If Trump paid the hush money directly from his own pocket, that's not illegal - candidates have a legal right to spend as much of their own money as they wish running for federal office. The donation itself could be illegal, depending upon its source. As Ryan pointed out, it's not just that failure to report the source itself could constitute a violation of the law. Failure to do so could constitute a violation of campaign finance law and could even be a crime, particularly if Trump or his campaign deliberately hid the expenditure from the FEC.Īn even more interesting question is where that money came from. Even though Cohen used this method to work outside the campaign itself, Ryan argued, the money " was a payment for the purpose for influencing the 2016 presidential election" and therefore the Trump campaign was required to report it as a campaign expenditure. Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, apparently paid Daniels off by setting up a shell corporation called Essential Consultants LLC, apparently for the sole purpose of handling this bribe. "This attempt to cover up an embarrassing and politically damaging story appears to be the latest example of Donald Trump skirting election laws." “We’ve already seen the complete disregard for good government and ethics laws by the Trump campaign and administration," Anne Feldman, the press secretary for End Citizens United, said when asked about the complaint. "Both are violations of federal campaign finance law disclosure requirements.” (No, this Paul Ryan is not related to the speaker of the House.) Ryan, Common Cause vice president for policy and litigation, told Salon. “The campaign failed to report the $130,000 payment out as an expenditure and it failed to report the source of the $130,000 as an in-kind contribution into the committee," Paul S. Common Cause argues there's good reason to believe that the campaign violated multiple laws in funneling money to Daniels in hopes of buying her silence. On Monday, the ethics watchdog group Common Cause filed complaints with both the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), asking for an investigation into Trump and his campaign for potential violations of campaign finance law regarding this alleged hush-money payoff. There's a good chance that Trump and his minions broke the law in order to cover up the sleaze-in-chief's adulterous activities. But the story may have legs beyond another round of hand-wringing about how Trump manages to evade accountability for behavior that would sink any other politician. Most of the press coverage understandably focused on the most titillating or ridiculous aspects of the story, such as Daniels' claim that during their 2006 encounter she spanked Trump with a copy of Forbes that featured him and his children on the cover. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that a porn actress who works under the name Stormy Daniels (her real name is Stephanie Clifford) received $130,000 of hush money from Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
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