For years, the doom-scrollers, catastrophists, and nay-sayers have been moaning that #P01135809 will somehow get away with everything. That he’ll never be held accountable. That he’ll be re-elected POTUS and somehow make all of the criminal and civil charges against him go away.
Almost 11 months ago, I wrote about his first set of indictments – by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg in what is generally called the “hush money” case. This is what I wrote at the time.
While an obstructionist judge in Florida, the legal machinations of #P01135809 in DC, and the soap opera shenanigans of his attorneys in Georgia are occupying all of the available cable news bandwidth, the earliest charged case – the hush money case – has now been set for trial on March 25 — six weeks from now.
Just as a refresher – and it’s hard to keep all of these cases separate in our minds – here’s a quick reminder of the facts of this case. It is focused on attorney Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment on behalf of #P01135809 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels - whose real name is Stephanie Clifford - to prevent her from publicly speaking ahead of the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had with #P01135809 a decade earlier. In 2018, Cohen (after initially lying about these events) pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws and served more than a year in prison and an additional year and a half in home confinement.
Although this case is often dismissed as a sleazy hush-money scandal, we need to remember that it is just one more election interference case. In October of 2016, less than a month before the general election, the infamous “grab ’em by the p***y” tape was made public. Initially, GOP congressmen and senators were outraged and distanced themselves from their party’s nominee. The next day, Cohen (as attorney for #P01135809) reached out to Stormy’s attorney, saying that he was open to a deal. Shortly after that, Stormy signed a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for $130,000. If the electorate had known that the Access Hollywood tape was part of a pattern of deviant behavior and not just “locker-room talk,” the election (which #P01135809 won in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton) might well have gone the other way. Think about that for a minute.
Cohen’s earlier lies included saying that he had made the payment out of his own pocket and that #P01135809 had reimbursed him directly. Investigators later determined that the money came from campaign contributions, a violation of campaign finance law. Cohen, you may remember, stated his fealty to #P01135809 by saying he would take a bullet for him. Prison apparently changed Cohen’s mind.
If you have not been following this case, here’s a bit of what has been going on since the March 2023 indictment. You can find the full history here.
#P01135809 was charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records in order to hide a series of payments to Michael Cohen. The charges are Class E felonies. To obtain a felony conviction, prosecutors will be required to prove that #P01135809 not only falsified records but that he did so to conceal another crime – in this case, violating campaign finance law.
Since these charges were made, he has made several attempts to delay the trial. He has filed various motions to dismiss the case – most recently, in court this week – or delay its timeline. His attorneys have argued that the trial schedule amounts to election interference and hinders #P01135809 ’s ability to campaign during the primary season. The judge dismissed both of these ideas yesterday – specifically saying that the argument that the trial schedule interferes with the campaign is not a legal claim within the purview of the court.
The judge also noted two points that #P01135809 has made about the cases against him belie this argument. #P01135809 has said more than once that “the primary is over,” thus making his need to hold campaign rallies moot. #P01135809 has also said that the prosecutions increase the likelihood that his supporters will vote for him. He can’t have it both ways, says the judge.
#P01135809 ’s attorneys are using the demands of each of the trials he’s facing to help him avoid accountability altogether – he can’t go to trial in New York because he has to be in Florida to face the charges there, he can’t go to trial in DC because he has to be in Georgia to face the charges there, and so forth. You get the idea.
Campaign finance laws are a rickety basis for bringing down a career criminal like #P01135809, but the charges are not the nothing burger that his supporters claim. People go to jail for violating these laws – not only Michael Cohen, but at least 14 other people, as this Wikipedia page lists. You can check it out.
And we should recall that the Watergate convictions 50 years ago had their roots in campaign finance shenanigans – the burglars who broke into the Democratic Party Headquarters were being paid out of the Nixon reelection campaign coffers. It is not accidental that the major piece of legislation that was passed after Watergate was campaign finance reform – the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act that tightened earlier campaign spending restrictions and created the Federal Election Commission that is tasked with enforcing campaign finance law.
We should also note that in 2019 and 2020 – the last two years of the #P01135809 administration – the FEC was unable to function due to a lack of a quorum. Trump delayed appointing members when some of the six-year terms expired, eliminating the enforcement mechanism for this commission.
Meanwhile, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is expected to issue an opinion on the claim that #P01135809 has absolute immunity from prosecution for things he did while he was POTUS. This is a nonsensical claim that the court is expected to reject expeditiously, given the importance of this issue. This case is on their agenda for discussion today, and their decision in opposition to the notion of absolute immunity is expected early next week.
As an aside, if we want to see what absolute immunity looks like, all we have to do is read the news that President Putin of Russia apparently ordered the murder of his political opponent Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison camp sometime in the past 24 hours. He didn’t exactly order up Seal Team Six to kill a political rival (as an appeals court judge in DC hypothesized last week in challenging the claims by #P01135809’s attorneys that he has absolute immunity) but the idea is the same.
Yes, let’s hear it for the chickens!!!
Come on, chickens!