> Candidate contributions to their own campaigns are not subject to any limits.

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate...

As far as I've read, it was money his campaign legally had, spent on something he could legally spend it on... that he attempted to conceal the payment for, so it wouldn't show up in campaign finance reports.

Ironically, if he'd just paid it directly from campaign funds and given it an obfuscated name ("PR Services"), he'd be in much less legal trouble now.

At the same time, is this really the kind of thing you want a prosecutor to go after a former president and likely future presidential candidate from the opposing party for?

And yes, I think all politicians should be gone after for breaking any campaign-finance-related law.

The legal ways to use money have so many loopholes (wink-nudge a PAC to pay off Stormy Daniels) that we shouldn't compromise an inch on what few restrictions we do have on the books.

This is a campaign finance violation. If we're not going to hold politicians beholden to those laws, then where is the line?

I think classifying this as "breaking any campaign-finance-related law" is a little bit of a strawman based on the fact pattern. It's one thing to go after someone for giving/accepting donations that are clearly illegal, but it's another thing to go after them for classifying hush money paid through a lawyer as a "legal expense" rather than a "PR expense." However, if New York were serious about justice, they would have had a clearly-politically-motivated prosecutor assign a special counsel to look for malfeasance here instead of running the prosecution himself.

Also, you should read the book "3 felonies a day," and it will give you more context on how much gray area there actually is in most crimes. The thesis of the book is that there is enough of a gray area that the average American commits 3 felonies a day.

It's a campaign finance disclosure crime. Either he properly classified and disclosed a campaign related expense, or he didn't.

The difference with your example is that you presumably aren't running for office, and hence aren't required to formally disclose campaign expenses.

The ad hominem attacks on the prosecutor also seem... desperate and distasteful. Trump has enough money to afford a good legal defense team -- why should the country be in the business of deciding who is too big to prosecute?

And I've read it.

They are in this business because they have put themselves there - "3 felonies a day" should have told you about how that happened. Now that they are there, they have to avoid even creating the appearance that they are misusing the power in circumstances like this, where they are trying to prosecute political opponents. This is how civil wars start.

> The ad hominem attacks on the prosecutor also seem... desperate and distasteful.

Alvin Bragg campaigned on the fact that he was going to get Trump. It is a pertinent fact that the prosecutor going after Trump is literally trying to fulfill a campaign promise that he made publicly. If that isn't evidence that he was politically motivated, I don't know what is.

And why does it matter if the prosecutor has a political ax to grind with Trump?

The distastefulness of the ad hominem attacks is the seeming thought process behind them: {prosecutor is political} == {no crimes he charges can be true}

Do crimes cease being crimes unless the prosecutor is inhumanly unbiased?

That's what a robust defense team is for.

Also, believe it or not, prosecutors have strict ethical rules around being "advocates for justice" rather than trying to get their guy, and the hint of bias actually does mean that Trump's lawyers can get this charge thrown out on those grounds. It is actually true that on some level {prosecutor is political} == {no crimes he charged can be true}. The courts in the USA understand that to a degree, the process is the punishment, and so prosecutors can also get in trouble for nakedly biased prosecutions like this. This is different than civil litigators, who are free to be as biased and litigious as they want.

Personally, I would have had no issue if he had found some actual, serious malfeasance. In fact, I was hoping he would find some serious malfeasance in the Trump organization given all the other shit we know they did (but couldn't link back to the big guy). But no, the best he could find was Trump's accountant possibly misclassifying an expense on a disclosure form.

Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels. The Trump organization reimbursed Michael Cohen. The candidate Trump never declared the payment on his campaigning behalf.

Do you have any links on the specific laws that preclude candidate-directed corporate payments? Haven't seen specific laws in the reporting thus far, although I expect when the charges come out it'll be all over.

No, he would have probably instead be indicted for using campaign funds to pay a mistress under the theory that such a payment is not a valid campaign expense. The rules are so unclear that you could prosecute him either way.

1. Would Stormy Daniels announcing weeks before the election that she and Donald Trump had an affair have impacted the election? Yes.

2. Was the (perfectly legal) money paid to Stormy Daniels to prevent that thus intending to influence the election? Yes. Ergo, it's a campaign expense.

And here's where it turns into what I believe they'll be charging.

3. Knowing the above, did Trump funnel the payment through Michael Cohen with the intent to conceal it from campaign finance disclosure transparency? If so, that's conspiracy and a felony through falsifying business records to conceal another crime.

If you break the law inadvertently, that's generally a lesser crime. If you specifically know you're breaking the law and still do it, that's usually a higher charge. And if you take additional actions to conceal the fact that you broke the law, that's an even higher charge.

And because these are financial crimes, it's easier to find records of the intermediate payments.

but if Trump paid directly himself, it wouldn't violate campaign finance laws? Because there is no campaign finance limit on Trump himself.

That said, they still have to prove "Ergo, it's a campaign expense" - any individual is motivated to protect their reputation aside from campaigns.

That's my (uneducated) understanding, but the speculation is that he didn't pay it himself because then he couldn't deny (to friends/family/fans/donors/voters) that he knew her.

Correct. My understanding is that if Trump had paid Stormy Daniels directly and classified it as a campaign expense, it would have been legal and there would be no case.

As for intent, expect it will turn on the exact language in the charged campaign finance laws. If Trump can find a reason he wasn't required to disclose, there is no felony concealment.

On the whole, a good thing for campaign finance law to have a high profile fight between two well-resourced legal teams. Hopefully it might drive some future reform and better law, as the boundaries are clarified.

That is still a campaign expense and needs to be reported to the state. Reporting on who donated money is a totally separate report.

Bloomberg ran because if Sanders' tax plans would have cost Bloomberg about $2 billion in higher taxes, so spending 1/4 of that to keep Sanders from getting the nomination was a reasonable maneuver.