Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulS
Jim, you are correct it's not a crime to write the check to the woman. The issue is that the timing was during the run up to the election. I think one month before the election. So if Trump wrote the check 3 years prior and prior to his announcing his candidacy there would not be a legal issue. I think also that part of the issue is they didn't declare it so it is a campaign finance violation. The same with the National Enquirer money. It is being viewed as a way to help the campaign but not being declared which is a campaign violation of some sort. I have no idea what would have happened if was the day after the election.
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I guess that makes sense in the sense that he might have to declare all campaign-related expenses. But there's a good chance he would have done the same exact thing even if he wasn't running for POTUS, right? So does the criminal question come down to this...was it a campaign issue, or a personal (private issue)? How about if he pays his home electric bill with his own money. If he didn't pay it, that could become fodder for the press during the election, right? So does he have to declare the money he's using to pay his electric bill for his home, since you could argue that paying it, has an impact on the election?
I don't think it's rare for people who are (1) uber wealthy, and (2) devoid of morals, to pay hush money to people they wrong. If he used campaign money and didn't declare it, that seems pretty bad. If he used his own money to make a private issue go away, but part of his motivation was to avoid damaging his campaign...that doesn't seem like a big deal to me. At that level, at this point in history, there's almost no distinction between his personal matters and campaign matters. Especially for this guy.