Quote:
Originally Posted by August
|
Apples and oranges...
The government implicates Trump and the Trump campaign in federal campaign finance violations --
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.5eee7fb243d7
Quote:
“In this case, you’re dealing with a situation where his lawyer who actually admits to doing the transactions says that they broke the law and that Trump knew about it,” Noble said. “This is something that very clearly would have to be considered for criminal prosecution” of Trump — were he not president. Department of Justice guidelines indicate that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
For Trump to be charged — if he weren’t president — it would need to be a “knowing and willful violation,” Noble said. This doesn’t mean, though, that Trump would need to know the specific statutes that his actions were violating. It would be enough for Trump to know that campaign contributions needed to be reported and were subject to limits, which he clearly did, and that the payments were being made to influence the election.
That Cohen and Trump went to great pains to obscure the payments bolsters the latter point. (Cohen “arranged one of the payments through a media company and disguised it as a services contract, and executed the second non-disclosure agreement with aliases and routed the six-figure payment through a shell corporation,” the filing reads.) In that leaked recording from earlier this year, Trump mentions a payment in cash, which would shield the payment from scrutiny. (His legal team insisted he was saying not to make the payment in cash.)
“What’s unusual is you have the person who was the key operator in this” — Cohen — “did it for the purpose of influencing the election, and that the candidate knew about it," Noble said.
That sets this case apart from the case of former North Carolina senator John Edwards, who faced criminal charges for accepting contributions aimed at helping him hide a romantic relationship. In that case, there was no equivalent to Cohen implicating Edwards. (That relationship was brought to light, ironically, by the National Enquirer.)
|
As with many, many things Trump claims are "the same", this situation is not equal. The basic fact is, if Trump were not a sitting President, but, say, a state governor or a candidate for other office, he would be indicted and face charges and a trial. And, remember, there is no real need to indict and/or convict a President in order to have an impeachment; Nixon was never indicted, nor was Clinton. All that is needed is evidence of conduct involving high crimes and misdemeanors. It is interesting how Trump is being referred to in US Attorney filings as "Individual 1"; kinda sound sa bit like Nixon's "Un-indicted Co-Conspirator...
<O>