Trump-haters hoping the president’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, will provide the evidence needed to impeach the president and perhaps even “lock him up” are likely headed for a bitter disappointment. The Cohen guilty pleas are likely irrelevant to the fate of President Trump.
That’s because in my judgment – as someone who served for two years as a member of the Federal Election Commission – the campaign finance law violations Cohen pleaded guilty to committing, allegedly at Donald Trump’s direction, aren’t really violations.
If I’m right – that is, if Cohen didn’t really violate campaign finance law, despite his ill-advised guilty plea – then it would be impossible for Trump to have violated campaign finance law by directing Cohen to take a perfectly legal action.
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But now to the most important charge as far as President Trump is concerned: the campaign finance violation that Cohen pleaded guilty to.
Many campaign finance law experts and fellow former commissioners of the Federal Election Commission agree with me that Cohen’s did not commit an actual violation of federal law.
It’s my belief as a former Federal Election Commission member that such payments were not “campaign-related” – and therefore the rules and regulations governing campaign contributions don’t apply.
In fact, the only time the Justice Department has ever tried to make such a claim before – against former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina – the Justice Department lost.
Furthermore, the Federal Election Commission – an independent federal agency responsible for civil enforcement of campaign finance law – didn’t consider the hush-money donations to the Edwards campaign to be campaign-related expenditures when it audited the Edwards campaign. – READ MORE