Trump left the money he owed Cohen off of his 2017 disclosure, but in a footnote in his 2018 disclosure he said he had “fully reimbursed” Cohen for expenses he had incurred. Trump should have reported his debt to Cohen in financial disclosures to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) from the get-go. Trump’s reimbursement payments to Cohen don’t just matter in the campaign finance realm - they’re significant in terms of government ethics, too. Trump MaTrump didn’t disclose the reimbursements to Cohen It was not a campaign contribution, and there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me. Trump tweeted on Thursday, apparently in reference to Cohen and the Daniels payments, that “there were no violations of campaign finance laws by me.” “In and of itself, is that a crime? I wouldn’t say necessarily.” “You have a scheme that is essentially to disguise and hide payments that Cohen made during the campaign, and Trump and the Trump trust were involved in that scheme,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said. (There’s an alternative some Trump defenders use, saying he just thought he was making retainer payments, but as mentioned, federal prosecutors don’t believe that.) But they’re not proof Trump knew about the original campaign finance violation.įurthermore, Trump trying to keep the payments under wraps might not matter in a courtroom, at least as part of a campaign finance violation. The checks, which Trump signed while he was president, prove that Trump at some point figured out about Cohen’s hush payments and agreed to pay him back. ![]() And two, they have to prove that Trump directed the payments and was personally liable. One, they have to establish that the purpose of the payments was political and not personal (in other words, that they were made to help Trump in the election, not, for example, to keep his wife from finding out about his alleged affairs). But prosecutors are going to have to prove more than that to make a criminal case against Trump, according to Ryan. ![]() (The legal limit for making a donation to a political campaign at that time was $2,700.)Ĭohen has implicated Trump in his campaign finance crimes by saying that Trump told him to orchestrate the hush payments. Specifically, prosecutors argued that these payments were made “with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election” and should have been subject to campaign finance limits. What the checks show - and don’t showįor arranging the payment to McDougal and making the payment to Daniels, Cohen was charged last year with violating campaign finance law. Representatives for the White House and Trump Organization did not return requests for comment on this story. The first woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., to secure the rights to her story and bury it.īut the second payment - $130,000 for Stormy Daniels - was made by Cohen himself, just days before the 2016 election, in exchange for Daniels signing a nondisclosure agreement.įederal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) said in a December sentencing memo that Cohen sent monthly invoices to Trump’s company “falsely indicating” that these invoices were part of some retainer agreement, and that the Trump Organization falsely accounted for the payments as legal expenses. “These checks are not the wall, but they are a brick - or 11 bricks - in this wall.” The hush payments, briefly explainedĬohen has admitted that, ahead of the 2016 election, he violated campaign finance laws by arranging hush money payments for two women who had alleged affairs with Trump. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at watchdog group Common Cause, told me. “There’s a saying among criminal prosecutors: You build a wall brick by brick,” Paul S. ![]() But they could be one piece of evidence in a potential case against Trump. And we’ve known for quite some time that Trump reimbursed Cohen for this afterward.īut the big unanswered question is whether prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York hope to pursue the hush money case further - by implicating the Trump Organization or even the president himself.Īccording to legal and campaign finance experts, the checks themselves don’t prove a crime. Cohen pleaded guilty last year to violating campaign finance law by paying off Daniels shortly before the election. The checks don’t change the basic facts at issue in the hush money scandal. ![]() The former attorney to President Donald Trump publicly released several personal checks meant to reimburse Cohen for his hush payments to Stormy Daniels - including some signed by the president himself. Michael Cohen’s dramatic congressional testimony last week came with a vivid visual aid.
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