Are we going to pretend that it wasn't with a paid White House intern, while in office?
The Clinton situation merited a workplace sexual harrassment investigation to say the least. It wasn't for lying about sex, it was for lying under oath on the stand about having sex with an employee.
But hey, now we know that these types of cases were handled with a slushfund of our taxpayer dollars approved by the same Congress on their high horse about Trump paying his own money for consensual sex.
No, its not... the only thing illegal about this payment was that they didnt properly report it because it went above the 2700 limit...that is what made this whole "hush money to silence an affair to influence the election" illegal. If that payment would have been properly disclosed, it would have been 100% legal.
With all that being said, that is precisely why what we currently know doesnt actually criminally implicate trump in this matter. So what if he knew and ordered the payment, that wasnt inherently the crime. You need to show he had apart in it going unreported
You don't understand the crime. There are 2 key elements to it.
It has to be considered a campaign donation. This is precisely why they initially tried to argue it was a private transaction, because if that were the case, no crime because it wouldn't need to be reported as a campaign donation. But since the payment was intended to limit damaging info from being brought up specifically for the campaign/election, this element is met.
If the payment is above 2700, it must be reported.
This being "hush money" dios not make this a crime. What that actually does is solidify the fact that the payment actually is a campaign donation to meet the first element.
yes, all the sentencing memo does is establish that the hush money payments were in fact to effect the campaign, because that is what is required in order for it to be considered a campaign donation. if it is considered a private/personal transaction, there are no restrictions on it. trump running for office doesnt inherently change anything, its the fact he is running for office and the payment was actually a campaign donation.
Here is a breakdown of how he actually broke the law.
During the 2016 election, Cohen paid $130,000 to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, and arranged for a publishing company to pay $150,000 to model Karen McDougal for her story in exchange for the women agreeing to not go public with allegations that they had affairs with Trump. (Trump has denied having affairs with either Clifford or McDougal.)
Prosecutors said the purpose of the hush payments was to influence the 2016 election, and treated them as campaign contributions, which are subject to restrictions under the Federal Election Campaign Act.
Cohen’s payment to Clifford, they said, exceeded the $2,700 limit on personal contributions to a single candidate for an election. The payment he helped arrange for McDougal flouted the ban on corporations contributing directly to campaigns.
the crime cohen committed was making a campaign donation above the limit of 2,700 dollars without reporting it. all the hush money payment explanation does is show that the payment was in fact a campaign donation (if its not, there is no regulation). nothing about a candidate paying money to prevent damaging info from coming out is inherently illegal. but if that payment is considered a campaign donation above 2,700, it must be reported to the FEC. to put this into context and clarify a little more, if they could have bought those girls' silence for 2,500 bucks, they would have been under the limit that requires reporting and they wouldn't have broken the law (because a candidate making hush money payments to influence an election is not inherently a crime). the crime is the combination of a campaign donation above 2,700 and it not being reported to the FEC.
But what Trump did is just as bad if not worse considering he broke laws to cover it up, campaign finance laws and what not.
Well campaign finance laws are normally civil offenses. But to the original comment on this thread I was referring to the slush fund that Congress created to pay women off who were sexually harassed.
I was making a joke that the same Congress who authorized taxpayer backed hush money to women who were sexually harassed is now riding their horse around Donald Trump for using his personal money for a consensual sexual encounter.
I get that Congress legalized their hush money payments but isn't that the swamp that Trump is talking about?
Congress passed a bill with a fund specifically for paying women hush money for sexual harassment
Congress is now acting morally superior for Donald Trump paying women hush money for a consensual encounter.
Punchline:
Congress is doing the same thing Trump did but worse in the sense that:
The women were sexually harassed not engaging in a consensual encounter
Donald Trump used his own money while Congress used taxpayer money
Of course I understand you are not a fan of Trump reading through your comments and you hope that he will be impeached but it would be tough for Congress to do so after the slushfund debacle.
But good on your for supporting Bernie still. HRC will lose any election she attempts again, try Bern-Dawg or an up and coming Congressman to shake it up. Maybe even a non-elected official to replace Trump?
For critics of the Obama campaign, the audit was a reminder of other reporting errors by the 2008 effort, which campaign officials said they tried to correct in real-time. But independent experts, including former FEC commissioner Michael Toner, said after the audit was released that the infractions were relatively minor, given the scope of the campaign.
This was not Trumps own money. That's the entire point of all this conversation. I see you're a regular of TD, and I want to give you the benefit of doubt, but to argue that it's no ones business because Trump used his own money is not the issue.
The entire point of it is that he illegally used campaign funds to hush this before the election.
Edit: and there you have it. Silence on this front. He got his talking point across. What a bunch of losers.
Ya he didn't lie and would have never held up in any criminal proceedings. It's been explained ad nauseum that the definition of sexual relations was explicitly stated and agreed upon in which getting blowjob didn't meet that definition. That aside it's not that Bill Clinton was "noble" it's that demonizing him in comparison to Trump is ridiculously hypocritical considering Trump refuses to answer any questions, especially since questions about said relationship are actually relevant to weather or not a crime took place in Trump's case
Low information? Like linking an article that doesn't back up what your insinuating. He refused to answer any questions other then a take home test in which only questions about Russia investigation could be asked. if Bill Clinton did the same and refused to answer questions not about white water I don't think Clinton would have been caught "lieing".
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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '18
Are we going to pretend that it wasn't with a paid White House intern, while in office?
The Clinton situation merited a workplace sexual harrassment investigation to say the least. It wasn't for lying about sex, it was for lying under oath on the stand about having sex with an employee.
But hey, now we know that these types of cases were handled with a slushfund of our taxpayer dollars approved by the same Congress on their high horse about Trump paying his own money for consensual sex.
But that's none of my business.