That's why it is a crucial difference if he said something like "to keep this from coming out during the campaign" under the arcane rules of donations
It's not that arcane, and you can read multiple former FEC commissioners saying it isn't a violation. For it to be a violation, you'd have to show that the other reasons for it were not the real reason for the payoff. Against a backdrop of other payoffs that's going to be impossible.
As for "doing something wrong"? Cheating on your wife is something wrong, and the law doesn't seem to have a problem with entering into these agreements to keep that quite (now whether it should is a different question). Not to mention protecting the Trump brand from damage was a legitimate business explanation.
Of course he can use unlimited funds for his campaign, but they have to be declared as campaign funds. Then they have to be accounted for as legitimate campaign expenses.
Again, it would have to be a campaign expense. It would have been flatly considered a violation of campaign finance laws if he had directed his campaign to pay off a mistress from a decade before the election. That's the kind of misappropriation of campaign resources for personal use that in fact gets investigated on a routine basis.
Declaring it would be no cure of the misappropriation. Ergo, you seem to be of the view that legal conduct could not be legally done during a campaign.
To make the argument that it was a payment he was making for personal reasons is certainly one he can try. But the Daniels affair stemmed back to 2006, and the payment wasn't made until one month before the election, yeah?
Since when does a defendant have to prove the case? The prosecution would have to demonstrate the payment wasn't made for a non-election reason - impossible against the backdrop of payments prior to any election even being on the horizon.
Certainly seems like it related to the election under the rules, although I'm no expert and wouldn't ever want to be.
Maybe you could point me at the rule, they seem to say the opposite to me (and based on former FEC commissioner statements, the Edwards case, and some of the actual campaign violations related to converting campaign funds for personal use).
It all seems so silly, I would think they could have easily washed this through a SuperPAC or other more esoteric pathway. I think it shows that Cohen and maybe Trump were probably unclear on the prickly ins and outs of campaign finance law, which are often illogical.
Again, if they had done this it would have been far more likely a criminal misappropriation of campaign resources for a personal benefit to candidate Trump.
Then you've got to go back to - if they did nothing wrong, why on earth did Trump deny making the reimbursement?
Married man? History of making these payments? Seems pretty obvious.
Does that really strike you as a bunch of people who thought Trump's payment was a legitimate personal expense?
I suspect they believe that the point of an NDA is to keep a matter private. Something being legal is not the same thing as it being savory.
In my opinion, the Democrats would be ill advised to bring impeachment proceedings on this, which constitute a futile gesture that will ultimately leave their base disappointed and further infuriate Trump's base.
Please bring it on this. It'll utterly fail and the ability to make the same charges on dozens of federal reps and senators will make it a field day.
No, this is far better as a claim that never sees court. That way they can endlessly claim its proof of him being a bad guy and a criminal and never get called out by the public seeing him win in court (which is what would happen).