Perspective: Why Trump probably won’t get in trouble for campaign finance violations
President Trump speaks at the White House on Wednesday. By Stephen R. Weissman Stephen R. Weissman is a political scientist and the former associate director for policy at the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. March 7 at 10:31 AM President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws by making a large, indirect, “in-kind” contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign and causing a corporation to do the same. American Media Inc.
Trump’s salvation would lie in the legal requirement that, to be criminal, violations of campaign law must be “willful.” That means a prosecutor would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew his conduct was unlawful but purposely went ahead with it anyway. Almost seven years ago, Abbe Lowell, a prominent Washington lawyer, exploited this requisite in his successful defense of former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards.
Trump’s team could certainly attempt to follow Lowell’s path by challenging witnesses’ credibility and emphasizing that Trump’s principal purpose was to protect his wife and avoid embarrassment . Trump’s lawyers could also cite the president’s longtime habit of spending money to squelch unfavorable publicity, including legal settlements and a reported 2011 payoff associated with one woman’s threat to go public.
Both agreed that the specific issue of whether donor payments for personal expenses of a “third party” associated with an affair were illegal in-kind contributions had never come up during their careers. The CFO also noted that after Edwards was indicted, FEC staff auditing his campaign’s financial reports raised no concerns about its failure to disclose the payments in question.
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