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One ray of light in the stinking murk:
President Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Mr. Trump two months before the presidential election in which they discussed payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump, according to lawyers and others familiar with the recording.
The F.B.I. seized the recording this year during a raid on Mr. Cohen’s office. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Cohen’s involvement in paying women to tamp down embarrassing news stories about Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Prosecutors want to know whether that violated federal campaign finance laws, and any conversation with Mr. Trump about those payments would be of keen interest to them.
And the rest of us want to know all the “embarrassing” i.e. rapey or unfaithful or both news stories Trump used $$$ to conceal.
The recording’s existence further draws Mr. Trump into questions about tactics he and his associates used to keep aspects of his personal and business life a secret.
Doesn’t it just. This is what I want to know about. I want to see all the lying and concealment exposed, and all the pussy-grabbing and wife-abandoning made public.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, confirmed in a telephone conversation on Friday that Mr. Trump had discussed payments to Ms. McDougal with Mr. Cohen on the tape. He said the recording was less than two minutes long, said Mr. Trump did not know he was being recorded and claimed that the president had done nothing wrong.
It depends how we’re understanding “wrong.” Fucking around isn’t inherently wrong, but if it’s on the sly it arguably is. If Melania is and was and always has been fine with Trump using his penis on women who aren’t Melania (as it’s hard not to think she must be) then maybe he didn’t do anything wrong, but then why was he hiding it?
The Cohen investigation began with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating the Trump campaign’s links to Russia. But as the Cohen case became increasingly focused on Mr. Cohen’s personal business dealings and his campaign activities unrelated to Russia, Mr. Mueller referred it to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who are now leading the investigation.
Trump can’t pardon his way out of that.
I’m always torn on these stories. Part of me wants Trump to go down by any (legal) means available–if you get Capone on tax evasion, you still get Capone. Part of me really, really wishes it was possible to get him on the stuff that should matter more when we’re talking about the Presidency–the consorting with hostile foreign powers, the blatant, immediate violation of the emoluments clause, the abuse of migrant children, the savaging of the Constitution, and on and on. Getting Trump on a sex scandal simply tells the GOP that they’d be untouchable with a Mike Pence in office. But that’s a position of privilege for me–taking the long road to deal with Trump makes sense for a middle-class white guy who could probably survive just fine in Trump’s America. It’s increasingly an immediate crisis for much of the country who don’t share my pallid phallus privilege, and stopping this NOW makes a helluva lot of sense from that perspective.
“I want to see all the lying and concealment exposed, and all the pussy-grabbing and wife-abandoning made public.”
Oh, but that might demean the presidency.
. . .
It’s not just a sex scandal, though.
I’m relying on this Twitter thread by former AUSA Mitchell Epner for the law, but the snarky comments are mine:
If the Enquirer paid $150k to McDougal to benefit the Trump campaign, that’s a campaign contribution. Corporations can’t make contributions to federal campaigns. (They can contribute to PACs or engage in their own advertising provided they don’t coordinate with the campaign. Which is why the Enquirer can run all the pro-Trump articles or ads it wants without running afoul of campaign law.) But — despite the left’s misconceptions about Citizens United, handing over cash to a campaign is not considered protected speech. Nor is doing so indirectly by paying a campaign’s bills, including paying its mistress hush-money bills.
So it would seem that the Enquirer committed a felony. If so, then Trump — and Cohen — may have aided and abetted that felony, or even procured/conspired to commit it. In addition, merely by knowing about this illegal contribution, Trump would have had an obligation to disclose it in his campaign filings with the FEC, and having failed to do so, that is arguably another felony for making false statements to the government.
Oh. Golly. Thanks for the elucidation.
Screechy Monkey: Oh, well done. That does step things up a bit. I’d still like to see a take-down on Constitutional grounds–but violating campaign finance laws at least gets to just how corrupted the system is.
I predict that the eventual demise of Trump, in whatever form (though I’m still betting on defeat in 2020 as the most likely), will be overdetermined. For some, it will be the toadying to dictators, for others, the crimes and coverups, for others, the horrendous policies like child separation, and for still others, the blatant incompetence. Many will insist that they never really liked him in the first place but only supported him reluctantly because of (Hillary, her emails, abortion, tax cuts, etc.). Much will be written about whether or not his supposedly loyal blue collar base deserted him, or whether he simply whipped up opposition among so many previously apathetic non-voters, or whether the Democratic nominee was just so much better than Hillary, and/or his or her campaign team was so much smarter, etc. etc.
And the truth will be — it’ll be all of those things, along with the fact that Trump barely won in 2016 to begin with. If he’s forced out of office via impeachment or resignation, it’ll still be all of those things other than the 2020 candidate, because the question will just change to “why did Republicans in Congress stop covering for him?” which in turn will be “why did the Republicans get their clocks cleaned in the midterms?”
So don’t worry too much about “why” he’s defeated, because it will inevitably be partly for the reasons you’re hoping for.