Ladki96 wrote:taken on its own what is wrong with what he's saying?
Ladki96 wrote:taken on its own what is wrong with what he's saying?
Ladki96 wrote:yes. is why I prefaced it with those four words :P he isn't even referring to any particular person or event here, he seems to be talking generally.
Ladki96 wrote:@Mr Fudge: not really, I think. "It should be ok to jail/murder someone for something about them that isn't hurting anyone and legally they haven't done anything wrong" - I have a hard time thinking how that would be acceptable to say, context or no context. I mean, legally allowed to express? sure! ^^ But I don't think anyone in all probability will be able to say such a thing and not face backlash from /someone/, especially if they are famous
Is Mr Trump being hypocritical here? I will not deny it
@Aquila not sure who that is, but he hasn't been specifically mentioned in this tweet so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fun With Mr. Fudge wrote:Rob Porter was a White House staffer who stepped down because allegations of domestic abuse came to light. Two ex-wives and an ex girlfriend accused Porter of physical and emotional abuse (one ex-wife provided a photo of a black eye). Members of the White House knew about those allegations for months, and the FBI cited those claims as legitimate reasons to delay granting Porter security clearance. Nonetheless, he ended up handling classified information after receiving interim clearance.
Aquila89 wrote:An update on the Stormy Daniels non-scandal: Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer admitted that he paid $130,000 to Daniels but he claims that he did so from his own pocket and "neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign" reimbursed him. (What about Trump himself?)
Trump, of course, denies that he ever had an affair with Daniels. Cohen said: "Just because something isn't true doesn't mean that it can't cause you harm or damage," Cohen said in a statement issued Tuesday night. "I will always protect Mr. Trump."
Give me a break - even a true claim of a consensual affair with a porn star would not have caused any harm or damage to Trump. We see that now. I still don't get why they felt the need to make this payment.
In the full statement, Cohen says he’s responding to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission that “alleges that I somehow violated campaign finance laws.” While he insists that the allegations are “factually unsupported and without legal merit,” nothing in Cohen’s statement disproves them — unless one actually believes that he gave Clifford a massive sum of money for reasons that have nothing to do with his boss.
In complaints to the FEC and Justice Department filed last month, Common Cause, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said there’s reason to believe the payment to Clifford was an “unreported in-kind contribution” to the Trump campaign, as well as an “unreported expenditure by the [campaign] — because the funds were paid for the purpose of influencing the 2016 presidential election.”
[...]
As Thomas Frampton recently explained in a post on the Harvard Law Review blog, the Edwards case turned on whether secret payments count as a campaign “contribution” under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA). He wrote:
FECA’s definition of “contribution” in 52 U.S.C. § 30101(8)(A) includes “any gift, subscription, loan, advance, or deposit of money or anything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.” Importantly, there is no requirement that a “contribution” be labeled as such or that the money actually pass through a campaign’s coffers: a third-party’s payment of a candidate’s campaign or personal expense qualifies as a “contribution,” except where “the payment would have been made irrespective of the candidacy.”
Finding a campaign-related motive wouldn’t be a problem for prosecutors looking into the Stormy Daniels affair. Rumors about Trump’s affair with Clifford had circulated for years, and she discussed them at length with InTouch in 2011. Documents obtained by the Journal show that on October 17, 2016, Cohen established a shell company and used pseudonyms to transfer the $130,000 to Clifford (though he blew his own cover by listing his real name as an “authorized person” for the company). Clifford was reportedly in talks with both Good Morning America and Slate at the time. “And then, about a week before the election, Daniels stopped responding to calls and text messages,” said Slate’s Jacob Weisberg. If the payment was about keeping the affair from Melania, why did it happen just before the election, rather than in 2011, when Clifford was dishing about spanking and Shark Week–inspired phobias?
The larger question is why Cohen felt the need release the bizarre statement in the first place. There may be a stronger case against Trump than there was against Edwards, but experts doubt federal investigators will pursue it. Even Common Cause vice-president for policy and litigation Paul Ryan (no relation to the House Speaker) acknowledges that’s unlikely in this political environment.
“The FEC has been for years mired in dysfunction and now has a Republican majority of commissioners,” he told USA Today, “and the DOJ is within the Executive branch of government headed by the president.”
In this administration, potentially violating campaign finance laws by paying off a porn star isn’t even the biggest scandal of the week.
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