Is It A Felony To Pay Hush Money
Donald Trump now owns upwardly to knowing about multiple large-sum payouts in 2016 that went toward silencing two women who say they had extra-marital affairs with him.
The political fallout could exist meaning. But perhaps more than apropos to the U.S. president is his risk of breaking campaign finance laws if a charging certificate filed in Manhattan federal court proves true. In an interview on Fox News that aired Thursday, the U.S. president was defiant.
"They weren't crimes," he protested.
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This, despite his old personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty in federal court this week to serious campaign finance violations. Cohen says the crimes were tied to those payments and directed by Trump himself, expressly "for the principal purpose of influencing the election."
The first round of hush money, $150,000 US, went to sometime Playmate model Karen McDougal 3 months before the Nov 2016 election. The 2d sum, $130,000, was wired to the porn actress Stormy Daniels, whose existent proper noun is Stephanie Clifford, about two weeks earlier election solar day.
The president made a lot of claims. In interviews with CBC News, six ballot-police experts counterbalance in. The experts are:
- Bradley Smith, former chairman of the Federal Ballot Committee
- Charles Spies, head of national political law at Clark Hill in Washington, D.C.
- Edward Foley, head of ballot law at Ohio State University's Moritz College
- Sam Isaacharoff, Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York Academy
- Dan Tokaji, author of Ballot Law in a Nutshell
- Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Stetson University election law professor
On Trump arguing that the coin didn't come from his entrada:
FOLEY: Information technology doesn't matter where the source was; what matters is intent. The fact information technology came from personal funds doesn't immunize him from misdeed, but it could be a subsidiary fact to the ultimate question of what was washed for entrada purposes? Cohen asserts that Cohen made the payments at the candidate'due south direction for "purposes of influencing the campaign." If those facts are true, that would be a violation.
SPIES: If it wasn't the candidate's coin but somebody else's personal money, it would have to be reported. And if corporate coin were used, it would be an impermissible accepted corporate contribution that should have been reported.
TOKAJI: Regardless of whether they were from Mr. Trump's personal funds or from some other source, at that place's an obligation to disclose. To report expenditure or contributions, as the example may be. That wasn't done.
SMITH: If they're non campaign expenditures, they're not subject field to disclosure. My view is that this is not a entrada expenditure, and once you lot striking that indicate, information technology doesn't affair how you paid for it.
On personal expenses versus campaign expenditures:
ISAACHAROFF: What y'all have is a powerful human who [allegedly] has an thing and pays hush coin to cover it. It'due south non pretty, not nice, but information technology's non a campaign finance crime. At present, if you take money from your campaign and utilise it for your personal expenses, though, is that a campaign finance violation? Under many circumstances — yes.
SMITH: You tin can't brand an argument similar I need to have my teeth whitened and so I expect good on the campaign trail, or I need a new suit. A part of the statute defines "personal utilize" every bit any abdication that would exist even if you weren't running for office. You've withal gotta accept apparel, still gotta keep your teeth, these are things that existed before y'all ran for office. The obligation has to exist solely because he'south running for president. It'south the idea of, 'I want to settle these lawsuits because I don't want this to hang over me.'
On the amounts of the payouts:
TORRES-SPELLISCY: Every bit an private, Cohen can only donate $2,700. The amount that was involved in the Daniels payment, $130,000, was far greater than that. And so it's a campaign finance violation. This is deemed an in-kind contribution for the Trump campaign. And it's as well large. Information technology'due south but that simple. Information technology blows through long-standing contribution limits at the federal level.
FOLEY: There are dollar limits. If information technology'southward the president'southward own money, he doesn't have to stick to the dollar amount. If he'due south doing it in society to win an election, though, he needs to disclose that to the Federal Ballot Committee as a campaign-related expense. Merely for Cohen every bit an individual, plain, a six-figure payment would be well in excess of what an private could give to a entrada.
SMITH: Typically, a candidate tin can spend whatever he wants on his own entrada. Now, if it's a reporting violation, an argument I hear is people saying the public had a right to know. Had they taken that approach, they would have probably recorded it as "legal services." So I'one thousand not sure that the public really would have gained much cognition had it been disclosed.
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On Trump claiming the campaign violations 'aren't even a criminal offense':
SPIES: I believe the president's point is that Michael Cohen was forced into a wide plea agreement that includes some serious crimes, simply the campaign finance piece of it would exist very hard to show at trial, or to fifty-fifty get an indictment on. But if Cohen was telling the truth and the government could show what he said, it'due south a clear violation.
TORRES- SPELLISCY: President Trump and some of his surrogates made some outrageous claims that all candidates break entrada finance laws. I call back that's demonstrably false. Parts of entrada finance are administrative, like getting sure filings in on fourth dimension. That's mostly dealt with by the Federal Ballot Commission, and usually they requite you a take chances to cure. Y'all fix the filing, yous might become slapped with a fine.
FOLEY: Campaign finance police force is complicated. It is truthful that campaigns tin run afoul of those rules in the ordinary class of receiving contributions and making expenditures. But if what Cohen said in court is true, and if he made the payment with campaign purposes with the total intent to violate the law, that's a very different thing. That's non run-of-the-mill. That'southward a distinction between what the Obama campaign and many others were caught up in, versus a knowing and wilful violation of the constabulary.
On a precedent-setting case:
FOLEY: The best way to sympathize this is to think nigh the John Edwards trial [Edwards was a 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful]. It involved the payment of money to a mistress to stay silent. The jury ultimately acquitted Edwards because it believed him that the payment was fabricated, at to the lowest degree primarily, to keep the affair secret so his wife wouldn't know well-nigh it. The statement was it was a personal payment and not entrada-related, and therefore it didn't demand to be disclosed as a campaign-related expense.
SPIES: The statement was the payments were made to avoid Edwards's married woman finding out, and to avoid a personal embarrassment. And I believe the Trump System has a long history of vigorously fighting to protect its reputation. Mr. Trump probable would have tried to squelch these rumours, even without the campaign.
ISAACHAROFF: Edwards didn't get convicted. Trump'southward lawyers would have to say, despite Trump's repeated claims that he had nil to do with this, that in fact Trump knew well-nigh it, did it, and lied about it, only nonetheless was doing it to protect Melania.
TORRES-SPELLISCY: The timing for Edwards was dissimilar. Information technology was almost a year out from an ballot. That case ended up with John Edwards walking away without being establish guilty of a finance violation.
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Analysis
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On how Trump could have avoided this:
TOKAJI: If Mr. Trump spends $130,000 of his own money to pay for somebody's silence and reports that, and then that wouldn't be a violation of federal campaign finance law. But information technology might sort of defeat the purpose [of paying hush money].
SPIES: If the payments would have been fabricated irrespective of Trump being a candidate in order to protect the Trump family or Trump Organization's reputation, then they would non be considered a entrada contribution. The fox here is whether the payments would have been made even if Trump wasn't a candidate.
TORRES-SPELLISCY: I think if they had washed this all higher up lath, they reported the donation, the donation was within the four corners of the contribution limits, then that'due south probably fine. Individuals enter into non-disclosure agreements all the time, and they're not all illegal. But when you do information technology closely timed near a federal ballot and involve a federal candidate, that's when the election laws attach. Some of these payments were done just weeks before the federal ballot in 2016. The timing matters in this case.
Interviews were edited for length and clarity
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-fox-interview-election-law-experts-weigh-in-1.4797126
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