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Good riddance to the White House media Christmas party – Washington Examiner
Good riddance to the White House media Christmas party – Washington Examiner

President Trump has canceled the White House media Christmas party. Let’s hope he and future presidents make this an annual tradition.

Howard Kurtz reports that the nixing of the decades old tradition was the latest victim of Trump’s contentious relationship with the White House press corps.

But it’s unclear why the event was ever deemed an appropriate interaction for the president and members of the press.

As Kurtz notes, the “annual Christmas-season gathering was a significant perk for those covering the White House, as well as other Washington reporters, anchors and commentators, and New York media executives would regularly fly in for the occasion … Journalists who attended the events, which featured a catered buffet of lamb chops, crab claws and elaborate desserts, got to roam the decorated mansion with a spouse or other family member, a friend or a colleague, adding to the invitation’s allure.”

In addition, “the biggest fringe-benefit was the picture-taking sessions, in which the president and first lady would patiently pose with guests and briefly chat with them in front of a Christmas tree, with the White House sending out the photos — copies of which were invariably sent home to mom. This would take a couple of hours, with long lines snaking across the building’s first floor.”

The press, during the Trump era, has rediscovered the importance of having an adversarial posture toward those in power. People in high positions and those who work for them are trying to spin, lie, deceive, and manipulate the public through the media, and members of the press should be able to maintain a healthy distance so that they can report dispassionately and fairly.

The Christmas party, however, is a spectacle in which White House reporters are almost transformed into political tourists. It was a nauseating display every year I’ve lived in Washington, and especially during the Obama era, to see reporters self-importantly posting their shots with Barack and Michelle in front of the Christmas tree. It reminds of me of the entertainment reporters who giddily boast about being on such and such movie set, snapping photos with some celebrity, acting as a fan of somebody they’re supposed to be covering.

In the Trump era, members of the media organizations have made a big show of their contempt for this specific president, so it would be kind of absurd to suddenly go to a Christmas party hosted by the Trumps and act like everything is normal.

Good riddance to this obnoxious tradition.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/good-riddance-to-the-white-house-media-christmas-party

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Byron York: Why Republicans ‘shrug off’ the Michael Cohen case – Washington Examiner
Byron York: Why Republicans ‘shrug off’ the Michael Cohen case – Washington Examiner

Democrats and media commentators are noting that many Republicans are “shrugging off” the fact that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to felony campaign finance violations which prosecutors say President Trump directed him to commit. The president, they say, is “implicated in two felonies.” How could GOP lawmakers shrug that off?

One little-discussed reason is that many Republicans never liked and continue to oppose current campaign finance laws. They don’t approve of limits on contributions by individuals, corporations, and others — they view those limits as restrictions on constitutionally-protected speech. So they don’t approve of what the laws are designed to do. But of course, the restrictions are law. Given that, many Republicans favor interpreting the law in the most limited way possible.

In that spirit, with the Cohen case, some of the best conservative thinkers on campaign finance are arguing that Cohen’s offense, to which he has pleaded guilty, wasn’t really an offense at all. And it certainly wasn’t an offense for which President Trump could be prosecuted.

Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is one of the strongest voices in opposition to much of the current campaign finance law structure. He doesn’t believe the Trump-Cohen Stormy Daniels payoff was a campaign finance violation because he doesn’t believe it was a campaign expenditure. In a recent email exchange, Smith explained his position at some length:

Not everything that is subjectively intended to influence an election is a campaign expenditure. For example, if Trump (or any other businessman running for office) settled lawsuits against the business in order to get them off the table, so that they wouldn’t become campaign issues, those settlements would not be campaign expenses, but would remain personal expenses, payable by Trump or the company sued. That is true even if the suits were deemed totally meritless by Trump’s lawyers and paid solely as nuisance settlements to prevent bad campaign press.

The standard “for the purpose of influencing a campaign” must be read in pari materia with the prohibition in the statute on personal use of campaign funds. That section and its regulations define things that are not campaign expenditures, and personal use includes any obligations that would exist irrespective of the campaign. The obligations to Daniels or others (such as they were) were not created as a candidate. Moreover, even if Trump decided to pay the blackmail in part because he was running for president, in its implementing regulations, the FEC specifically rejected a mixed motive test, i.e. that something would count as a campaign expense if one of multiple motives was to help the campaign. It must exist solely because the candidate is running for office. But Daniels’ blackmail threat exists whether or not Trump was running for office. Clearly, Trump may be more inclined to pay it because he was running for office, but it still existed. Indeed, Daniels has said she was threatened way back in 2012. And if she only came forward after Trump were elected, he might still pay it — yet the campaign would be over. In short, it doesn’t arise solely from the campaign.

Secondly, the prosecutors want “for the purpose of influencing a campaign” to be a subjective test determined by the mindset of the actors. I believe that the test is intended as an objective test according to a reasonable observer, defining expenditures that one makes when running for office — for example, hiring campaign staff, buying ads, purchasing phone service for the campaign, renting office space, printing bumper stickers, etc. I doubt any reasonable jury would deem “payments to mistress” a “campaign expenditure.” If it were literally “anything” “for the purpose of influencing a campaign” than virtually every personal expenditure made by a person in public life might be deemed a campaign expenditure, and at least arguably subject to investigation. (Note also, that things that are “campaign expenditures MUST be paid with campaign funds.) So the phrase must be narrowed. This is in line with Supreme Court precedent, which, along with lower appellate courts, has consistently noted that the “for the purpose of influencing” language is unconstitutionally vague unless narrowed by judicial construction. Thus, where it has had cause to rule on the language, on the independent expenditure side, it narrowed the phrase to mean “express advocacy” or, later, an objective standard (mention candidate, 60 days before election) that it declared was the “functional equivalent” of express advocacy.

In short, the prosecutor has Cohen by the short hairs, so it’s not surprising that he made the plea, but this is not actually a campaign violation. We don’t have a clear appellate court ruling on this definition as applied to contributions, but the rulings on the expenditure side suggest the prosecutors are overreaching. And note that they’ve had great difficulty getting juries to convict on the theory (see John Edwards and payments to Rielle Hunter).

In other words, short answer: payments to a mistress to stay silent are not campaign expenditures. They may violate other laws or ethics rules, but they don’t violate the FECA.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, also argues that Trump’s Stormy Daniels payoff was not a campaign expenditure and should not be regulated as such. “The campaign finance law violations Cohen pleaded guilty to committing, allegedly at Donald Trump’s direction, aren’t really violations,” von Spakovsky wrote recently on Fox News:

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.

The bottom line: Cohen was “persuaded” to plead guilty to an action that was not an actual violation of the law. … [I]f 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.

Both Smith’s and von Spakovsky’s reasoning applies to the Stormy Daniels payment. But what about the case of Karen McDougal, who was paid by the parent company of the National Enquirer in a complex deal that involved the publication paying her for her story and then making sure the story did not see the light of day? What campaign finance law applies when a corporation is involved?

It’s the same thing, von Spakovsky argued in a recent email exchange:

In another email exchange, Smith agreed. “My basic take is, no campaign finance violation, so it really doesn’t matter (for campaign finance purposes) if the Enquirer or Cohen or Trump or Trump Industries or whomever made the payment,” Smith wrote. But Smith conceded the McDougal-Enquirer case is more complex than the Stormy Daniels matter, in part because the Enquirer is a press outlet:

Again, first, it’s probably not a campaign expenditure and so not subject to the law. But if the U.S. Attorney could get a judge to rule otherwise — and again, his theory isn’t conjured up out of nothing — there would be some other interesting issues. Under the statute, the press is exempt from the limits and reporting. Otherwise, the press couldn’t function. (If you think about it, just about any news story on the campaign is at least arguably “coordinated” with the campaign — done with the campaign’s permission and contact, and involves spending money (to travel and publish). But the press is only exempt when operating within its “press function” (per FEC interpretations). So the Washington Post couldn’t just take out billboard ads saying “Trump threatens a free press -—vote Democratic.”

But much short of that, the exemption has been interpreted broadly, including allowing a publication to advertise its articles. So the Post almost certainly could put up billboards showing a picture of a Post editorial headline saying in big bold letters “Trump threatens a free press and must be defeated” and maybe saying below that on the billboard “Is Trump truly a Scoundrel? Read the Post to find out.”

To go in another direction, can the Post editors say, “the most important thing on our agenda is to assure the impeachment of Trump. I want a dozen investigative reporters on him, full time, more if necessary. Bezos will pay so spend whatever it takes!” I think so. In other words, the press works to elect or defeat candidates all the time.

And here’s the real thing. The Enquirer buys a story and doesn’t publish it. Ethical journalism? You tell me. I’m told this is not uncommon in the UK. But either way, can the press function if all its editorial decisions are subjected to second guessing by the government? Suppose, in my example above, the investigative reporters come back, $130,000 in time and expenses later, and say, “you know, there’s really nothing to this collusion business. Nothing at all. But you wouldn’t believe what we found out about Clinton, Fusion GPS, and the Rooskies!” And the editor says, “well, we’re not going to run that story.” Is the Post operating within the press exemption?

The Enquirer story, if it’s true they were promised reimbursement, is about as good a case as you could have for a periodical going outside the press exemption. (Plus, the press exemption doesn’t apply to media under a candidate’s control, which I could suppose one might argue, though of course it was intended to prevent guys like Steve Forbes from using their publications as campaign conduits). But even then, I’m not sure that’s really a road the press wants to go down, or a statutory interpretation they want to take hold. At the FEC, we got a lot of complaints against the press that were routinely dismissed without investigation. But if we’re going to start looking at the motives of editors, it could get dicey.

But again, my basic take is no campaign finance violation, so it really doesn’t matter (for campaign finance purposes) if the Enquirer or Cohen or Trump or Trump Industries or whomever made the payment.

In the past, Smith’s and von Spakovsky’s views on campaign finance have been quite prevalent among Republicans on Capitol Hill and among many conservative opinion writers as well. Now they are receiving new attention in a new, Trumpian context. The next time a Republican politician “shrugs off” the Cohen allegations against Trump, it might be worthwhile to remember many conservatives’ long-held position on campaign finance.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-why-republicans-shrug-off-the-michael-cohen-case

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No evidence FBI tried to destroy Peter Strzok or Lisa Page texts, IG report finds – Washington Examiner
No evidence FBI tried to destroy Peter Strzok or Lisa Page texts, IG report finds – Washington Examiner

The FBI did not intentionally delete anti-President Trump text messages exchanged by two former employees at the center of a congressional investigation into potential bias at the bureau.

The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General released a report Thursday in which it cleared the FBI of deliberately destroying texts sent between former special agent Peter Strzok and ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who were both involved in the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and, briefly, special counsel Robert Mueller’s federal Russia inquiry. The OIG investigation was initiated after it was revealed thousands of messages sent from December 2016, shortly after Trump’s election win, and May 2017 via their government-issued phones were missing.

Investigators instead blamed the FBI’s automated application that wirelessly gathers and saves data to and from its mobile devices. They found that the software, as of last month, was still not working “in approximately 10 percent” of the bureau’s phones that are in service.

“The OIG investigation determined the FBI’s collection tool was not only failing to collect any data on certain phones during particularly periods of time, it also does not appear that it was collecting all text messages even when it was generally functioning to collect text messages,” the report states.

The FBI welcomed the OIG’s findings Thursday.

“As noted by the OIG, because of the level of sophistication and access that would be required, it was unlikely that Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok attempted to circumvent the FBI’s text message collection capabilities; and, the OIG found no evidence that they did,” the bureau wrote in response to the report.

The missing texts between Strzok and Page, who were having an extramarital affair at the time, were eventually recovered by investigators. One of their messages, sent in August 2016, suggested they would “stop” Trump seizing the White House. Their exchanges were later scrutinized by lawmakers on Capitol Hill — primarily House Republicans — concerned with the appearance of bias on the part of the FBI staffers, but the OIG found in June the FBI’s Clinton probe was not swayed by improper motivations.

Strzok was fired from the FBI in August. Page resigned in May.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/no-evidence-fbi-tried-to-destroy-peter-strzok-lisa-page-ig-report-finds

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It’s now very likely Strasbourg terrorist Cherif Chekatt has help – Washington Examiner
It’s now very likely Strasbourg terrorist Cherif Chekatt has help – Washington Examiner

It is now almost certain that Cherif Chekatt has a support network of at least one person. That’s relevant because Chekatt is the prime suspect in the terrorist attack on Tuesday in Strasbourg, France. That attack took three innocent lives, and wounded twelve others, six seriously.

But 48 hours since the attack, it is striking that Chekatt hasn’t yet been found.

His closest associates and family members have now either been arrested or cleared from the investigation. So where is Chekatt hiding? After all, it is very likely that the French would have identified any Chekatt-personal safe houses by now. France’s DGSI domestic intelligence service has extremely wide legal latitude and significant signal, technical intelligence capabilities with which to monitor terrorists. Using these capabilities, it almost certainly knows down to the hour where Chekatt was in the days leading up to the attack. That he has not yet been found at one of these locations suggests he took operational security measures that most inspired terrorists would be unaware of.

Still, Chekatt’s at-large status isn’t terribly surprising. As I noted on Tuesday, there were immediate indications to suggest that Chekatt was operating with the support of a broader network. Two other factors stand out here.

First, one German news outlet is reporting that Chekatt received a phone call from Germany just before the attack took place, but that he didn’t answer the call. If the report is true, who called Chekatt? Was it a green-light order? Again, the decision not to answer the phone is also nominally indicative of operational security. It’s also relevant because Germany is just across the border from Strasbourg and terrorist facilitators have freer reign there than in France.

Second, there’s the French government’s belief that its security forces wounded Chekatt in at least one of the two firefights he engaged in on Tuesday. If true, that would lend to the idea that Chekatt is either dead or being hidden/treated by a supporter. But if Chekatt is dead, why hasn’t he been found in a ditch? We must also note here that Salafi jihadists like to die in action rather than die in hiding. The alarming exception to this rule is when an operative believes he or she must evade detection to prevent themselves from being interrogated into surrendering other members of a network.

As I believe, however, the clearest element in favor of Chekatt having a support network is the most basic: He hasn’t been caught (yet).

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/its-now-very-likely-strasbourg-terrorist-cherif-chekatt-has-help

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Russian Maria Butina pleads guilty in case to forge Kremlin bond with U.S. conservatives – The Washington Post
Russian Maria Butina pleads guilty in case to forge Kremlin bond with U.S. conservatives – The Washington Post

Spencer S. Hsu

Tom Jackman

December 13 at 12:47 PM

A Russian gun rights activist pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring with a senior Russian official to infiltrate the conservative movement in the United States as an agent for the Kremlin from 2015 until her arrest in July.

Maria Butina, 30, became the first Russian national convicted of seeking to influence U.S. policy in the run-up and through the 2016 election as a foreign agent, agreeing to cooperate in a plea deal with U.S. investigators in exchange for less prison time.

Butina admitted to working with an American political operative and under the direction of a former Russian senator and deputy governor of Russia’s central bank to forge bonds with officials at the National Rifle Association, conservative leaders, and 2016 U.S. presidential candidates, including Donald Trump, whose rise to the Oval Office she presciently predicted to her Russian contact.

“Guilty,” Butina said with a light accent in entering her plea with U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan at a hearing Thursday morning in federal court in Washington.

As part of her plea, Butina admitted seeking to establish and use “unofficial lines of communication with Americans having influence over U.S. politics” for the benefit of the Russian government, through a person fitting the description of sanctioned Russian central banker Alexander Torshin, prosecutor Erik Kenerson said.

Court documents indicate that Butina worked closely in her efforts to advance Russia’s interests with a Republican Party consultant with whom she had a romantic relationship after they met while he visited Moscow in 2013.


An undated picture made available by the Press Service of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation on chamber’s official website shows gun-rights activist Maria Butina posing with a gun in Moscow. (Press Service of Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation via EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

The operative, previously named as Paul Erickson, is a longtime GOP political advisor from South Dakota who managed the 1992 presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan.

In a statement Wednesday, Erickson’s lawyer, William Hurd, said, “Paul Erickson is a good American. He has never done anything to hurt our country and never would.”

[Guns and religion: How American conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia]

Butina’s case is a vivid “part of larger mosaic of Russian influence operations” laid out in part by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference, said David Laufman, former chief from of the Justice Department’s National Security Division’s counterintelligence section from 2014 until earlier this year.

“This case shines important light on the nature and aggressiveness of Russian influence operations targeting the United States, a threat that we need an unequivocal U.S. government commitment to counter, including the president of the United States, and both houses of Congress,” he said.

In plea documents read by prosecutors in court Thursday, Butina admitted undertaking a multiyear influence campaign coordinated through Torshin, a top Russian official, that she proposed in March 2015 as multiyear “Diplomacy Project.”

Requesting $125,000 from a Russian billionaire and citing the NRA’s influence on the Republican Party, Butina traveled to conferences to socialize with GOP presidential candidates, host “friendship dinners” with wealthy Americans, bond with NRA leaders and organize a Russian delegation to the influential National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

Butina’s efforts, which continued after she moved to Washington as a graduate student at American University in 2016, included asking whether the Russian government was ready to meet her contacts.

Butina’s initiative came during what the U.S. intelligence community has said was a concerted Russian government effort to help elect Trump, including by hacking and distributing emails stolen from Democrats. Although Robert S. Mueller is investigating links between that effort and individuals in Trump’s campaign, Butina was prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.

Butina crossed paths with Trump in July 2015, when she asked the newly declared Republican candidate about Russia and sanctions at a public event in Las Vegas. “We get along with Putin,” Trump told Butina, referring to the Russian president. “I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.”

[Trump associate socialized with alleged Russian agent Maria Butina in final weeks of 2016 campaign]

Erickson also tried to get Trump to meet Torshin when both attended the NRA’s convention in May 2016, referring to Torshin as “Putin’s emissary” in an email to a campaign official. The campaign declined a meeting, but documents provided to Congress show Butina and Torshin met briefly during the event with Donald Trump Jr., one of the president’s sons.

In plea papers, prosecutors agreed to drop a second count against Butina of violating a law that requires foreigners working for their government to register with the U.S. Justice Department. There is no suggestion in the documents that Butina was employed by the Russian intelligence services, but violations of the law are considered more serious than a separate law that requires registration by paid lobbyists for foreign entities.

Under her deal, Butina agreed to cooperate “completely and forthrightly” with American law enforcement about “any and all” matters deemed relevant by the U.S. government, including participating in interviews and debriefings outside the presence of her lawyers, testifying and providing sworn, written statements.

Butina faces a possible maximum prison sentence of five years followed by deportation. Under the deal, her defense agreed that she could face a recommended zero to six months in prison under federal guidelines, and could seek a lower sentence. Prosecutors did not agree on any guidelines range, but agreed to request leniency if she provides “substantial assistance.”

Butina, who has been jailed since her arrest in July, agreed to remain behind bars pending sentencing. She appeared thinner in court Thursday than in appearances last summer, wearing a green jail jumpsuit with holes in the elbows of a white thermal undershirt, with her red hair braided.

The court did not set a sentencing date pending Butina’s ongoing cooperation with prosecutors but set another hearing for Feb. 12 on the status of her case.

Before the plea, the Russian foreign ministry continued to support Butina, planning to send embassy personnel to her hearing and posting a statement on Twitter by spokeswoman Maria Zakharov, saying, “We demand that Washington observe legal rights of Maria Butina & release her as soon as possible.”

On Tuesday Russian President Vladi­mir Putin addressed Butina’s case at a meeting of a Kremlin council on human rights in Moscow, saying: “I asked all the heads of our intelligence services what is happening, ‘Who is she?’ No one knows a thing about her.”

In the “Diplomacy Project,” Butina suggested using unofficial channels to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Butina had served as an interpreter for Torshin, an NRA member, as he attended its annual conventions, and her profile as a self-made gun activist in Putin’s restrictive Russia charmed American associates.

[‘She was like a novelty’: How alleged Russian agent Maria Butina gained access to elite conservative circles]

Butina and Torshin invited NRA leaders to Moscow in December 2015, a delegation that includedDavid Keene, a former NRA president and past head of the powerful American Conservative Union. Documents reviewed previously by The Washington Post show the group met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

After the meeting ended, Butina sent Torshin a message: “We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later.”

Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/russian-maria-butina-pleads-guilty-in-effort-to-forge-kremlin-bond-with-us-conservatives/2018/12/13/c27f2d26-fe4f-11e8-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html

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Byron York: Why Republicans ‘shrug off’ the Michael Cohen case – Washington Examiner
Byron York: Why Republicans ‘shrug off’ the Michael Cohen case – Washington Examiner

Democrats and media commentators are noting that many Republicans are “shrugging off” the fact that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to felony campaign finance violations which prosecutors say President Trump directed him to commit. The president, they say, is “implicated in two felonies.” How could GOP lawmakers shrug that off?

One little-discussed reason is that many Republicans never liked and continue to oppose current campaign finance laws. They don’t approve of limits on contributions by individuals, corporations, and others — they view those limits as restrictions on constitutionally-protected speech. So they don’t approve of what the laws are designed to do. But of course, the restrictions are law. Given that, many Republicans favor interpreting the law in the most limited way possible.

In that spirit, with the Cohen case, some of the best conservative thinkers on campaign finance are arguing that Cohen’s offense, to which he has pleaded guilty, wasn’t really an offense at all. And it certainly wasn’t an offense for which President Trump could be prosecuted.

Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is one of the strongest voices in opposition to much of the current campaign finance law structure. He doesn’t believe the Trump-Cohen Stormy Daniels payoff was a campaign finance violation because he doesn’t believe it was a campaign expenditure. In a recent email exchange, Smith explained his position at some length:

Not everything that is subjectively intended to influence an election is a campaign expenditure. For example, if Trump (or any other businessman running for office) settled lawsuits against the business in order to get them off the table, so that they wouldn’t become campaign issues, those settlements would not be campaign expenses, but would remain personal expenses, payable by Trump or the company sued. That is true even if the suits were deemed totally meritless by Trump’s lawyers and paid solely as nuisance settlements to prevent bad campaign press.

The standard “for the purpose of influencing a campaign” must be read in pari materia with the prohibition in the statute on personal use of campaign funds. That section and its regulations define things that are not campaign expenditures, and personal use includes any obligations that would exist irrespective of the campaign. The obligations to Daniels or others (such as they were) were not created as a candidate. Moreover, even if Trump decided to pay the blackmail in part because he was running for president, in its implementing regulations, the FEC specifically rejected a mixed motive test, i.e. that something would count as a campaign expense if one of multiple motives was to help the campaign. It must exist solely because the candidate is running for office. But Daniels’ blackmail threat exists whether or not Trump was running for office. Clearly, Trump may be more inclined to pay it because he was running for office, but it still existed. Indeed, Daniels has said she was threatened way back in 2012. And if she only came forward after Trump were elected, he might still pay it — yet the campaign would be over. In short, it doesn’t arise solely from the campaign.

Secondly, the prosecutors want “for the purpose of influencing a campaign” to be a subjective test determined by the mindset of the actors. I believe that the test is intended as an objective test according to a reasonable observer, defining expenditures that one makes when running for office — for example, hiring campaign staff, buying ads, purchasing phone service for the campaign, renting office space, printing bumper stickers, etc. I doubt any reasonable jury would deem “payments to mistress” a “campaign expenditure.” If it were literally “anything” “for the purpose of influencing a campaign” than virtually every personal expenditure made by a person in public life might be deemed a campaign expenditure, and at least arguably subject to investigation. (Note also, that things that are “campaign expenditures MUST be paid with campaign funds.) So the phrase must be narrowed. This is in line with Supreme Court precedent, which, along with lower appellate courts, has consistently noted that the “for the purpose of influencing” language is unconstitutionally vague unless narrowed by judicial construction. Thus, where it has had cause to rule on the language, on the independent expenditure side, it narrowed the phrase to mean “express advocacy” or, later, an objective standard (mention candidate, 60 days before election) that it declared was the “functional equivalent” of express advocacy.

In short, the prosecutor has Cohen by the short hairs, so it’s not surprising that he made the plea, but this is not actually a campaign violation. We don’t have a clear appellate court ruling on this definition as applied to contributions, but the rulings on the expenditure side suggest the prosecutors are overreaching. And note that they’ve had great difficulty getting juries to convict on the theory (see John Edwards and payments to Rielle Hunter).

In other words, short answer: payments to a mistress to stay silent are not campaign expenditures. They may violate other laws or ethics rules, but they don’t violate the FECA.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, also argues that Trump’s Stormy Daniels payoff was not a campaign expenditure and should not be regulated as such. “The campaign finance law violations Cohen pleaded guilty to committing, allegedly at Donald Trump’s direction, aren’t really violations,” von Spakovsky wrote recently on Fox News:

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.

The bottom line: Cohen was “persuaded” to plead guilty to an action that was not an actual violation of the law. … [I]f 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.

Both Smith’s and von Spakovsky’s reasoning applies to the Stormy Daniels payment. But what about the case of Karen McDougal, who was paid by the parent company of the National Enquirer in a complex deal that involved the publication paying her for her story and then making sure the story did not see the light of day? What campaign finance law applies when a corporation is involved?

It’s the same thing, von Spakovsky argued in a recent email exchange:

In another email exchange, Smith agreed. “My basic take is, no campaign finance violation, so it really doesn’t matter (for campaign finance purposes) if the Enquirer or Cohen or Trump or Trump Industries or whomever made the payment,” Smith wrote. But Smith conceded the McDougal-Enquirer case is more complex than the Stormy Daniels matter, in part because the Enquirer is a press outlet:

Again, first, it’s probably not a campaign expenditure and so not subject to the law. But if the U.S. Attorney could get a judge to rule otherwise — and again, his theory isn’t conjured up out of nothing — there would be some other interesting issues. Under the statute, the press is exempt from the limits and reporting. Otherwise, the press couldn’t function. (If you think about it, just about any news story on the campaign is at least arguably “coordinated” with the campaign — done with the campaign’s permission and contact, and involves spending money (to travel and publish). But the press is only exempt when operating within its “press function” (per FEC interpretations). So the Washington Post couldn’t just take out billboard ads saying “Trump threatens a free press -—vote Democratic.”

But much short of that, the exemption has been interpreted broadly, including allowing a publication to advertise its articles. So the Post almost certainly could put up billboards showing a picture of a Post editorial headline saying in big bold letters “Trump threatens a free press and must be defeated” and maybe saying below that on the billboard “Is Trump truly a Scoundrel? Read the Post to find out.”

To go in another direction, can the Post editors say, “the most important thing on our agenda is to assure the impeachment of Trump. I want a dozen investigative reporters on him, full time, more if necessary. Bezos will pay so spend whatever it takes!” I think so. In other words, the press works to elect or defeat candidates all the time.

And here’s the real thing. The Enquirer buys a story and doesn’t publish it. Ethical journalism? You tell me. I’m told this is not uncommon in the UK. But either way, can the press function if all its editorial decisions are subjected to second guessing by the government? Suppose, in my example above, the investigative reporters come back, $130,000 in time and expenses later, and say, “you know, there’s really nothing to this collusion business. Nothing at all. But you wouldn’t believe what we found out about Clinton, Fusion GPS, and the Rooskies!” And the editor says, “well, we’re not going to run that story.” Is the Post operating within the press exemption?

The Enquirer story, if it’s true they were promised reimbursement, is about as good a case as you could have for a periodical going outside the press exemption. (Plus, the press exemption doesn’t apply to media under a candidate’s control, which I could suppose one might argue, though of course it was intended to prevent guys like Steve Forbes from using their publications as campaign conduits). But even then, I’m not sure that’s really a road the press wants to go down, or a statutory interpretation they want to take hold. At the FEC, we got a lot of complaints against the press that were routinely dismissed without investigation. But if we’re going to start looking at the motives of editors, it could get dicey.

But again, my basic take is no campaign finance violation, so it really doesn’t matter (for campaign finance purposes) if the Enquirer or Cohen or Trump or Trump Industries or whomever made the payment.

In the past, Smith’s and von Spakovsky’s views on campaign finance have been quite prevalent among Republicans on Capitol Hill and among many conservative opinion writers as well. Now they are receiving new attention in a new, Trumpian context. The next time a Republican politician “shrugs off” the Cohen allegations against Trump, it might be worthwhile to remember many conservatives’ long-held position on campaign finance.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-why-republicans-shrug-off-the-michael-cohen-case

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Trump may want a shutdown, but voters don’t – Washington Examiner
Trump may want a shutdown, but voters don’t – Washington Examiner

Negotiation in politics is a fine art. What the public witnessed between President Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was the political equivalent of the food fight from “Animal House.”

Trump presented himself to the public as part of his campaign as a master negotiator, one who mocked his Republican opponents in the primary as a bunch of amateurs, who could get Democrats and Republicans to work out “the best deals.” Since his election, however, he’s had to rely entirely on having a GOP majority to get anything done.

If this meeting with Pelosi and Schumer was any indication, 2019 will not go well.

Say what you want about their politics, Pelosi and Schumer have been in this game a long time and they bring some shrewdness to the table. Trump brings bluster and bravado that he mistakes for political savvy. At the end of that meeting on Tuesday, both Schumer and Pelosi looked like cats who ate the canary. They walked away with the president boasting he’d shut down the government if he didn’t get the $5 billion in border wall funding he wants. It was a remarkable scene and that noise you may have heard was the collective groan of Republicans in Congress.

Naturally, Trump supporters were thrilled and think that meeting will work out well for the president. On social media, there was talk of how people hate backroom deals and this kind of public negotiation is what they want to see.

That’s hogwash. Trump loves the spectacle and the press attention. Trump adheres to Madonna’s adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and as long as the president is the focus of attention, he’s happy — even if it means getting nothing done.

It’s debatable what people think of backroom deals, but we do know a majority do not like it when the government shuts down. People can debate the impact of a shutdown all they want but from a political standpoint, it doesn’t matter for Republicans or Democrats. Earlier this year, for perhaps the first time, Democrats felt the impact of shouldering the blame for a short three-day shutdown.

This time, thanks to Trump’s bluster, Republicans will be on the hook.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., understands the game and knows a shutdown will not work out well for Republicans. Following the White House meeting, he said, “One thing I think is pretty clear no matter who precipitates the government shutdown is, the American people don’t like it.”

Putting aside for a moment that Trump promised for well more than a year that he’d send Mexico an invoice for the border wall, the master negotiator backed himself into a corner with his embrace of a shutdown. Will his base like it? Of course. But even among his base, Trump doesn’t have much wiggle room. Trump’s job approval numbers hover around 40 percent, and the only thing keeping those numbers from sinking further is strong GDP growth and low unemployment.

The possible shutdown is a mess that didn’t have to happen. Trump played a strong hand in not extending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, using it as leverage against Democrats to get more funding for border security. The reason it didn’t happen had nothing to do with machinations by Pelosi or Schumer. Rather, it was Trump’s position on what he’d support or wouldn’t support that constantly changed. Instead of listening to his advisers and hammering out a deal, he’d alter his demands based on what he saw most recently on Fox News.

Trump is on dangerous ground. The year is coming to a close. If the government shuts down, Trump will have to negotiate its reopening with House Speaker Pelosi, not House Minority Leader Pelosi. In that scenario, Trump may not get any money for his border wall.

Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News. He is also a contributor to National Review.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trump-may-want-a-shutdown-but-voters-dont

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Trump confides to friends he’s concerned about impeachment – NBC News
Trump confides to friends he’s concerned about impeachment – NBC News

WASHINGTON — Despite President Donald Trump’s public declaration that he isn’t concerned about impeachment, he has told people close to him in recent days that he is alarmed by the prospect, according to multiple sources.

Trump’s fear about the possibility has escalated as the consequences of federal investigations involving his associates and Democratic control of the House sink in, the sources said, and his allies believe maintaining the support of establishment Republicans he bucked to win election is now critical to saving his presidency.

On Wednesday Trump was delivered another blow when federal prosecutors announced an agreement with American Media Inc, in which the publisher of the National Enquirer admitted to making a $150,000 payment in 2016 to silence a woman alleging an affair with Trump, in coordination with his presidential campaign, to prevent her story from influencing the election.

The agreement with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York follows the admission by the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that he violated campaign finance laws by arranging hush payments to women in 2016 at the direction of Trump.

“The entire question about whether the president committed an impeachable offense now hinges on the testimony of two men: David Pecker and Allen Weisselberg, both cooperating witnesses in the SDNY investigation,” a close Trump ally told NBC News.

Weisselberg is the chief financial officer for Trump organization who was allegedly in the center of the hush money operation. He was reportedly granted immunity for his testimony. Pecker is the chief executive at AMI.

The developments leave Trump as the lone party who argues the payments were not intended to influence the election.

They also come as Trump’s search for a chief of staff is in disarray, with no consensus around a single choice in sight after multiple potential candidates have signaled they’re not interested in the job.

The president has yet to acquire a team to combat the expected influx of congressional investigations and continued fallout from multiple federal investigations of his associates. He’s been calling around to his friends outside the White House and allies on Capitol Hill to vent and get the input. On Wednesday the president wasn’t in the Oval Office until noon.

The White House declined to comment on this report.

Yet despite his frustrations behind the scenes, Trump has tried to maintain a confident public posture.

“It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Reuters. “I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened.”

Some Republican lawmakers have signaled cracks in what has been a solid wall of support for Trump amid intensifying federal investigations after prosecutors said Friday that Trump directed Cohen to arrange illegal payments to two women alleging affairs.

“Am I concerned that the president might be involved in a crime? Of course,” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told reporters Tuesday. “The only question is, then, whether or not this so-called hush money is a crime,” he added.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida rattled the White House with similarly cautious remarks Sunday when asked about Trump’s possible involvement in the violation of campaign finance laws: “If someone has violated the law, the application of the law should be applied to them like it would to any other citizen in this country, and obviously if you’re in a position of great authority like the presidency that would be the case.”

Rubio said his decision on how Congress should respond to federal investigators’ final findings on the payments “will not be a political decision, it’ll be the fact that we are a nation of laws and no one in this country no matter who you are is above it.”

Republican lawmakers, however, have largely shrugged off the latest twists in the investigations involving Trump’s close associates and have signaled their strong support for him.

The incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Democrat Jerry Nadler of New York, said that same day that the president may have committed “impeachable offenses.”

Federal prosecutors in New York state in the court documents that the payments violated campaign finance laws and were arranged by Cohen “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump.

The president has been on a days-long tirade, sources tell NBC News, lashing out at his own staff and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, frustrated by the threat of a Democratic House with subpoena power, an array of looming congressional investigations, multiple intensifying federal probes, a botched effort to find a new chief of staff and a potential partial government shutdown over a lack of funding for his top campaign promise — a border wall.

Trump has ranted about why no one around him is doing anything to stop any of it and vented about the lack of support he believes he has in Congress and within his own White House, the sources tell NBC News.

In addition to the much-anticipated report from Mueller on the Russia investigation, Democrats could ask prosecutors in the SDNY to similarly share details of their probe into Cohen that are related to the president.

Trump has in recent days been made aware of this possibility from people close to him, opening up a new vulnerability for the president.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-confides-friends-he-s-concerned-about-impeachment-n947296

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Trump’s trade team spent days building strategy to deal with Huawei CFO arrest – Then Trump blew it – AOL
Trump’s trade team spent days building strategy to deal with Huawei CFO arrest – Then Trump blew it – AOL

  • Trump administration officials have been trying to treat the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou and the US-China trade talks as two separate issues.
  • Trump undermined that argument on Tuesday by suggesting Meng could be used as a bargaining chip in the trade talks.
  • “I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump told Reuters.

President Donald Trump has once again created a potential headache for his economic team in talks with China and thrown a wrench into a days-long effort to keep negotiations on track.

Trump’s economic team has taken pains since Canada’s arrest of Chinese tech giant Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou, to separate the issue from the ongoing trade negotiations. But Trump contradicted those efforts during an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.




“If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made — which is a very important thing — what’s good for national security — I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said.

The statement flies in the face of comments from National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, the leader of negotiations with Beijing.

“This is a criminal justice matter. It is totally separate from anything that I work on or anything that the trade policy people in the administration work on,” Lighthizer told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “So, for us, it’s unrelated, it’s criminal justice.”

Kudlow offered a similar assessment during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I might be wrong,” he said. “I can’t predict the future on this thing, but there are different channels and I think they will be viewed that way for quite some time.”

Chinese officials have also attempted to keep the two issues separate, instead directing most of their ire at Canada since the arrest.

By quarantining Meng’s arrest from the trade negotiations, the Trump team was hoping to achieve some success on trade while continuing a broader effort to address China’s growing influence in technology and geopolitics. But with Trump mixing the two issues, advisers may find it harder to set the broader campaign aside in the trade talks.

Additionally, some analysts and observers have argued that Trump using a national security and justice issue as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations would undermine the US’s justice system and rule of law. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made reference to these fears when asked about Trump’s comments on Wednesday.

“Regardless of what goes on in other countries, Canada is, and will always remain, a country of the rule of law,” Trudeau told reporters.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, pushed back even harder on Trump’s comments.

“Our extradition partners should not seek to politicize the extradition process or use it for ends other than be pursuit of justice,” she said

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross attempted some damage control Wednesday, telling reporters at the White House that the president had not made a decision.

“Let’s see what he actually decides,” Ross said Wednesday. “Let’s see where we go from there. This is a matter that’s in litigation right now.”

Meng was arrested in Canada on December 1 and charged with violating US sanctions on Iran. According to prosecutors at Meg’s bail hearing, Huawei misled investors and others about connections to a second company that was still making sales to Iran.

A Canadian judge ordered Meng released on bail Tuesday but with tight restrictions, including ankle monitoring. The Huawei executive’s extradition to the US is expected to take months.

The arrest came the same day that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping had dinner at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and hashed out a preliminary trade agreement.

As part of the agreement, Trump delayed the escalation of tariffs on Chinese goods for 90 days while Xi agreed to increase purchases of US goods. The two sides also committed to working on a broader, more detailed trade agreement that addressed underlying Chinese economic practices like the theft of US intellectual property.

The agreement was the first concrete step toward ending the US-China trade war. Roughly $360 billion worth of goods moving between the two countries are now subject to new tariffs imposed over the past six months.

More from Business Insider:

Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/finance/2018/12/13/trumps-trade-team-building-strategy-deal-with-huawei-cfo-arrest-trump-blew-it-up-in-interview/23617426/

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Commentary: The argument over Pelosi as House speaker misses the point – Reuters
Commentary: The argument over Pelosi as House speaker misses the point – Reuters

California Democrat Nancy Pelosi is now all but assured of becoming the next speaker of the House of Representatives. In late November, the House Democratic caucus voted to nominate her for the position; on Wednesday she agreed to limit herself to four years as speaker, a deal that allowed her to pick up at least seven votes, paving the way for her to win the gavel. This outcome was probably always less in doubt than it may have looked to some.

Pelosi remained the strong favorite by masterfully playing different factions of opponents against each other, co-opting potential challengers like Marcia Fudge of Ohio by giving them important positions, and through a media campaign touting her record of accomplishment and her very solid credentials, all of which made it harder for liberal Democrats in Congress to oppose her. For Pelosi the fight was all but won when progressive critics realized that if the liberal Congresswoman, who has been in Congress since the Reagan administration, was deposed as leader, it would be from the right of the party. Once that occurred, Pelosi was able to offer progressives more power in the Democratic caucus in exchange for their support.

The opposition to Pelosi was never fully realized. It was based on a battery of criticisms that in some cases had merit, but no specifics. The idea of fresh leadership is always nice, but without policies and people representing that leadership, it is just a platitude. Pelosi’s opponents also confronted a dilemma in repeating warmed-over conservative talking points about Pelosi being a drag on the Democratic Party. Those arguments might be necessary in the swing districts that elected some of them, but in a Democratic congressional caucus the sexism and indeed homophobia – in conservative circles “San Francisco values” has long been code for either gay or gay-friendly – underlying those criticisms was never going to fly. In the end, Pelosi framed the debate as between a good liberal who knows the job and some young white guys who wanted more power. That argument was one she was never going to lose.

As fascinating as it was to watch a congressional master at work, it is possible that both sides were asking the wrong questions and engaging in the wrong debate. The question of who the next speaker should be was, in some respects, less important than what the speaker’s job now is. Both sides in the battle over who would win the position made their argument based on an understanding of Congress that may no longer be as relevant.

In doing that they overlooked how Congress has changed, as well as the particular challenges that a Democratic Congress will face in a Donald Trump presidency. The days when a congressional leader had to work with a president of either party to pass legislation, reach compromise and find some kind of bipartisan balance, or when major legislation often received support and faced opposition from members of both parties, are gone. That means the ability to count votes, reward support, know when to allow members of the majority party to vote against the speaker out of political necessity, and to advise, cajole and threaten the president – skills that Pelosi has sharpened during her three decades in Congress – are no longer as pertinent because this Congress is not going to pass any significant laws.

The next Democratic speaker is not going to work with Trump on legislation because he has shown so little interest in legislating even when his party controlled both houses of Congress. Similarly, the next speaker will not be working closely with the Republican House leadership to find compromises because the rancor between the parties is too intense, and will likely become even more intense during the new Congress, as the House begins its promised investigations into issues like Trump’s relations with Russia.

The major task facing the next speaker will probably not be vote counting and legislating, but holding the Democratic caucus together and crafting a balance between supporters, both inside and outside Congress, who want to relentlessly investigate the president and those who believe that would be an unwise strategy. To a great extent this is more about setting the tone for Congress, rather than delivering votes or cutting deals. The job nonetheless requires political acumen and toughness as the speaker will come under constant attack from Republicans, Fox News and other usual suspects.

Those who argued over who should be the speaker never really wrestled with this. The position that Pelosi excelled at before and that congressmen like Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan and others feel, with no apparent reason, she is suddenly unqualified for because some see her as an electoral liability, has gone away. Its replacement has not yet taken shape. The question for the Democrats is whether it is best to go into the unknown with an experienced leader, or whether they should move in a more conservative direction with fresher faces who may be out of step with the progressives of the Democratic Party. For Speaker Pelosi, defining the job could prove much harder than winning it.

About the Author

Lincoln Mitchell is a writer and scholar based in New York and San Francisco. He teaches in Columbia University’s Political Science Department and is the author of several books, most recently “Baseball Goes West: the Dodgers, the Giants and the Shaping of the Major Leagues,” Kent State University Press, 2018. @LincolnMitchell

The views expressed in this article are not those of Reuters News.

Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mitchell-pelosi-commentary/commentary-the-argument-over-pelosi-as-house-speaker-misses-the-point-idUSKBN1OC2DL

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With Drive-By Shootings and Deadly Manhunts, the West Bank Heats Up – The New York Times
With Drive-By Shootings and Deadly Manhunts, the West Bank Heats Up – The New York Times

A second manhunt began on Sunday after a drive-by shooting near the Jewish settlement of Ofra that wounded seven Israelis, including a 21-year-old woman who was seven months pregnant. Doctors delivered the woman’s baby boy, but he died Wednesday evening as a result of the shooting.

Later on Wednesday night, security forces found one of the suspects, Saleh Omar Barghouti, 29, in Surda, north of Ramallah, and tried to arrest him. When he tried to flee in a taxi, the police said, the Israelis opened fire on the vehicle, killing Mr. Barghouti and wounding another passenger.

Hamas, the Gaza-based Islamic militant group, claimed both Mr. Na’alowa and Mr. Barghouti as members and vowed to avenge their deaths, but stopped short of claiming responsibility for either of their attacks.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/world/middleeast/israel-west-bank-shooting.html

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Trump publicly breaks his silence after former "fixer" sentenced to 3 years in prison – CNN
Trump publicly breaks his silence after former "fixer" sentenced to 3 years in prison – CNN

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/politics/donald-trump-tweets-michael-cohen-sentencing/index.html

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Trump may want a shutdown, but voters don’t – Washington Examiner
Trump may want a shutdown, but voters don’t – Washington Examiner

Negotiation in politics is a fine art. What the public witnessed between President Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was the political equivalent of the food fight from “Animal House.”

Trump presented himself to the public as part of his campaign as a master negotiator, one who mocked his Republican opponents in the primary as a bunch of amateurs, who could get Democrats and Republicans to work out “the best deals.” Since his election, however, he’s had to rely entirely on having a GOP majority to get anything done.

If this meeting with Pelosi and Schumer was any indication, 2019 will not go well.

Say what you want about their politics, Pelosi and Schumer have been in this game a long time and they bring some shrewdness to the table. Trump brings bluster and bravado that he mistakes for political savvy. At the end of that meeting on Tuesday, both Schumer and Pelosi looked like cats who ate the canary. They walked away with the president boasting he’d shut down the government if he didn’t get the $5 billion in border wall funding he wants. It was a remarkable scene and that noise you may have heard was the collective groan of Republicans in Congress.

Naturally, Trump supporters were thrilled and think that meeting will work out well for the president. On social media, there was talk of how people hate backroom deals and this kind of public negotiation is what they want to see.

That’s hogwash. Trump loves the spectacle and the press attention. Trump adheres to Madonna’s adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and as long as the president is the focus of attention, he’s happy — even if it means getting nothing done.

It’s debatable what people think of backroom deals, but we do know a majority do not like it when the government shuts down. People can debate the impact of a shutdown all they want but from a political standpoint, it doesn’t matter for Republicans or Democrats. Earlier this year, for perhaps the first time, Democrats felt the impact of shouldering the blame for a short three-day shutdown.

This time, thanks to Trump’s bluster, Republicans will be on the hook.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., understands the game and knows a shutdown will not work out well for Republicans. Following the White House meeting, he said, “One thing I think is pretty clear no matter who precipitates the government shutdown is, the American people don’t like it.”

Putting aside for a moment that Trump promised for well more than a year that he’d send Mexico an invoice for the border wall, the master negotiator backed himself into a corner with his embrace of a shutdown. Will his base like it? Of course. But even among his base, Trump doesn’t have much wiggle room. Trump’s job approval numbers hover around 40 percent, and the only thing keeping those numbers from sinking further is strong GDP growth and low unemployment.

The possible shutdown is a mess that didn’t have to happen. Trump played a strong hand in not extending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, using it as leverage against Democrats to get more funding for border security. The reason it didn’t happen had nothing to do with machinations by Pelosi or Schumer. Rather, it was Trump’s position on what he’d support or wouldn’t support that constantly changed. Instead of listening to his advisers and hammering out a deal, he’d alter his demands based on what he saw most recently on Fox News.

Trump is on dangerous ground. The year is coming to a close. If the government shuts down, Trump will have to negotiate its reopening with House Speaker Pelosi, not House Minority Leader Pelosi. In that scenario, Trump may not get any money for his border wall.

Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News. He is also a contributor to National Review.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trump-may-want-a-shutdown-but-voters-dont

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As E.U. leaders gather in Brussels over Brexit, Britain’s May says no to reelection – The Washington Post
As E.U. leaders gather in Brussels over Brexit, Britain’s May says no to reelection – The Washington Post

Michael Birnbaum

December 13 at 9:10 AM

BRUSSELS — British Prime Minister Theresa May said Thursday that she would not seek reelection, making the announcement as she headed to Brussels for a last-ditch effort to persuade fellow European Union leaders to soften the terms of Britain’s departure from the bloc.

Hours after she survived a challenge to her leadership from her own rebellious ranks, she told reporters in Brussels that she had agreed to stand down ahead of 2022 elections in the United Kingdom as a condition for winning support now to oversee the country’s departure from the European Union.

“In my heart I would love to be able to lead the Conservative Party into the next general election, but I think that it is right that the party feels that it would prefer to go into that with a new leader,” May said on her way into the summit in Brussels.

“My focus now is on ensuring that I can get those assurances that we need to get this deal over the line because I genuinely believe it’s in the best interest of both sides, the U.K. and the E.U., to get a deal over the line, to agree to a deal.”

Both sides appeared at an impasse, with the Europeans saying they were willing to give ground on everything except exactly what May is seeking: legal reassurances that Britain would not be locked permanently into a sort of junior-class E.U. membership, subject to many of its rules but unable to sway its decision-making.

And E.U. leaders watching political chaos engulf Britain planned to step up their own emergency preparations in case Britain crashes out of the European Union on March 29 without a deal in place. Diplomats say they believe that is increasingly likely, since the British Parliament appears paralyzed by fragmentation, with no clear majority for any single course of action as the clock ticks on Britain’s E.U. membership.

May met European Council President Donald Tusk and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Thursday before the summit got underway, as she continued to press for language that could win over her restive Brexiteer backbenchers, who feel she has not negotiated a wide enough split from the E.U.

But Europeans said again Thursday that few fundamental changes are possible, even as many welcomed May’s political survival, which they see as key to their ability to conclude a deal with Britain.

“At least total chaos has been averted,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told Germany’s Deutschlandfunk public broadcaster. He said that E.U. leaders were eager to hear proposals from Britain about what could help produce a Brexit deal that will pass muster in Britain’s Parliament. But he warned that there was little room to reopen the current deal.

In Brussels, leaders said they wanted to help May but were unsure how.

“There is nobody in his right mind in the European Union who wants to trigger the backstop because this is bad news not only for the U.K. but also for the E.U.,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on his way into the meeting. “Today is about demystifying.”

May emerged from Wednesday’s confidence vote battered but on top. Under Conservative Party rules, she now cannot face another internal party effort to depose her for a year. But the 200-to-117 party vote exposed the depth of anger within the Tory ranks and left it unclear whether any Brexit deal proposed by the unpopular leader can carry the Parliament.

The uncertainty over May’s future has only hardened resolve among E.U. leaders that they need ironclad guarantees for the future relationship between Britain and the rest of the European Union as a backup plan. 

If the two sides cannot strike an acceptable trade deal before the end of Britain’s two-year transition period, the current deal would leave Britain inside the E.U. Customs Union in a bid to avoid a hard border between Ireland, which is staying in the European Union, and Northern Ireland, which is departing along with the rest of the United Kingdom. Both sides fear a revival of the decades-long Northern Irish conflict if border infrastructure goes up.

May is seeking legal reassurances that Britain would not get stuck inside the customs union indefinitely. European leaders say they can only repeat what they have already said: They will make a good-faith effort to avoid it. And though the political chaos in London makes E.U. negotiators fearful that no deal will be possible at all, E.U. diplomats are also wary of making concessions that then go nowhere in Britain, as happened several times with then-Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of the 2016 Brexit vote.

“It sounds like a bit when Mr. Cameron came here to obtain major concessions that did not even last 10 minutes in London,” said one senior E.U. diplomat on Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the summit preparations.

“Obviously, Theresa May needs to tell us what could help. If she says a political text, without any legal commitment, will not be useful, then we have a big problem,” the diplomat said.

Quentin Ariès contributed to this report.

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Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu-leaders-gather-in-brussels-to-discuss-brexit-but-few-see-possible-concessions/2018/12/13/a7ad7158-fd5d-11e8-a17e-162b712e8fc2_story.html

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Trump confides to friends he’s concerned about impeachment – NBC News
Trump confides to friends he’s concerned about impeachment – NBC News

WASHINGTON — Despite President Donald Trump’s public declaration that he isn’t concerned about impeachment, he has told people close to him in recent days that he is alarmed by the prospect, according to multiple sources.

Trump’s fear about the possibility has escalated as the consequences of federal investigations involving his associates and Democratic control of the House sink in, the sources said, and his allies believe maintaining the support of establishment Republicans he bucked to win election is now critical to saving his presidency.

On Wednesday Trump was delivered another blow when federal prosecutors announced an agreement with American Media Inc, in which the publisher of the National Enquirer admitted to making a $150,000 payment in 2016 to silence a woman alleging an affair with Trump, in coordination with his presidential campaign, to prevent her story from influencing the election.

The agreement with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York follows the admission by the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that he violated campaign finance laws by arranging hush payments to women in 2016 at the direction of Trump.

“The entire question about whether the president committed an impeachable offense now hinges on the testimony of two men: David Pecker and Allen Weisselberg, both cooperating witnesses in the SDNY investigation,” a close Trump ally told NBC News.

Weisselberg is the chief financial officer for Trump organization who was allegedly in the center of the hush money operation. He was reportedly granted immunity for his testimony. Pecker is the chief executive at AMI.

The developments leave Trump as the lone party who argues the payments were not intended to influence the election.

They also come as Trump’s search for a chief of staff is in disarray, with no consensus around a single choice in sight after multiple potential candidates have signaled they’re not interested in the job.

The president has yet to acquire a team to combat the expected influx of congressional investigations and continued fallout from multiple federal investigations of his associates. He’s been calling around to his friends outside the White House and allies on Capitol Hill to vent and get the input. On Wednesday the president wasn’t in the Oval Office until noon.

The White House declined to comment on this report.

Yet despite his frustrations behind the scenes, Trump has tried to maintain a confident public posture.

“It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Reuters. “I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened.”

Some Republican lawmakers have signaled cracks in what has been a solid wall of support for Trump amid intensifying federal investigations after prosecutors said Friday that Trump directed Cohen to arrange illegal payments to two women alleging affairs.

“Am I concerned that the president might be involved in a crime? Of course,” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told reporters Tuesday.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida rattled the White House with similarly cautious remarks Sunday when asked about Trump’s possible involvement in the violation of campaign finance laws: “If someone has violated the law, the application of the law should be applied to them like it would to any other citizen in this country, and obviously if you’re in a position of great authority like the presidency that would be the case.”

Rubio said his decision on how Congress should respond to federal investigators’ final findings on the payments “will not be a political decision, it’ll be the fact that we are a nation of laws and no one in this country no matter who you are is above it.”

Republican lawmakers, however, have largely shrugged off the latest twists in the investigations involving Trump’s close associates and have signaled their strong support for him.

The incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Democrat Jerry Nadler of New York, said that same day that the president may have committed “impeachable offenses.”

Federal prosecutors in New York state in the court documents that the payments violated campaign finance laws and were arranged by Cohen “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump.

The president has been on a days-long tirade, sources tell NBC News, lashing out at his own staff and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, frustrated by the threat of a Democratic House with subpoena power, an array of looming congressional investigations, multiple intensifying federal probes, a botched effort to find a new chief of staff and a potential partial government shutdown over a lack of funding for his top campaign promise — a border wall.

Trump has ranted about why no one around him is doing anything to stop any of it and vented about the lack of support he believes he has in Congress and within his own White House, the sources tell NBC News.

In addition to the much-anticipated report from Mueller on the Russia investigation, Democrats could ask prosecutors in the SDNY to similarly share details of their probe into Cohen that are related to the president.

Trump has in recent days been made aware of this possibility from people close to him, opening up a new vulnerability for the president.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-confides-friends-he-s-concerned-about-impeachment-n947296

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Here’s how Trump can finally make progress on immigration (and it’s not a government shutdown) – Washington Examiner
Here’s how Trump can finally make progress on immigration (and it’s not a government shutdown) – Washington Examiner

President Trump needs to do a prime time Oval Office address about immigration, the current crisis on the border, and why the country needs bold action from Congress and the executive branch.

Between the migrant caravan and the president’s Tuesday debate with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., immigration has become the most critical issue to a plurality of Americans, according to a Gallup poll. With just three weeks before the new Congress begins, Trump needs to score whatever legislative victories he can before Democrats take over the House.

To help, Trump should go on prime time network TV to tell the country why he needs Congress to fund a border wall, reform asylum laws, and pass E-Verify.

The border wall is Trump’s most important issue not only because it secures the southern border, but also because it was his most significant campaign promise during the 2016 election. So far, Congress has just passed funding on replacement fencing and not the actual construction of a wall. Congress could have made Mexico pay for the wall had House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., attempted to tax remittances and withhold foreign aid, but that’s water under the bridge at this point.

Trump needs to speak soberly to the public and explain why it’s necessary for Congress to fund the wall. He should say how monthly border apprehensions are at the highest they’ve been in years. Migrants coming in from the South are unvetted. There have been cases of migrants attempting to come to the U.S. with infectious diseases and criminal pasts. He should also reference Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan who told the Senate on Tuesday that a border wall would be an “important tool” for stopping illegal immigration.

He should highlight the success of other border barriers in America as well as foreign countries like Hungary and Israel, where there were declines in illegal crossings after they built a border wall. Trump needs to make a simple argument that walls have worked in the past and will work again to stem the crisis on the border.

Congress also needs to close the asylum loopholes which allow migrants to claim “credible fear” and allow a limited holding time for people who come to the ports of entry with children. This asylum system may have been created with the best intentions, but it has caused a massive humanitarian crisis.

Human smugglers, coyotes, and cartels prey on desperately poor Central Americans promising them easy access to a better life in the U.S. for thousands of dollars. It has become a multibillion dollar industry that lawyers help facilitate when they coach asylum seekers on what to say to law enforcement at the border, most of whom do not have credible claims to asylum.

This has to stop, not only for the sake of our sovereignty but also because it enriches human smugglers and has caused the death or disappearance of nearly 4,000 migrants over the last four years.

Enacting E-Verify would round out the essential enforcement measures Trump needs from Congress. It forces employers to check the legal status of anyone applying for a job and is overwhelmingly popular, supported by 79 percent of the country according to an ABC/Washington Post poll. Enacting E-Verify nationwide would protect low-skilled American workers who see their wages undercut by illegal aliens. Trump could even highlight a recent story from The Chicago Sun-Times about a bakery who was forced to fire unlawful aliens and hire African Americans after ICE raided the factory. Wages rose from $10 to $14 an hour for the African Americans who had been economically displaced by foreign nationals.

Finally, Trump needs to make absolutely clear that he will not sign a spending bill that doesn’t fulfill these legislative priorities. Furthermore, he must say he will use the full power of the executive branch to implement his immigration agenda. The Supreme Court ruled in Hawaii v. Trump that the president has broad statutory authority to make natural security judgments when it came to immigration. The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president authority to “deny entry to any alien or class of aliens” whenever he “finds” that those class of aliens “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Using that executive authority, Trump should start throwing out executive orders on everything regarding immigration from the citizenship question for anchor babies to withholding visas to broad classes of foreign nationals. He should announce that he’s authorizing the State Department to stop the visa approval process and order the military to build tent cities and barriers on the border.

Hardball actions will add pressure not only to Democrats but also business-first Republicans who want cheap labor.

Immigration is Trump’s winning issue. It is the reason why he’s president. If Americans didn’t want to protect the southern border and further immigration restrictions, then Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton would be in the Oval Office right now. Trump needs to use the power of his office and speak directly to the public about why it’s so important in a national address, not just in a tweet.

Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a writer based in New York.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/heres-how-trump-can-finally-make-progress-on-immigration-and-its-not-a-government-shutdown

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‘Active Shooter’ Places Indiana Schools On Lockdown, Suspect Dead – LEX18 Lexington KY News
‘Active Shooter’ Places Indiana Schools On Lockdown, Suspect Dead – LEX18 Lexington KY News

LEX 18 News is the leading news and information provider in Central Kentucky. LEX 18 News offers the most compelling and comprehensive coverage on-air, online and through mobile technologies.

P.O. Box 1457
Lexington, KY 40588-1457

Source Article from https://lex18.com/news/2018/12/13/active-shooter-places-richmond-community-schools-on-lockdown-suspect-dead/

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Trump’s John Edwards defense further dissipates – Washington Examiner
Trump’s John Edwards defense further dissipates – Washington Examiner

Buried in the Justice Department’s sentencing announcement of President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen is a brief aside that may threaten Trump’s legal defense if he gets charged with violating campaign finance laws.

American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer that enabled Cohen’s payouts to former Trump flings Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, asserted that “its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”

The three-year sentence issued to Cohen for violating campaign finance laws, income tax evasion, and lying to secure a loan indicates that prosecutors likely considered Cohen’s intentions as illicit. If Trump did in fact direct Cohen to broker the deals with Daniels and McDougal, today seriously hampered his best possible criminal defense: the John Edwards precedent.

In 2011, Edwards faced similar charges for payments issued to his mistress by private donors during his failed presidential bid. He was acquitted on the basis that the payments were meant to conceal the affair from his wife for personal and reputational reasons, not from the public for political reasons. What did Cohen in — or at least, what led him to plead guilty rather than mount the same defense as Edwards — were AMI’s claims that the Daniels and McDougal deals were intended to influence the election. This might hinder Trump’s ability to make the same argument.

For his part, the president tweeted about the outcome of the Edwards case in 2012, demonstrating that if he did direct the payments, he had mens rea in intentionally directing his personal attorney to violate federal law. Again, it is still unclear how much Trump knew and when. But AMI CEO and Chairman David Pecker met with Cohen and “at least one other member of the campaign” in 2015 specifically to discuss “assisting the campaign in identifying [negative stories about that presidential candidate’s relationships with women] so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”

Campaign finance laws as a whole are generally dumb, ineffectual, and easy to violate. If Trump did in fact direct Cohen to violate them, it’s likely not an impeachable offense, nor is it remotely comparable to the Democrats’ initial charge that he colluded with a foreign dictatorship to rig U.S. elections. But if Trump did direct Cohen to broker the payments to Daniels and McDougal, there’s one more piece of evidence now suggesting that he might have done so with criminal intent.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-john-edwards-defense-further-dissipates

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Trump may want a shutdown, but voters don’t – Washington Examiner
Trump may want a shutdown, but voters don’t – Washington Examiner

Negotiation in politics is a fine art. What the public witnessed between President Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was the political equivalent of the food fight from “Animal House.”

Trump presented himself to the public as part of his campaign as a master negotiator, one who mocked his Republican opponents in the primary as a bunch of amateurs, who could get Democrats and Republicans to work out “the best deals.” Since his election, however, he’s had to rely entirely on having a GOP majority to get anything done.

If this meeting with Pelosi and Schumer was any indication, 2019 will not go well.

Say what you want about their politics, Pelosi and Schumer have been in this game a long time and they bring some shrewdness to the table. Trump brings bluster and bravado that he mistakes for political savvy. At the end of that meeting on Tuesday, both Schumer and Pelosi looked like cats who ate the canary. They walked away with the president boasting he’d shut down the government if he didn’t get the $5 billion in border wall funding he wants. It was a remarkable scene and that noise you may have heard was the collective groan of Republicans in Congress.

Naturally, Trump supporters were thrilled and think that meeting will work out well for the president. On social media, there was talk of how people hate backroom deals and this kind of public negotiation is what they want to see.

That’s hogwash. Trump loves the spectacle and the press attention. Trump adheres to Madonna’s adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity and as long as the president is the focus of attention, he’s happy — even if it means getting nothing done.

It’s debatable what people think of backroom deals, but we do know a majority do not like it when the government shuts down. People can debate the impact of a shutdown all they want but from a political standpoint, it doesn’t matter for Republicans or Democrats. Earlier this year, for perhaps the first time, Democrats felt the impact of shouldering the blame for a short three-day shutdown.

This time, thanks to Trump’s bluster, Republicans will be on the hook.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., understands the game and knows a shutdown will not work out well for Republicans. Following the White House meeting, he said, “One thing I think is pretty clear no matter who precipitates the government shutdown is, the American people don’t like it.”

Putting aside for a moment that Trump promised for well more than a year that he’d send Mexico an invoice for the border wall, the master negotiator backed himself into a corner with his embrace of a shutdown. Will his base like it? Of course. But even among his base, Trump doesn’t have much wiggle room. Trump’s job approval numbers hover around 40 percent, and the only thing keeping those numbers from sinking further is strong GDP growth and low unemployment.

The possible shutdown is a mess that didn’t have to happen. Trump played a strong hand in not extending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, using it as leverage against Democrats to get more funding for border security. The reason it didn’t happen had nothing to do with machinations by Pelosi or Schumer. Rather, it was Trump’s position on what he’d support or wouldn’t support that constantly changed. Instead of listening to his advisers and hammering out a deal, he’d alter his demands based on what he saw most recently on Fox News.

Trump is on dangerous ground. The year is coming to a close. If the government shuts down, Trump will have to negotiate its reopening with House Speaker Pelosi, not House Minority Leader Pelosi. In that scenario, Trump may not get any money for his border wall.

Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News. He is also a contributor to National Review.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trump-may-want-a-shutdown-but-voters-dont

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After winning leadership vote, Theresa May heads to Brussels to debate Irish border – CNBC
After winning leadership vote, Theresa May heads to Brussels to debate Irish border – CNBC

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Europe Politics


The Irish border issue has been around since Brexit talks first started 18 months ago, but it’s only recently emerged as a widely recognized crucial element of negotiations. Still, the E.U. is unlikely to change its stance on the matter.

“We know that the E.U. will not renegotiate but they may offer some clarifications or addendums or some kind of promise of a future comprehensive trade and political agreement — but they will not really reopen the deal that London signed only three weeks ago,” Adriano Bosoni, senior Europe analyst at geopolitical intelligence firm Stratfor, told CNBC.

European Council President Donald Tusk has already made clear that the current Brexit agreement, which was approved by E.U. leaders in late November, is the only option on the table.

At the Brussels gathering, “the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, will explain to the EU’s 27 leaders why the demands the U.K. Government is making would contradict the backstop, and so can’t be delivered,” Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at consultancy Eurasia Group, said in a Thursday note.

“We can perhaps repeat what it can and cannot do in a different format, but the negotiation on the backstop is done,” a senior European negotiator reportedly told Rahman.

The situation, however, isn’t entirely bleak for May.


“There are some signs coming out of the European Union that they might be looking to do things outside of the actual deal, maybe alongside it, side letters, agreements that could help with the interpretation … that might help [May] when she comes back to the Commons,” said Henry Newman, director of policy group Open Europe.

After Brussels, May has to reintroduce the Brexit deal in the British House of Commons, which is divided on the matter. Some want a softer agreement or a second referendum, while others seek a much harder Brexit deal.

“The problem is that the PM is bang in the center here,” Newman warned. “She’s in the middle of the road and the problem in politics is that when you’re in the middle of the road, you can get run over.”

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Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/13/theresa-may-heads-to-brussels-to-debate-irish-border-with-eu-leaders.html

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Trump’s John Edwards defense further dissipates – Washington Examiner
Trump’s John Edwards defense further dissipates – Washington Examiner

Buried in the Justice Department’s sentencing announcement of President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen is a brief aside that may threaten Trump’s legal defense if he gets charged with violating campaign finance laws.

American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer that enabled Cohen’s payouts to former Trump flings Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, asserted that “its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”

The three-year sentence issued to Cohen for violating campaign finance laws, income tax evasion, and lying to secure a loan indicates that prosecutors likely considered Cohen’s intentions as illicit. If Trump did in fact direct Cohen to broker the deals with Daniels and McDougal, today seriously hampered his best possible criminal defense: the John Edwards precedent.

In 2011, Edwards faced similar charges for payments issued to his mistress by private donors during his failed presidential bid. He was acquitted on the basis that the payments were meant to conceal the affair from his wife for personal and reputational reasons, not from the public for political reasons. What did Cohen in — or at least, what led him to plead guilty rather than mount the same defense as Edwards — were AMI’s claims that the Daniels and McDougal deals were intended to influence the election. This might hinder Trump’s ability to make the same argument.

For his part, the president tweeted about the outcome of the Edwards case in 2012, demonstrating that if he did direct the payments, he had mens rea in intentionally directing his personal attorney to violate federal law. Again, it is still unclear how much Trump knew and when. But AMI CEO and Chairman David Pecker met with Cohen and “at least one other member of the campaign” in 2015 specifically to discuss “assisting the campaign in identifying [negative stories about that presidential candidate’s relationships with women] so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”

Campaign finance laws as a whole are generally dumb, ineffectual, and easy to violate. If Trump did in fact direct Cohen to violate them, it’s likely not an impeachable offense, nor is it remotely comparable to the Democrats’ initial charge that he colluded with a foreign dictatorship to rig U.S. elections. But if Trump did direct Cohen to broker the payments to Daniels and McDougal, there’s one more piece of evidence now suggesting that he might have done so with criminal intent.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trumps-john-edwards-defense-further-dissipates

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