sanders was above reproach, that's ok because the DNC cheated in their primaries. You get the idea. You don't need every person to be guilty, just enough of them and at the right time that you have constant ammo to feed to 'your side' to get them riled up, and "the truth" is always technically on your side even though your motives are anything but pure. In the end my point isn't that every politician is GUILTY (thankfully I don't think this is the case) but rather that the system currently verges towards increased partisan divide and that this is in the interest of both parties to maintain. Or at least they think so for now. So when we hear a "true story" about a person who did a bad thing and the witch-hunt ensues, I'm not one of those gratified that the witch got burned and all is now right in the world. If the people advocating for the burning (to use a historical-type example) are those who would inherit the witch's farm, I will be deeply suspicious of the motives of the accusation, to the point where even if I see a bubbling cauldron and a familiar I'll take a second look just in case it's not a cat making soup.
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Crunch, what's your "most damning answer" to your own question?
If that turned out to be the case, how does it matter? Or do you believe that this NDA was to stop a false allegation, as I assume Trump still contends?
I don’t know about most damning but most likely is the DNC and Hillary Clinton (although as we’ve learned there’s no material difference between those two). It’s well documented that Hillary intended to delegitimize the election and overturn the results by fueling impeachment efforts. The goal with Stormy is to reduce Trump’s approval rating sufficiently to provide cover for those that would vote to impeach.
Most damning, it’s the Russians. In a time when the media and the left(again, no material difference) hysterically sees Russians around every corner, it could be Russians.
Maybe Soros.
Someone is paying Avenatti, someone with an interest that aligns with deep state never-trumpers. Given the impacts, I think we have a right to know who’s footing the bill to destabilize the US government. Stormy says it’s not her, she’s not paying.
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Avenattis response to questions of funding:
“Once again (for at least the 20th time)–ALL fees and expenses of this case have either been funded by our client, Ms. Stephanie Clifford, or by donations from our crowdjustice.com page,” Avenatti wrote in a statement he linked to a tweet through Dropbox.
I don't have a hard time believing that there are enough small donors who hate Trump out there to contribute $500,000.
Crowdfund site (https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stormy/)
article (http://www.newsweek.com/michael-avenatti-reveals-whos-paying-his-stormy-daniels-work-after-accusations-920008)
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I don’t have a hard time believing it’s anonymous and/or “fake” donors from anywhere in the world.
Is it so hard a stretch under these circumstances to think Avenatti is doing his usual deceptions and the money is coming through fronts from the DNC, Clinton, russian bots or whatever?
It’s actually easier to believe the funds come this way, it makes more sense than 10’s of thousands of Americans rushing to the defense of a stripper/pornstar who was consensually spanked by Trump a decade ago.
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He road the wave of tabloid celebrity gawking into office. Why is it implausible he could ride a similar wave back out? :P
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There are more than just 7 shadowy NeverTrumpers. There's a whole movement of people who would spend 10 bucks to feel like they are jabbing a thumb in Trump's eye. You can start with everyone who voted for Hillary. I don't know why those guys would put up the money if they can fire up their base by getting them to put some kind of skin in the game.
I'm not sure why you find it unlikely that some of the millions of people who have signed online petitions to impeach Trump wouldn't kick in a few bucks, or more likely that the bulk of donations are not legitimate. There always exists the possibility that the people you suspect could be funding the effort, but I doubt they would use a crowd fund to disguise their efforts when they have perfectly functional other ways to do so.
Unless you think that the vast majority of Americans love Trump, and evidence to the contrary is all manufactured polls, professional paid protesters, and media spin.
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Come on, Crunch. Don't tell me you wouldn't have ponied up $10 to help get Obama impeached? ;)
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So to be clear you are advocating that he is being funded as a political matter to oppose Trump? Would that make contributions to him reportable under our election laws and require him to register as some kind of PAC?
Crowd funding a lawyer to publically oppose Trump, or to pursue a claim on behalf of a client for the purposes of political damage would be even more directly related to politics that what you guys claimed was an election law violation by Trump to have settled the claim without reporting it. Wouldn't it? Or is this another place where laws don't apply to the "good guys"?
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Since you put a generic "you guys" out there, I'll just distance myself if anyone missed my stance that going after this as a campaign financial reporting issue is ridiculous.
It is an interesting question as to what falls under political disclosure rules. According to WaPo:
While federal election law limits the amount of money individuals can donate to campaigns, political action committees and national political party committees, no such rules apply for donations for legal cases, like the Daniels case. In theory, someone could donate as much money as they wanted as many times and they want, which can’t be done with political donations.
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I am sympathetic to the opinion that it would be ridiculous to try to take Trump down over this particular peccadillo. I don't think it CAN happen. He isn't going to have his party turn on him over this (after all, it's just additional color on things that were already known about his character).
But if it COULD be done, I'd be fine with it. It's not like we can't field presidents who HAVEN'T done this kind of thing.
Avenatti's PR for his case as a political campaign is an interesting angle, but I'm gonna guess he's not billing his client for the TV appearances anyway.
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Second, there are huge swaths of liberals or the left who cannot grok how conservative christian values can tolerate this stuff. Hypocrisy IS the story. YOU claim X yet you voted for Y, how is this not insane?
I voted against him, but technically there is some sanity for the self-elected protectors of female virtue to wish him president. Because as president he's no longer able to run beauty pageants where he controls the lives of stables full of vulnerable young women. :D
To my atheist friends who oppose Trump on sexual/moral grounds, I ask: "You claim to believe in the separation of church and state; why do you then rail at the right for failing to enforce their religious views in their voting?" Because that too smells like hypocrisy.
Trump seems to be able to keep things in his pants during his presidency, which is more than could be said about ... JFK, WJC, Johnson ... That's not a reason to vote for him, but it is a reason for his detractors to stop being sanctimonious hypocrites and look for more substantive reasons to attack him over. Oh yeah, and that whole strategy of calling one's enemies stupid inbred hillbilly hypocritical flyover white flour losers ... how did that work out for us in 2016? Please god let someone atop the 2020 DNC team come up with a better plan than doubling down in their failed 2016 strategy.
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Welcome back Pete. Also, I'll have to give more thought on putting someone in office to keep others safe from them... One of the more amusing ideas I've heard. You may be onto something there.
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Maybe we should have another election for anti-leaders and if they get enough votes they have to go live on an island somewhere in quarantine for a term. Best reality show, ever. Haspel can emcee.
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Stormy’s defamation lawsuit against Trump was dismissed today. So egregious was the suit that Daniel’s was also ordered to pay Trump’s legal fees.
I am literally laughing. ;D
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Closing the loop on this ...
Celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti was arrested Monday on charges of trying to extort up to $25 million from Nike by threatening to reveal claims of misconduct by company employees.
Avenatti also is charged in a separate federal case in Los Angeles with embezzling a client’s money “in order to pay his own expenses and debts” and those of his law firm and coffee company, and of “defrauding a bank in Mississippi,” prosecutors said.
What a piece of work.
At this point, the only thing missing for Trump is if Obama comes out and admits he *really was* born in Kenya. LMAO . What year it's been already.
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that said Stormy’s lawyer a dick doesn't change the payout she got for have sex with Trump
I'm pretty sure that's not disputed.
No that that matters in anyway. Trump isn't supported for his Moral character
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Beat me to it. Yeah, Avenatti has dug himself a hole in the world. He's clearly been doing shady stuff all along, which makes it a bad move to shove yourself into the limelight.
He messed with the bigger boys when he decided to take on Nike. Likely he's shaken down lots of smaller firms that paid him "go away" money.
The fact that he's on Trump's lengthy enemies list will no doubt make his supporters rub their hands together and giggle.
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Trump may have spiked a poem star and had her sign an NDA. So what?
She's not a victim.
She's not someone who he had some responsibility to protect her innocence. (Like a 21 year old intern)
He didn't perjure himself to cover it up.
It's not public business.
It didn't happen while president.
Calling the right hypocrites over this just suffocates possible discussion.
The right didn't make a fuss about the pinup girl that Clinton poked before he was Pres.
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And, remarkably, with this long list of reasons, you missed the single reason Trump is in trouble because of this "indiscretion." :)
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And, remarkably, with this long list of reasons, you missed the single reason Trump is in trouble because of this "indiscretion." :)
We've covered this previously I do believe, there is letter of the law, and there is spirit of the law. He may have(and probably did) violated the letter, but given the spirit in which that particular law was written, I don't think he actually did anything contrary to it.
The spirit of that law revolved around the purchasing and trading of political favors by third parties to influence a candidate.
I don't think anybody has managed to make a credible claim that Cohen was trying "to buy Trump"(trade political favors) by paying off Stormy Daniels.
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that said Stormy’s lawyer a dick doesn't change the payout she got for have sex with Trump
I'm pretty sure that's not disputed.
No that that matters in anyway. Trump isn't supported for his Moral character
Exactly. Much rather have someone who pays his own cash to cover up affairs than someone who starts genocidal wars to cover up affairs.
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Of course, if Trump did know about the payment, then he did not report the campaign expense, (https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/596805368/payment-to-stormy-daniels-may-have-broken-campaign-finance-law) which is also illegal.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But if he's saying that it's his personal funds, does that make a difference?
NOBLE: Well, it makes a difference in the sense that, if it was his personal funds, it was an individual campaign contribution. If it came from another company or if it did come from the Trump Organization, it was a prohibited contribution. And we don't know what the source could have been. The source could have been another company, could have been another individual. We just don't know. And one of the purposes of the campaign finance laws to allow us to know where the campaigns are getting financed.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's talk a little bit about this idea of it being 11 days before the election. Why is that so important?
NOBLE: It suggests that the election was on their mind. Now, she allegedly had the affair about 10 years before. There was a potential article that was going to come out in 2011. But they did not enter the agreement until right before the election. And that is evidence that the purpose of this was for the purpose of influencing the election.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And if that is the case, why is that problematic?
NOBLE: If it's for the purpose of influencing the election, the federal campaign finance laws come into play. So that's where you have the violation of the contribution limits by whoever paid for this - and that you also have the campaign's failure to report this. Everything a campaign does for the election is supposed to be reported and is subject to limits. And that includes even things like this, even though they are things that may be salacious, that people don't want to know about. They are supposed to be reported if they're for the purpose of the campaign.
(Emphasis mine.)
That's a legal positivist argument. Take it to a judge. Some go blue in the face expecting others to get outraged over a legal technicality.
Just before the election Trump gets blackmailed by a whore he shtupped and pays her off. Your saying that his failure to record this as a campaign offense is "the reason he's in trouble"? Really? All this moral sanctimonious outrage is about *that*?
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For me it is. :P
I require the person I vote for to be "lawful".
I prefer them to be "good".
Anyone brazen enough, stupid enough or sloppy enough to break the law has no business in drafting and enforcing them or other policies >I< am to live by. Doesn't mean I trust OTHER law makers. I do think they should all be ready to put under the microscope. We should expect a lot more out of our senators, congressmen, governors and president. They should certainly be held to a higher standard (or level of legal scrutiny) than you and me.
I for one didn't care who he screwed, I just didn't want to add my name to that list.
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Just before the election Trump gets blackmailed by a whore he shtupped and pays her off. Your saying that his failure to record this as a campaign offense is "the reason he's in trouble"? Really? All this moral sanctimonious outrage is about *that*?
I've pointed out to Wayward, and others, many times, that with Trump's history of NDAs it would be impossible to show that this was for the purpose of influencing the campaign. In fact, it's a virtual certainty it would have been entered into whether or not the campaign existed.
But even more interesting, if Trump has redirected campaign funds to pay for the NDA it would have been deemed a misappropriation of campaign funds. And there's no question that it would be pursued on that basis.
The fact is Cohen pled guilty without reasonable cause as part of deal he cut. Mueller couldn't have won the case of this being a campaign finance violation in any court.
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I'm not saying that his failure to record this as a campaign offense is "the reason he's in trouble." I'm telling you that it is. :)
And, actually, you're the one who admitted it to me, since I didn't specify it at all. :D
Seriati, obviously the legal and ethical thing to do was to pay Stormy with his own funds and report it as a campaign contribution. Nothing in the law (AFAIK) prevents a candidate from contributing to himself.
Instead, he tried to hide the payment and lied about it. What does that tell you about Trump's legal and ethical intentions?
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Lol, yes, makes total sense, let's enter into a non-disclosure agreement and wait a sec, how do you spell your name for the press release about our non-disclosure agreement?
NDAs are legal. Whether they should be is a different question. With his background there's no legitimate way to separate his personal desire for an NDA from a political purpose, which makes treating it as a campaign expense highly questionable and paying for it from campaign funds probably a violation. Paying for it out of his own money is exactly what should have (and did) happen.
Our campaign finance laws are designed and intended to prevent the misappropriation of campaign funds to private purposes, not to "catch" people spending private funds on private purposes. Again, what you are seeking is not about the Rule of Law, its about the corruption of law for a political purpose.
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And, actually, you're the one who admitted it to me, since I didn't specify it at all
Yes you did. In a previous post. I had no idea what you were saying and out of respect to you I read your previous posts to find out what you meant. Given your insulting response I won't treat you with such respect in the future if you take that as an admission. You just turned into Crunch's counterpart. Is that really how you want to be?
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Instead, he tried to hide the payment and lied about it. What does that tell you about Trump's legal and ethical intentions?
I don't think those that support Trump rhetoric and policies care much about his moral or ethical character or what hes done to protect his persona. Many actually admire it
Trump is defining the new normal with regards to the moral character of leadership, (weather the evangelicals want to acknowledge that or not), but maybe that a good thing. Maybe questionable morals doesn't matter when it comes to leadership. Honestly does it matter? When it suits our purpose, right or left, we tend to look away when looking away gets us what we think we want. Maybe its time to stop pretending.
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Instead, he tried to hide the payment and lied about it. What does that tell you about Trump's legal and ethical intentions?
I don't think those that support Trump rhetoric and policies care much about his moral or ethical character or what hes done to protect his persona. Many actually admire it
I think this is a crazy point to even make. It makes literally no sense to argue that he morally should have publicly declared a NDA to cover over an affair. You could argue that he shouldn't have had an affair, but this point is ridiculous. Now to be fair this isn't totally unlike what Clinton received over Lewinsky, except that there they had him on perjury. But that, too, was likely a trumped up charge to try to trap him with something over what was otherwise a moral affair used against him for political purposes. The Europeans laughed. Only Americans could pretend that this is a capital political crime when all the while insane human rights violations go on behind closed doors (and sometimes in front of them).
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Lol, yes, makes total sense, let's enter into a non-disclosure agreement and wait a sec, how do you spell your name for the press release about our non-disclosure agreement?
To which I say, too bad. :P His stupidity is not an excuse to break the law.
NDAs are legal. Whether they should be is a different question. With his background there's no legitimate way to separate his personal desire for an NDA from a political purpose, which makes treating it as a campaign expense highly questionable and paying for it from campaign funds probably a violation.
Define "legitimate." He had years to make sure she signed an NDA. During all that time, he apparently wasn't worried about her blabbing to his wife, etc. But suddenly, just before the election, it becomes a serious personal issue, completely separate from his running for President? What a coincidence! ::)
It certainly appears to be campaign related.
And, as I said before, what would prevent him from paying from his personal funds and declaring it a "campaign contribution?" An in-kind contribution of sorts, where he didn't put money in the campaign, just reported the value that was used to be part of his campaign? That seems to me to legally cover him. And if it made the NDA useless, well, as I said before, not my problem. :)
Again, what you are seeking is not about the Rule of Law, its about the corruption of law for a political purpose.
No, what you're trying to do is excuse Trump from breaking the law.
And, actually, you're the one who admitted it to me, since I didn't specify it at all
Yes you did. In a previous post. I had no idea what you were saying and out of respect to you I read your previous posts to find out what you meant. Given your insulting response I won't treat you with such respect in the future if you take that as an admission. You just turned into Crunch's counterpart. Is that really how you want to be?
Good detective work on your part, since I didn't even remember that I had addressed this issue previously in this thread. My apologies. I assumed you just remembered it, since just about all the liberal pundits who discussed the issue at the time made it very clear that his breaking campaign finance law was the primary reason Trump was being criticized. I was afraid this was another case of selective memory, where conservatives ascribe motivations and reasons to liberals that have little to nothing to do with their real motivations. Again, my apologies.
I think this is a crazy point to even make. It makes literally no sense to argue that he morally should have publicly declared a NDA to cover over an affair.
Once again, it's not a moral question but a legal one. Spending money to help his campaign, by making sure Stormy didn't blab, should have been reported. The moral and ethical lapse was Trump believing he didn't need to obey the law, then lying like a dog to cover it up.
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Define "legitimate." He had years to make sure she signed an NDA. During all that time, he apparently wasn't worried about her blabbing to his wife, etc. But suddenly, just before the election, it becomes a serious personal issue, completely separate from his running for President? What a coincidence! ::)
It certainly appears to be campaign related.
I'm not sure what's so hard to understand. You are insisting that Trump decided to do this right at election time, as if there was no possibility that it was her choice of timing to maximize the damage to him and/or increase her chances of a great settlement.
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Wayward, I gratefully receive and acknowledge your graceful apology. Thank you for your very reasonable explanation
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As for daniels, EN ESPANOL DECIMOS' CUERPO DE TENTACION CARA DE ARREPENTIMIENTO.
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I think this is a crazy point to even make. It makes literally no sense to argue that he morally should have publicly declared a NDA to cover over an affair.
My intention was not to argue that point - only that the morale argument of such issues no longer matter. The moral arguments only seem to matter when it the 'other guy' while we (in general) look away when its 'our guy'
Lets embrasure the moment and end the pretense that we actually care about such things. How nice it might be to never have to argue about such matters again.
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Define "legitimate." He had years to make sure she signed an NDA. During all that time, he apparently wasn't worried about her blabbing to his wife, etc. But suddenly, just before the election, it becomes a serious personal issue, completely separate from his running for President? What a coincidence! ::)
It certainly appears to be campaign related.
I'm not sure what's so hard to understand. You are insisting that Trump decided to do this right at election time, as if there was no possibility that it was her choice of timing to maximize the damage to him and/or increase her chances of a great settlement.
Let's dispense with "possibilities." What are the actual facts in this case? Whose choice was it regarding timing? Was she the one who asked for the hush money? Why would she ask for it, since she already talked about the affair back in 2006? (Hard to ask someone to "hush" something that was already public knowledge. :) ) What actually happened?
No reason to speculate. If she was the one who forced the payment at that time, you have a point. But I haven't seen anything that indicates that. Is this based on something you know, or just a possible excuse that may or may not be true.
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No reason to speculate. If she was the one who forced the payment at that time, you have a point. But I haven't seen anything that indicates that. Is this based on something you know, or just a possible excuse that may or may not be true.
I'm not speculating! You're the one making a positive statement about what did happen. I have no clue!
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So on Stormy's timing, it was a case of trying to profit off the story, but happy to take an extortion payout instead. You can easily find the details, she gave an interview in 2011 to InTouch that they never published (until after the election), and decided to shop the story after the Access Hollywood release. As that apparently prompted her agent to decide it was a good time to shop it, the profit motive, rather than an ethical one seems clearly paramount. And in fact, since she did agree to an NDA for a cash payment that's exactly what played out.
Of course, blackmail or extortion doesn't bother you.
Lol, yes, makes total sense, let's enter into a non-disclosure agreement and wait a sec, how do you spell your name for the press release about our non-disclosure agreement?
To which I say, too bad. :P His stupidity is not an excuse to break the law.
There's no law requiring the public disclosure of an NDA. Again, this case is a loser on campaign finance. The John Edwards case was far far more egregious and it too was a loser. There's absolutely no way to establish that a private payment, where the motive is mixed, was a technical violation of campaign financial laws, and it's already clear it's not a substantive one. Campaign finance is about misapproriation of campaign resources, which is why candidates can spend in unlimited ways.
As I noted before, your read would make every haircut a candidate gets, every new suit, every single vanity item into a campaign expense, as they are all targetted at least in part at electability, and it's been clearly established by the actual cases that charging those to the campaign, whether or not disclosed, can trigger violations of the law.
Your read on this is self serving nonsense, not an accurate statement of how the law works or is intended to work.
NDAs are legal. Whether they should be is a different question. With his background there's no legitimate way to separate his personal desire for an NDA from a political purpose, which makes treating it as a campaign expense highly questionable and paying for it from campaign funds probably a violation.
Define "legitimate." He had years to make sure she signed an NDA. During all that time, he apparently wasn't worried about her blabbing to his wife, etc. But suddenly, just before the election, it becomes a serious personal issue, completely separate from his running for President? What a coincidence! ::)
She brought it up, see above. Her agent saw that after the Access Hollywood release the information value now had a premium and they moved to market it.
I'm willing to bet there are other women out there that have slept with him that he's never reached out to.
It certainly appears to be campaign related.
Lol. By your "standard" everything is.
And, as I said before, what would prevent him from paying from his personal funds and declaring it a "campaign contribution?" An in-kind contribution of sorts, where he didn't put money in the campaign, just reported the value that was used to be part of his campaign? That seems to me to legally cover him. And if it made the NDA useless, well, as I said before, not my problem. :)
So if a candidate pays for medicine for an illness, where disclosing the illness could hurt their campaign, even if it's not disqualifying, by your logic that too is a campaign finance violation. If a candidate is in a fender bender and the other person says, lets settle this with a $500 payment and not involve the police or our insurance, that too is a campaign finance violation.
If a candidate, pays to have dentures so they can smile, that's a campaign finance violation.
You have no sense of perspective.
Again, what you are seeking is not about the Rule of Law, its about the corruption of law for a political purpose.
No, what you're trying to do is excuse Trump from breaking the law.
What law is that? There's no winnable case based on your misinterpretation, ergo not against the law, ergo not excusing breaking the law.
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So on Stormy's timing, it was a case of trying to profit off the story, but happy to take an extortion payout instead. You can easily find the details, she gave an interview in 2011 to InTouch that they never published (until after the election), and decided to shop the story after the Access Hollywood release. As that apparently prompted her agent to decide it was a good time to shop it, the profit motive, rather than an ethical one seems clearly paramount. And in fact, since she did agree to an NDA for a cash payment that's exactly what played out.
Of course, blackmail or extortion doesn't bother you.
Blackmail? Extortion? How can you blackmail or extort someone with public information?? ???
The first reports of an alleged 2006 affair between Trump and Daniels ... were published in October 2011 by the blog The Dirty and the magazine Life & Style. Around the same time, Daniels talked about the alleged affair with the gossip magazine In Touch Weekly, which chose not to publish the interview after Cohen threatened to sue the magazine. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormy_Daniels%E2%80%93Donald_Trump_scandal)
Stormy's motivation is not in question here. She was trying to make money on the story. It's Trump's motivation that is salient.
If Trump was trying to prevent the story from becoming public knowledge to his loved ones, the cat was already out of the bag, and no NDA was going to stop it.
If Trump was trying to prevent the story from becoming widely known, an NDA would help.
Lol, yes, makes total sense, let's enter into a non-disclosure agreement and wait a sec, how do you spell your name for the press release about our non-disclosure agreement?
To which I say, too bad. :P His stupidity is not an excuse to break the law.
There's no law requiring the public disclosure of an NDA. Again, this case is a loser on campaign finance. The John Edwards case was far far more egregious and it too was a loser. There's absolutely no way to establish that a private payment, where the motive is mixed, was a technical violation of campaign financial laws, and it's already clear it's not a substantive one. Campaign finance is about misapproriation of campaign resources, which is why candidates can spend in unlimited ways.
It's not just about misappropriation. In this case, it was using funds for a campaign that were not reported as such, not using campaign funds for non-campaign purposes. Or are you using "misappropriation" in a different way?
And if a case is a "loser," does that mean it is automatically legal and not breaking the law? ;)
As I noted before, your read would make every haircut a candidate gets, every new suit, every single vanity item into a campaign expense, as they are all targeted at least in part at electability, and it's been clearly established by the actual cases that charging those to the campaign, whether or not disclosed, can trigger violations of the law.
If taken to the extreme, perhaps. Taken to the opposite extreme, paying for hours of TV commercials advocating for a candidate is not a campaign contribution if they also plugged a specific brand of toothpaste at the end. :) What makes you think paying off a woman to protect a campaign is the same as getting a haircut?
Your read on this is self serving nonsense, not an accurate statement of how the law works or is intended to work.
I am no lawyer, so if you would like to explain how the laws which so many pundits were referring is not applicable in this case, I'm interested to hear it.
NDAs are legal. Whether they should be is a different question. With his background there's no legitimate way to separate his personal desire for an NDA from a political purpose, which makes treating it as a campaign expense highly questionable and paying for it from campaign funds probably a violation.
Define "legitimate." He had years to make sure she signed an NDA. During all that time, he apparently wasn't worried about her blabbing to his wife, etc. But suddenly, just before the election, it becomes a serious personal issue, completely separate from his running for President? What a coincidence! ::)
She brought it up, see above. Her agent saw that after the Access Hollywood release the information value now had a premium and they moved to market it.
I'm willing to bet there are other women out there that have slept with him that he's never reached out to.
Once again, her motivations are not salient to this. Did Trump pay her off to protect his personal reputation, or to protect his campaign for President?
It certainly appears to be campaign related.
Lol. By your "standard" everything is.
Sounds like, by your standard, nothing is. ;)
And, as I said before, what would prevent him from paying from his personal funds and declaring it a "campaign contribution?" An in-kind contribution of sorts, where he didn't put money in the campaign, just reported the value that was used to be part of his campaign? That seems to me to legally cover him. And if it made the NDA useless, well, as I said before, not my problem. :)
So if a candidate pays for medicine for an illness, where disclosing the illness could hurt their campaign, even if it's not disqualifying, by your logic that too is a campaign finance violation. If a candidate is in a fender bender and the other person says, lets settle this with a $500 payment and not involve the police or our insurance, that too is a campaign finance violation.
If a candidate, pays to have dentures so they can smile, that's a campaign finance violation.
You have no sense of perspective.
No, you're trying to make everything equivalent when they are not. Just because paying off a fender-bender doesn't need to be reported does not imply that paying for TV commercials doesn't need to be, either, or paying someone a NDA doesn't need to be reported.
Again, what you are seeking is not about the Rule of Law, its about the corruption of law for a political purpose.
No, what you're trying to do is excuse Trump from breaking the law.
What law is that?
From what I understand, the law says that contributions to a campaign must be reported, even non-monetary, "in-kind" contributions. Trump made a contribution to his own campaign in the form of a NDA payment to Stormy. He tried to hide it by various devious means and by out-and-out denial that he ever made it. That appears to me to be someone trying to break the law and hide it.
There's no winnable case based on your misinterpretation, ergo not against the law, ergo not excusing breaking the law.
Am I understanding you correctly? That breaking the law is primarily determined by whether there is a "winnable case" or not? That, in fact, if the case is not "winnable," is it automatically legal? ???
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No reason to speculate. If she was the one who forced the payment at that time, you have a point. But I haven't seen anything that indicates that. Is this based on something you know, or just a possible excuse that may or may not be true.
I'm not speculating! You're the one making a positive statement about what did happen. I have no clue!
We know that she did not force Trump to pay her at that time. Trump could have paid her anytime before the election is his purpose was to keep his loved ones from knowing about the affair. Apparently, he didn't care until he was a candidate. That's a pretty strong indication of motivation in my book.
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Stormy's motivation is not in question here. She was trying to make money on the story. It's Trump's motivation that is salient.
That's on you since you implied it made a difference whether the timing was set by Trump or Daniels, and the answer was Daniels.
If Trump was trying to prevent the story from becoming public knowledge to his loved ones, the cat was already out of the bag, and no NDA was going to stop it.
Without open confirmation, or if Daniels denied it publically (which is also not illegal), it would help. Ergo, moot.
It's not just about misappropriation. In this case, it was using funds for a campaign that were not reported as such, not using campaign funds for non-campaign purposes. Or are you using "misappropriation" in a different way?
Personal funds are not inherently campaign funds, ergo they can not be "misappropriated" for a non-campaign use.
It would have been a misuse to use actual campaign funds for this.
Moreover, it's fundamentally not why we have campaign finance laws to prevent or force the disclosure of personal expenses paid for with personal money.
And if a case is a "loser," does that mean it is automatically legal and not breaking the law? ;)
Yes. If a case is unwinnable because it's a nonsense claim, it means the conduct is not breaking the law.
Just like if I tried to convict you of murder because you cut down an oak tree. The case would be nonsensical, even if the point of the murder laws is to stop unlawful killings, and it was unlawful to kill the oak tree.
If taken to the extreme, perhaps. Taken to the opposite extreme, paying for hours of TV commercials advocating for a candidate is not a campaign contribution if they also plugged a specific brand of toothpaste at the end. :)
You are already close to the ridiculous extreme. Again, you seem not to understand that you want to treat conduct it would not be legal to pay for out of campaign funds - and that a candidate would therefore be required to pay for out of pocket - as a campaign expense solely to force it to be disclosed. There's no world in which that makes real sense.
Putting commercials on tv to advertise reruns of the apprentice was not a campaign contribution either.
Or if you want to get real, what about all the misleading and free support that flows through Hollywood. I mean, even if you discount the opinion spewers on the news channels, you still have things like Hollywood basing characters on specific politicians - I mean hello "Madame Secretary." Did they disclose that contribution?
Not every thing in the world is intended to be covered by any convenient legal theory. The laws you are talking about are specifically designed to prevent the misuse of contributions by others, not to limit what a candidate can spend on themselves. The interpretation of "mixed use" items has consistently been to be skeptical of treating them as campaign expenses specifically because the misappropriation of those funds is what the law was written to stop. Turning the entire history of the law, its purpose and its enforcement on its head to try and manufacture a legal problem when a candidate pays for a personal expense with personal funds is an abusive joke.
What makes you think paying off a woman to protect a campaign is the same as getting a haircut?
Just a difference of scale under your theory.
I am no lawyer, so if you would like to explain how the laws which so many pundits were referring is not applicable in this case, I'm interested to hear it.
You're clearly not listening.
Quit listening to pundits. They love to assert bizarre interpretations to create a headline.
Once again, her motivations are not salient to this. Did Trump pay her off to protect his personal reputation, or to protect his campaign for President?
Or for both reasons, or for neither reasons, or for a dozen. To win this case you'd have to prove it was the sole reason (actually prove it) and even then it's still most likely a loser.
Sounds like, by your standard, nothing is. ;)
Does it? Maybe actually spend some time learning about campaign expenses and come back to me.
No, you're trying to make everything equivalent when they are not. Just because paying off a fender-bender doesn't need to be reported does not imply that paying for TV commercials doesn't need to be, either, or paying someone a NDA doesn't need to be reported.
Then describe the legal/logical theory that separates them. You know what people actually do when they are trying to make an argument.
You don't have history on your side, no one's been found to have violated these rules on this basis, if fact worse cases have lost at trial and been derided.
You don't have purpose on your side, it's not why the law was written.
You don't have logic on your side if something like settling a car accident to keep it off a police blotter isn't covered and you can't differentiate why it's been considered a violation to use campaign funds to buy clothes to go to an event.
From what I understand, the law says that contributions to a campaign must be reported, even non-monetary, "in-kind" contributions. Trump made a contribution to his own campaign in the form of a NDA payment to Stormy.
Except, there's no reasonable basis to think that was a campaign contribution. Show any case where such has been found to be so in the past, and differentiate the Edwards case, and then come back to me.
You don't get to make up a fact.
He tried to hide it by various devious means and by out-and-out denial that he ever made it. That appears to me to be someone trying to break the law and hide it.
That appears to me to be someone hiding legal conduct that it was legal to hide.
Am I understanding you correctly? That breaking the law is primarily determined by whether there is a "winnable case" or not? That, in fact, if the case is not "winnable," is it automatically legal? ???
It's like we're debating global warming and you just keep repeating that the Earth isn't getting hotter cause your fridge is making ice.
What exactly do you think law is? There's no conduct here that's an actual campaign finance violation. It's only by an absurd, aggressive, never held up before and actually found to be a loser version an interpretation that you can make the claim. So yes, in this case, the fact that this is not a winnable case is evidence that this is not illegal conduct.
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Beat me to it. Yeah, Avenatti has dug himself a hole in the world. He's clearly been doing shady stuff all along, which makes it a bad move to shove yourself into the limelight.
He messed with the bigger boys when he decided to take on Nike. Likely he's shaken down lots of smaller firms that paid him "go away" money.
The fact that he's on Trump's lengthy enemies list will no doubt make his supporters rub their hands together and giggle.
I didn’t rub my hands together but I can’t stop giggling.
Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti was convicted Friday by a jury of all three charges related to his efforts to extort up to $25 million from athletic apparel giant Nike, in what a top prosecutor called “an old-fashioned shakedown.”
He’s looking at 20 years - . Remember when this guy was all the rage on the left, gonna take Trump down? More than a few media pundits were even talking about him running for President for Democrats.
Good times.
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And he's not done yet, he has another cases pending trial this spring if I heard the report right last night.