@coldjoint,
Quote:Pretty misleading statement. It leaves the reader with the impression Trump had something to do with all 8 charges. That simply is not true because Cohen did not say any such thing.
Quote:Cohen admitted that "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," he kept information that would have harmed Trump from becoming public during the 2016 election cycle.
CNN
The point is that Trump coordinated and directed Cohen to keep information from becoming public. In other words, hush money which is a serious campaign violation. He also committed crimes associated with those campaign violations.
Quote:Plus Obama received a slap on the wrist for campaign finance issues. D'Souza went to jail and Rosie O'Donnell was not even charged. All hypocrisy all the time.
Comparing Obama campaign issues with Trump's campaign violation is a false comparison . Standard operation procedure with Trump and Trumpies.
Quote:But let’s focus on the second part of Trump’s assertion, that Cohen’s charges and his actions fall into a big bucket of “campaign finance violations” that also includes violations that President Barack Obama was found to have committed. It’s a very Trumpian bit of whataboutism, waving away something severe that Trump or a Trump ally did by pointing out something minor that one of his political opponents did.
It’s certainly true that both Cohen’s admissions and the Obama campaign did things that were “campaign finance violations” in the same way that your lifting a candy bar from a convenience store as a kid and what Bernie Madoff did are both “stealing.” Which isn’t to say that the Obama campaign’s violations weren’t serious. It’s just to note that broad legal terms can cover a variety of actions.
So what did Obama do? Well, Obama didn’t do anything, really. His campaign — Obama For America — failed to report 1,300 contributions within 48 hours as required by law. It also received some campaign contributions that exceeded allowable limits from a donor for a campaign cycle and others that had incorrect dates. In total, the contributions at issue amounted to about $2 million, and the campaign paid $375,000 in fines.
What Trump is alleged to have done is to have personally instructed his attorney to facilitate an illegal contribution by a corporation with the goal of burying a negative story before the campaign and, in another case, having that attorney make an illegal payment to hide another damaging allegation. Unlike the Obama example, Trump and Cohen then proceeded to lie about what took place for months — until Cohen’s admission in court.
Some additional context that will shed light on the difference between what Trump did and what the Obama campaign did. A few weeks after the 2016 election, the Trump campaign also paid a fine for improperly handling campaign contributions. About 1,100 donations made to Trump’s campaign violated campaign finance laws, including donations that exceeded the allowable limit in a year.
How common are such contributions? Trump’s former attorney John Dowd made contributions to Trump’s 2020 reelection bid in excess of legal limits earlier this year. Trump’s former attorney. A failure to respond to the improper donations, a Federal Election Commission letter to the Trump campaign said, “could result in enforcement action.”
On Fox News Tuesday night, Trump defender Alan Dershowitz told host Tucker Carlson that violations like the one to which Cohen admitted guilt were “regarded as kind of jaywalking in the realm of things about elections.”
“Every administration violates the election laws; every candidate violates the election laws when they run for president,” Dershowitz added. “Usually they pay a fine or something like that.”
This is the Madoff-candy-bar equation from earlier. While many campaigns do end up violating campaign finance laws, often because of the number of contributions coming in during an election, it’s by no means the case that the allegations about Trump and Cohen are run-of-the-mill. There are often violations of the law, just as there are often violations of the rules at summer camps.
That doesn’t mean, though, that horror-movie villains working their way through each cabin is just part of a standard camp experience.
WP
What the campaign of Obama's did was similar to a violation the Trump had with accepting campaign contributions which exceeded the amount allowable, he paid a fine like Obama did.
As to what Cohen admitted to yesterday and implicated Trump is a different kettle of fish altogether and you and everybody else knows it.
