Quote (mki @ Mar 18 2023 09:50am)
Did you get your law degree from Trump University?
I got my definition of a campaign expense from the FEC commissioner
In fact, its right up on the fec.gov website right now, and flies in the face of this prosecution;
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-disbursements/personal-use/Quote
Commission regulations provide a test, called the "irrespective test," to differentiate legitimate campaign and officeholder expenses from personal expenses. Under the "irrespective test," personal use is any use of funds in a campaign account of a candidate (or former candidate) to fulfill a commitment, obligation or expense of any person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign or responsibilities as a federal officeholder.
More simply, if the expense would exist even in the absence of the candidacy or even if the officeholder were not in office, then the personal use ban applies.
Conversely, any expense that results from campaign or officeholder activity falls outside the personal use ban.
EXAMPLE
A candidate may not make tuition payments with campaign funds, unless the costs are associated with training campaign staff.
Rich businessmen pay hush money to mistresses all the time irrespective of political campaigns. In fact, Donald Trump has paid off women prior to his campaign for public office.
The FECs metric does not judge whether an expense would influence a campaign- the classical example being a fancy haircut being a personal expense even if it is to make a candidate look photogenic for a debate.
Trump paid Stormy Daniels hush money for the same reason he had paid off previous mistresses, that she was exploiting a campaign to extort him into a payday doesn't make that a campaign expense
Not only that, Stormy Daniels herself has said Trump had previously 'threatened' her into silence, long before his campaign, which demonstrates Trump had a pre-existing reason to pay her hush money irrespective of the campaign.
The FEC's stated methodology isn't ambiguous in this case, its extremely clear. It does not ask "could it influence a campaign or "could it have been caused by a campaign". It instead asks the inverse, "could it have been caused by something other than the campaign". That's the irrespective test. And the answer is abundantly a 'yes'. That's provable in this case. Even the absurdly biased politifact that shills the (D) line for a living still has its article up stating precisely that (probably should archive that page since you know they're going to retcon it);
Quote
"The FEC does not ask, ‘Would it help a candidate to buy the silence of an old girlfriend?’ " Hoersting said. "Rather it asks, ‘Would there be any other reason, other than the campaign, for this person to buy the silence an old girlfriend?’ The answer here is yes, there are many reasons a man like Trump would want to buy the silence of old girlfriend."
And most importantly of all,
if Trump had paid Stormy Daniels from campaign funds, the Democrats would have spent the last 7 years prosecuting him for it and calling it campaign finance fraud because its a personal expense. Its an obvious catch-22. A de facto legal activity that is rendered illegal no matter how you abide by the law, because they'll just twist the law the opposite way to incriminate you.
This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 18 2023 09:12am