Exactly he made a personal problem go away. Dude is married. He can say he paid that womam to gp away for that reason alone and it wouldn't be anything illegal
When is trying to make a bsd personal story go away a felony. The media even understands thos is stretch
The fact that you don't understand why it is a crime, does not make it any less of a crime. In before "Its a process crime"...nope...its a felony.
@DonnyMost You compared this to John Edwards. Edwards was in trouble because of WHERE THD MONEY CAME FROM
Mueller has nothing to do with this. At least not anymore. Mueller was only involved because of Cohen's shady dealings with the Russians. This is now a whole separate issue. It's like when the cops come and kick down your door because they have a warrant due to your involvement with some hitmen, and they find a giant pile of cocaine on your kitchen table. Yeah, it ain't a dead body or a murder weapon, but it's still illegal and you're still going up the river for it. Once again, this is why you don't elect sleezy people.
To be fair... just one of many reasons, in a sane universe. But since so many Americans have a sports-type allegiance to their "team," what we've seen is basically John Stockton, Rick Mahorn, and Zaza Pachulia sign with the Rockets red and the red-wearing fans eventually screaming their heads off for those dirty fools, apologizing and explaining away every dirty play. But it's worse than that, of course.
When the Trump train derails, it will derail hard. November 2018 is right around the corner. The House should become majority Democrat. They will begin impeachment proceedings immediately. The Senate is a question mark in terms of how they will conduct the trial. Given that the Republican majority is slim and public opinion will be souring (even more) on Trump, the Senate may snowball on him. Chief Justice Roberts will preside and I trust him to do the right thing. This will all begin when the next Congress is seated in January 2019... I don't when it will conclude, but when it does, it will result in Trump resigning in disgrace all the while claiming conspiracy and his idiot followers will be relegated to the margins of society where they have always belonged. The Marco Rubios and Paul Ryans of the world will claim they never supported or liked Trump to begin with. Thus will end Republican's years long rage bender and so begins their electoral hangover. Of course none of this is counting Mueller's investigation, which will probably drop an atom bomb on us at any time now.
Don't have your confidence about the House of Reps, give several months of insanity to go, but if the Dems do take the House, that is a realistic prediction. I think the fall out could be much worse than his followers slinking away, TBH. Two Scoops, cretin that he is, would gladly set the nation ablaze before he admitted to any wrongdoing.
When the worm turns, it turns fast. Nixon is a perfect example. He was gaining in popularity even as Watergate became a household term throughout 1972. Then suddenly, he was done. I liken it to the way Jerry Jones hires and fires his head football coaches. When they're under his employment, he supports them 100% and thinks they are the best thing since sliced bread. Until they aren't. When he turns on them, he turns swiftly and decisively. You are either 'his guy', or you are fired. There is no grey area. You can expect when impeachment is impending that Republican leadership will distance itself just as quickly and sternly.
I don't know if people did a good job explaining the felony. I'm not sure I quite get it. But, this is my understanding: * Campaign expenditures are to be reported to the FEC. Failure to report a campaign expenditure over $25k is a felony. If Trump paid Stormy or McDougal directly to keep them out of the news, it would be a campaign expenditure and should be reported. * Donations-in-kind are considered campaign donations and are to be reported to the FEC. So, if a third party (AMI in one case, Cohen in the other) spent their own money to the women to help the campaign, that expenditure should have been reported as a campaign donation in-kind. Demonstrating the Trump knew about these donations and did not report would qualify as a felony. * If the campaign repaid those donations, they would instead be considered loans. Campaign loans are supposed to be reported. Repayments of loans are supposed to be reported as campaign expenditures as well. Repayment shows that Trump was aware of the help he was given. And, in any case failure to report is a felony. Now, of course, he can argue that the payments were not related to the campaign and he was doing it for merely personal reasons. It looks like they might go that way. But these payments were made shortly before the general election despite the fact that the relationships happened many years ago. That's suggestive enough for the court of public opinion -- we all know that he was paying off women so they didn't submarine his campaign. A prosecutor, though, would need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt (if he ever got an opportunity to indict). He'd have to demonstrate the expenditure itself, the loan or donation if applicable, and demonstrate his intent to do this for the campaign. I don't know what all evidence they have. I'm not confident that one tape is explicit enough to be sufficient. But then there might be a third court, Congress, if it flipped Democrat. They could consider campaign finance felonies to be a high crime. Who knows what would happen there.
...you know... ...I think I liked it better when all we had to worry about our president doing was debating the definition of the word "is"....
Let me introduce you to something called "Google". It lets you search news from the past (and present), especally helpful since you seem to have missed the news in the past. Here's Fortune Magazines reporting from December, 2016... Here's How Much of His Own Money Donald Trump Spent on His Campaign http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/donald-trump-campaign-spending/ Here's Open Secret's reporting: https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00023864 So yes, trump did spend $66M of his own money... but he didn't only self-fund his campaign.
...maybe this comes up, maybe it doesn't, I dunno... ...but anybody got any guesses as to how far back any release of the Donald's tax returns goes, in revealing just how much debt he was in with his glorified racketeering (or "construction") projects of the 1980s... ...which led to all those bankruptcies in the 1990s and on into the aughts... ...I mean, Jesus H. Christ the Third... ...Michael Cohen couldn't have any tapes on all of that stuff...could he?
