08-26-2018, 01:33 AM
(08-26-2018, 01:13 AM)HairOfTheDog Wrote:(08-26-2018, 12:22 AM)ZEROSPHERES Wrote: Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Fox News Wednesday that claims by Senate Democrats and liberal pundits that President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea makes the president an “unindicted co-conspirator” are “just wrong as a matter of basic criminal law.”
“The law is clear that a president may contribute to his own campaign so if the President had paid $280,000 to these two women even if he had done so in order to help his campaign,” Dershowitz explained to Fox’s Bret Baier, “that would be no problem, that’s legal, and if Cohen himself made the contribution that would be unlawful because he has a limit of $5,200 so the complicated issue is what if Trump told him to do it as Cohen says?”
Dershowitz explained that, in that case, it would still not be a crime as Cohen would be acting as the president’s representative.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabr...g-n2512223
We know Cohen committed crimes because he pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions to the Trump campaign.
Cohen said he made those contributions, payoffs to silence women, on the direction of candidate Trump.
The potential campaign finance crime for Trump is if he paid the hush money back to Cohen (which he now admits to doing) AND he didn't file it as a campaign contribution.
According to the Cohen indictment, Trump directed Weisselberg to pay Cohen back for the hush money, plus a bonus, and to write it off as "legal expense", which is a false (and typically tax-deductible) classification of the expenditure.
That's my understanding.
Alan Dershowitz has some unique interpretations of the law these days and often finds himself in disagreement with other legal experts when it comes to Trump. Maybe he's right on some or all of them. I don't know. But, Weisselberg was granted immunity in the Cohen case for some reason.
Yes there is a bad history between Mueller and Trump (to do with membership at Trump's golf course). Mueller wants to justify his investigation with an indictment and so he has convinced Cohen (under threat of having Mueller go after his wife) to plead guilty to a number of charges including a couple of non-crimes.
Of course this makes sense to no one who has not thought about things for more than 10 seconds. When all the pollsters gave ridiculous pollings during the lead up to the election it was done with intent. It was not that they were blindsided. It was that they wanted to plant a false narrative. Trump was going to lose and lose badly. It was all over before it began. The reasoning is that by pretending it was over, it would influence people to believe the falsity and to behave in ways to support this. Trump supporters to get despondent and stay at home and encourage confidence in Hillary supporters. Then their plan went to shit.
Similar here. Two months from a very important midterm and they want to pretend Trump is tied to Cohen with an indictment-worthy charge. Great narrative. Now these enthusiastic Liberals seeing the writing on the wall can vote for the Democrats knowing that he will be indicted when they win the House and Senate on these water tight charges. He will be impeached and jailed and they will be all but frothing at the mouth. The Never Trump crowd will join in. The Independents will perhaps less enthusiastically but with an amount of conviction follow that narrative and side with the Democrats. The trump supporters outnumbered and outplayed will stay at home. Or so the plan is. Then when it all comes out that the two charges were not quite meeting the smell test nor any legal benchmark, it will not matter because Trump will have been de-fanged and impeached and they will have majority....so they won and at no great cost.
But what happens if this like all the other endeavors against him from the Access Hollywood, to the Jessica Leeds story, to the Trump University lawsuit to whatever else does NOT derail him?
The proponents of this are in so much trouble. He is taking down their number and when he pushes back they will have him do to them what they tried to do to him. They will deserve it.