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Machiavellian on 27 August 2018
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NightlyPoe said:
Machiavellian said:

Cohen and his lawyer are not going to plead guilty to a no charge, that is absolutely silly to even keep that pretense up. 

I brought this up earlier, but I think it has merit.  Would it have been legal for Trump to, say, pay off his mistresses with campaign money and then report it when campaign expenses needed to be filed.  From everything I understand, the answer to that is "No."  Therefore, this can't be a campaign expense because it would mean that it couldn't have been done either way.  The law would contradict itself.   The options would be:

1.  Use personal money.  Don't report it.  Be charged with not reporting a campaign donation.

2.  Use campaign money.  Report it.  Be charged with misuse of campaign funds.

The prosecutors can't have it both ways.  It's either a legitimate campaign expense or it's something else.  And I, for one, would just as soon campaign donations not go to keeping mistresses quiet.

As for Cohen pleading guilty, that doesn't mean anything since they had him on other charges.  It's silly to keep up the pretense that Cohen and his lawyer had the option to fight that battle separately.

1.  Does not matter if he used his personal money or not.  Its has always been a case of when the payments were made and in what relation to the campaign.  You cannot sit there and say 2 affairs from 2006 was something he was going to pay hush money for before running for Office.  Any payments made to the campaign whether personal, through a corporation you own or do not own or an outside entity is subject to campaign finance laws.  Read up on this part as you are totally wrong on 1 and 2.  The key part you have to look at is whether Trump and Cohen made those payments for the campaign instead of personal.  The burden still will be with the prosecutors to prove this point and that's why they have secured immunity for 2 very key people in this whole mess.  One is David Pecker, who they have record of him telling Trump and Cohen that they need to pay Karen or it would be POLITICAL suicide. That alone could bury any Trump defense if he testify to that.  Second is Allen Weisselberg CFO of Trump organization.  They probably secured his testimony because he can verify that the money came from Trump Organization which kills the whole personal from his pocket defense and seals the deal.  

As stated, Cohen lawyer isn't going to have his client plead guilty to something he did not do.  It doesn't make sense.  You can argue that Cohen being guilty doesn't mean Trump is guilty since there are circumstances that have to happen in order for Trump to be guilty but we will see if that comes out or not.