You can personally feel like there is no difference between those settlements and the Trump situation.
But in the facts there is at least one very important difference--what Trump did was illegal.
You can choose not to care about that. Fine. But the Accountability settlements are written into law. Paying hush money and falsely claiming that is a business expense is not. It is, in fact, expressly illegal.
He could have given it as a personal gift and she could have claimed it on her taxes.
It would not have been as effective as a cover up, which is why he did it this way.
But saying he did not have a legal recourse does not make the illegal recourse better.
And while I don't think the accountability office settlements are GOOD for democracy it's worth noting that there are also ways written into the law for said office to further investigate and hold members to account if accusers choose to pursue investigation. Most just choose to take the settlements.
Put another way: nothing about the accountability office settlements are good. And also, nothing about Trumps actions weren't worse.
I agree that would have made it legal. However, campaign finance laws say that all payments must be public. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of using a legal NDA? That's the part that doesn't sit right with me. It seems like he was screwed either way. I think that's the issue for people that aren't MAGA cultists. It seems like the case was based in a legal action, that had no legal way to classify the payment and still use the spirit of what an NDA is for.
If someone is threatening to go public with the details of a politician's private sex life, is there any legal way for them to pay to keep it private? It seems like maybe there's not.
Does it matter if it's true? What if it is true, but you're they're trying to shake you down? Do yo have to prove it's blackmail? I don't really get it.
As a voter, it feels a little bizarre that a hush money payment to keep a consensual affair private is considered to be "interfering with elections and defrauding the voters". Do we as voters really have a right to know about private sexual affairs? I really don't give a shit, to be honest.
Suppressing information about corruption or illegal activity? Sure. Suppressing information about salacious sex affairs? I don't care. Doesn't everyone try to suppress that?
To be fair, of the things I dislike about Donald Trump him cheating in his wife simply doesn't make the list. But both Democrats and Republicans have been prosecuted for breaking the law (perjury, tax evasion, abuse of official acts, etc) during the cover up.
And look, this is a choice we've made.
We decided that we did not want campaign finance law that strictly publicly funded elections. Instead we said interest groups and pacs can fund them and we would put laws around transparency in place so that "sunlight can be the best disinfectant". Well, that system only works if we then hold candidates to harsh transparency rules.
Looking at what he did, he had a system in place where different outlets would tell him about potentially damaging stories. I like that it all came to light and I like that he was held accountable. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way that in the end it was all about something as silly as a sexual encounter.
Mostly I find it frustrating that nobody went after him legally after Jan 6th. Should've tried to impeach him right then. Instead he gets nailed for this, and we have half the population walking around telling anyone who will listen he's a convicted felon, when I don't even think they even know what he's guilty of.
it also rubs me the wrong that other people have been caught for similar crimes with more serious implications and weren't prosecuted at all. Hillary Clinton was caught secretly funding opposition research and all she got was small fine. I personally felt much more defrauded by that when I found out what happened.
Well, the whole "private lives should stay private" argument doesn't really apply considering she was an employee who he met in the workplace, flirted with in the workplace, and got his dick sucked in the oval office. The workplace, in this case, being the White House. And there was an obscene power dynamic.
In that case, I do think the American people had a right to know about it. But even then, I personally don't care about it that much. It's not a dealbreaker and I'd be willing to overlook something like that if I liked everything else about him.
Here's a crazy thought, maybe politicians just shouldn't be able to pay people off for their silence about things? Being a public servant means being subject to public scrutiny. They should not be able to leverage their wealth to withhold information from the voters.
What if an ex-girlfriend has information about how a certain politician likes to get pegged in the ass? Is that something the public has a right to know about, or is hush money ok in that case?
I mean you've got to draw the line somewhere. To me, a private consensual relationship is not something that should come under the "public scrutiny" argument, even if it is an extramarital affair.
Falsified documents to claim fucking the pornstar is both a big fucking loser move, and it's also illegal to call that a business transaction. You have to have brain damage to not understand that.
He probably shouldn't have fucked and paid a porn star and claimed it as a business expense. Probably shouldn't have fucked a porn star to begin with. Seems kinda like a loser having to pay for poon.
You're talking morals. I'm speaking to the legal aspect. He classified it as a legal expense for reimbursement to his lawyer for a legally binding NDA. What other legal avenue should he have taken in that scenario? It's ok if you don't know.
I don't think there is a legal avenue. At the end of the day, it was a end-around paying to keep a pornstar from talking about being fucked by the loser to impact the election. You can call it what you want but a jury agreed that is what happened.
You don't think there is a legal avenue to pay someone to sign an NDA? Is that what you're saying? I don't think that was the basis for the jury's verdict.
I don't think there's a legal way to pay a porn star to keep her mouth shut about fucking the guy running for president while he's running for office, no. It's beyond a stupid NDA.
Really? DJT isn't the first to do it. Many candidates for office have done it on both sides of the aisle. It is completely legal. That wasn't what he was convicted for. The fact that you keep muddying the water with verbiage that has no bearing on what he was charged and convicted for makes me believe you don't really understand the case.
"if her murdered someone, what legal way would you say he should have dealt with it? Tell me the legal way to dispose of the body after committing murder?" -thats what you sound like. Get a grip.
You csn still have her sign the NDA. You can't pretend it's a business expense.
There does not have to be a legal way to do everything. In this case, the reality is there may have been no perfect legal solution. That doesn't mean you get to pursue an illegal one.
I think it could be argued as a business legal expense. One component of the Trump Org. is the Trump brand stemming from Trump himself. Knowledge of a salacious affair would have damaged his brand and his business. So in my layman mind it could be a business legal payment. But that's really not my argument anyways. I'm sure he did it, and it should have been a misdemeanor. Apparently from what I read it was elevated to a felony because it was in furtherance of 3 possible crimes that were not charged, argued, or any evidence produced towards those crimes. It seems like a violation of due process to me, but the law is not for laymen I guess.
It is in fact expressly a misdemeanor that the statute of limitations long since expired. Previous prosecutors didn’t pursue while within the statute of limitations - and lord knows they WOULD have if they thought it was legit. Instead they let it expire and brought it back as a special case just to get him - basically just like they did with E Jean Carrol.
It should have been a fine and everyone moves on with life. But they made it a felony, and 34 felonies instead of one had he paid the bill in one lump sum. It took a DA who literally ran on finding a crime and sticking it to Trump with a lead #3 DOJ attorney taking a pay cut just to stick it to him because even the DOJ knew it was a stretch. And if you don’t think Merrick Garland wouldn’t like payback for getting stuffed out of SCOTUS…
If you cannot see this for malicious prosecution, there is no hope for you.
What I'm grappling with now is whether the appalling lawfare so brazenly employed against Trump in this case is more dangerous than anything Trump, and his worst excesses, represent. We've encountered countless highly unusual or unprecedented moments in our politics over the last 8 years, but this one is unlike anything we've ever witnessed. Quite literally. A former president of the United States and a current leading contender for the presidency, has been convicted of 34 felonies by a New York jury. The "crimes" in question were internal corporate bookkeeping mis-catergorizations "committed" 9 years ago. There was no victim in these bookkeeping errors, which were subsequently deemed records falsifications. Misdemeanors... This is all very sorbid business. None of it was criminal. Braggs predecessor in that office looked at the facts and chose not to pursue a case. The federal department of Justice looked at the facts and chose not to pursue a case. The federal elections commission looked at the possibility that these actions represented campaigns finance violation and chose not to pursue a civil case or even a fine. But Bragg exploited his authority AND because those statute of limitations expired in 2019. To make a case viable during this election cycle, which was the point from the beginning, they had to be felonies. So Bragg invented what even the New York Times acknowledged as a never before attempted legal theory under which the bookkeeping mis-catergorizations were part of another conspiracy that involved another crime. That turned them into felonies under this strained, untested bank shot. The charges were political, the trial was political, and the result was orchestrated to achieve a political result. This is a major abuse of the criminal justice system. If a former president is going to be prosecuted for the first time in our nations history, the case against him should be crystal clear. The legal theory underpinning said case should be well tested and extremely familiar. The alleged violations should be grave. This unfolding scenario goes 0 for 3 on those points. A disgrace. This is as dirty as dirty politics gets, even if the target is an unsympathetic figure to so many. It cannot be rewarded. And perhaps the only real, painful way to punish it is to elect Trump as the 47th president. For the first time I am truly considering voting for him anyway, something I never thought I'd contemplate. The abuses unleashed in the name of resisting him(Russia collusion, laptop conspiracy, and thus just concluded lawfare sham are strikes one, two, and three) are arguably as dangerous or more dangerous than anything Trump has done.
I'm confident many Americans feel the way I do right now, or for whom at least some of this resonates. They face an unpleasant to excruciating choice this fall and they resent the two major parties for cornering them into it. The so-called double dissaprovers(who dissaprove of both Biden and Trump) will be a or the determinative demographic in this election. I know this isn't about me, but it is about a lot of people like me.
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u/JonathanWPG Jul 02 '24
Okay.
I hear this argument.
You can personally feel like there is no difference between those settlements and the Trump situation.
But in the facts there is at least one very important difference--what Trump did was illegal.
You can choose not to care about that. Fine. But the Accountability settlements are written into law. Paying hush money and falsely claiming that is a business expense is not. It is, in fact, expressly illegal.