Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is trying to convince everyone that former President Donald Trump committed a federal crime when he supposedly paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to shut up about a supposed affair.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) isn’t having it with Bragg. The DA must have forgotten the FEC and DOJ concluded if Trump did this, he did not commit a federal crime:
“It’s not a campaign finance violation. It’s not a reporting violation of any kind,” said FEC Commissioner James E. “Trey” Trainor.In trying to stretch the law to make it look like a violation, he added, District Attorney Alvin Bragg “is really trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.”In a 34-count indictment of Trump, the first criminal case ever against a former president, Bragg charged that a $130,000 payment made by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels, which Cohen went to jail for in a plea deal, violated several campaign finance laws that splashed onto Trump.But, said Trainor, the FEC and Justice Department already considered the case and tossed it.
If the alleged crime was federal, it would occur in the room in Trainor’s tweet. The FEC and DOJ prosecute campaign finance laws, not a local district attorney.
But then there’s Michael Cohen’s plea deal.
The document posted in Trainor’s tweet makes me wonder if officials regret that Cohen took the blame in his plea deal:
Before the Commission could consider the Office of General Counsel’s (“OGC”) recommendations in these matters, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to an eight-count criminal information,2 and in connection thereto admitted, among other things, to making an excessive contribution in violation of the Act by making the Clifford payment from his personal funds. The plea hearing transcript includes a step by step review of how U.S. District Judge William Pauley verified the plea, confirming that a federal judge was sufficiently satisfied with the circumstances surrounding the plea deal and the responses given by Cohen at the hearing, including the explanations given by Cohen, count by count, during his allocution.4 Ultimately Mr. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $1.39 million in restitution, $500,000 in forfeiture, and $100,000 in fines for two campaign finance violations (including the payment at issue in these matters) and other charges. In sum, the public record is complete with respect to the conduct at issue in these complaints, and Mr. Cohen has been punished by the government of the United States for the conduct at issue in these matters.
“At the end of the day, there’s the person who committed the crime, and there’s the person who is behind bars because of it,” Trainor told The Washington Examiner.
The documents “in question came well after Trump’s 2016 election, so it couldn’t have been done to help his election.”
DERP.
Trainor also said that nothing shows the payment and reimbursement happened to influence the 2016 election:
Third, it is not obvious that the reason for the payment and the reimbursement to Cohen was to influence the election, thus failing the “objective standard” of law. “It has to be something that anybody on the street can look at and say the only reason you did that was to influence the campaign,” said Trainor. “There’s a lot of reasons that he could have done it that aren’t related to him being a candidate for president, and so therefore, it wouldn’t have met the standard as campaign expenditure under federal law,” he added.
Also, the statute of limitations on the case was running out, and it wasn’t worth the time and expense to prosecute, he said.“I don’t know how you get around the evidence that both the Department of Justice in their investigation of the federal campaign finance issues and the Federal Election Commission in their ultimate jurisdiction over campaign finance issues, neither of them found there to be any violations whatsoever, and I think the jury is going to see that and they’re going to have to rely upon the fact that both the law enforcement experts and the civil enforcement experts, as far as campaign finance are concerned, didn’t find any violation of the law here,” said Trainor.
Bragg and the court cannot get around that evidence if they follow the rules.
If this happened, then Trump committed a misdemeanor. If it’s a misdemeanor that also means a two-year statute of limitations. To make it a felony, you must show that he committed this crime to cover up another crime. In this case, Bragg alleges that Trump falsified business records to cover up a campaign-finance crime.
Trump has legit reasons to move the trial. I doubt he will receive a fair trial no matter where he goes, but it’s obvious it won’t happen in New York City. Trump wouldn’t get a fair trial in NYC if this happened in the 80s or 90s without expanded media and social media.
In other words, it’s a clown show, and nothing will stick. The left will consider anything a win for them, except it keeps Trump in the spotlight, giving him an opportunity to gain more followers.
The left continues to play itself. They’re so blinded by their hatred of Trump that they’ll never learn.
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