This just keeps getting better and better.
For us.
Not Dotard…
Pace yourself: We haven’t even gotten to the “RNC” part…
Keeping it all in the [corporate and political] family. Problem is Trump is a evil version of a real-life Archie Bunker on steroids.
What are the different legal ramifications of Cohen being reimbursed by Trump Organization versus Trump Foundation versus Trump Campaign?
So many hush money deals, it’s hard to keep them straight. And in typical Trumpian incompetence, he pays the hush money and gets outed anyway.
I’m neither a lawyer nor an accountant but running the bribes thru the campaign is an FEC violation while running the bribes thru his corporation is tax fraud.
I had not doubt that he would run these thru as business expenses. His entire business history is fraud. I’m only surprised that these bribes didn’t run thru the so-called foundation where he could use other people’s money to make the payments and also claim the charitable deduction.
But I guess we don’t yet know that he didn’t do both!
Don’t forget that the Trump Foundation paid for Don Jr.'s Boy Scout Camps and Iwanka Trump’s Girl Scout cookies as part of its charitable giving activities.
So Trump unwittingly confessed to a crime earlier today on Fox. He thought if he said the campaign didn’t pay for the Daniels expense that it would be better legally. Actually, the opposite is true. It would’ve been legal for the campaign to pay off Daniels because it ties the payment to a campaign benefit. It’s illegal for Trump to use intermediaries to pay and intermediaries to reimburse Cohen. Why? Because it concealed the existence of the payment from the FEC and he didn’t disclose it. I guarantee you if the Comey letter doesn’t come out and the Daniels/McDougal payments are revealed in the October '16 FEC disclosure forms, Trump would’ve struggled to win 210 EVs. If both of these payments became public at the same time as the Comey letter, HRC probably wins with 300 EVs.
That the Trump Org may have made these reimbursements crosses another legal threshold because it’s illegal for corporations to make such donations to campaigns. What makes it worse is that it was Trump’s own company, which makes it more fraudulent because he used his own company to avoid disclosing the payment. Each one of the charges that Cohen pleaded to on the campaign finance side carries a jail sentence of 5 years. That’s what Trump is dealing with and this is just the beginning.
Did his staff know he would admit to a crime?
By now, they should have been able to guess that he would do so. After all, he’s done the same thing repeatedly, to one degree or another.
Invoices? Only really dumb crooks submit invoices!
Is Cohen’s lawyer on drugs?
Here he is on live TV, sounding confused as heck about the most basic of questions, can’t get the numbers (or the questions) straight, volunteering information…and then guessing?
And he and Giuliani waive the attorney client privilege on the taped call between Trump and Cohen on the rather ridiculous claim that it showed Trump wanting to make the payment by check because it would be more legal…
It’s both.
I helped Susan Simpson run the numbers here: https://viewfromll2.com/2018/03/11/on-the-origins-of-stormy-danielss-130k-settlement-payment-and-the-probability-of-the-disbursement-records-matching-the-settlement-amount-by-random-chance/
As best I can tell, the Trump Organization invoiced the campaign for the $130k that was used to pay off Stormy Daniels, then Cohen paid it out of pocket, then the Trump Org paid Cohen via the phony invoices.
the wall street journal article-
David Pecker is saying Trump Org was ALSO subpoenaed in April???
“Pecker, along with both his company and the Trump Organization, had reportedly been subpoenaed by federal investigators in April.”
who at Trump Org would have responded? or dodged??? and not told the don?
Small point: I THINK the Trump foundation has been locked up by NYS. Under investigation.
I think they did tell him, which is why we’ve seen a marked increase in Twitter freak outs since April. The Cohen raid messed him up for good.
From July 20, 2017:
On the same day President Donald Trump appeared to issue a warning to Special Counsel Robert Mueller to stay out of his family finances, the special counsel leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election appears to be doing the opposite.
Bloomberg reported Thursday morning that Mueller is examining “a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates.”
Yup, you’re correct but I don’t think the fake foundation - Fauxdataion? - was frozen and under review in Oct 2016 when all this was going down.