John R. Houk
© August 22, 2018
Yesterday guilty verdicts came to light against Paul
Manafort and Michael Cohen, both have a connection to President Trump. If you
were paying attention to the Leftist MSM you would think blood was in the water
stirring a shark frenzy was erupting with bloodthirsty glee. They all believe
Trump association to guilty parties means Trump’s Administration is about to
come tumbling down.
The poor delusional Left are forgetting to report the guilty
verdicts have ZERO to do with collusion between Trump and Russia to manipulate
the 2016 election.
Manafort was found accused of 18 counts but the jury could
only agree on eight counts of guilt:
In a verdict announced at the same
hour as President Trump’s
longtime fixer pleaded guilty to other financial charges, Manafort was
convicted of filing a false tax return in each of the years from 2010 to 2014,
failing to report a foreign bank account in 2012, and two counts of bank fraud.
…
But the panel of six men and six
women deciding Manafort’s fate in Alexandria, Virginia, deadlocked on 10
counts. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III declared a mistrial on those
charges.
…
The 10 deadlocked charges were
three instances of failing to file a foreign bank account in 2011, 2013 and
2014, two counts of bank fraud, and five counts of conspiracy to commit bank
fraud.
… (Paul
Manafort guilty on eight counts in first trial conviction from Mueller probe;
By Jeff
Mordock; Washington Times; 8/21/18)
Michael Cohen chose a guilty plea deal rather than face a
jury:
… Cohen pled guilty to eight felonies. While the five
counts of failure to pay taxes on over $4 million in income are the most
consequential to him, most significant to the country are two counts of illegal
“in kind” campaign contributions. …
… The media narrative suggests that
these payments violate federal law because they were made to influence the
outcome of the election. That is not quite accurate. It was not illegal to
pay hush money to the two women — Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford
(a.k.a. “Stormy Daniels”). It was illegal for Michael Cohen to make in-kind
contributions (which is what these pay-offs were) in excess of the legal
limit. (Bold text by blog Editor)
… (What
to Make of the Cohen Plea and Manafort Convictions; By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY; National
Review; 8/22/18 10:28 AM)
So what’s the deal with the press? Why the shark-fest of
glee? Could it be because the Left is planting Fake News against Trump to stir-up
hatred to enhance future impeachment sentiment and plant more Dems in Congress
for such a proceeding?
*************************
MUST SEE: Former Head of Federal
Elections Says Cohen Payment IS NOT an In Kind Campaign Contribution (AUDIO)
By Jim Hoft
August 21, 2018
Conservative author and radio-TV host Mark Levin
interviewed the former FEC Chairman on his show.
Professor Bradley Smith said
the payment Cohen pled guilty to DO NOT qualify as campaign violations.
Last night Mark Levin interviewed a former FEC Chairman who
explained why a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels cannot be considered an in
kind contribution to the Trump campaign, thus violating campaign finance law.
Via The
Right Scoop:
“When the FEC wrote the
regulation that says what constitutes campaign expenditures and what
constitutes personal use, it rejected specifically the idea that a campaign
expenditure was anything related to a campaign, and instead says it has to be
something that exists only because of the campaign and solely for that reason.”
Here’s the audio:
VIDEO of Audio: Levin
Lays Out a Case That There is no Campaign Violation
[Posted by TheNewsCommenter
Published on Aug 21, 2018]
Professor Bradley Smith wrote about this in
the Wall
Street Journal in April.
Shortly before the 2016
election, one of President Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000
payment to the porn star in return for silence about a 2006 affair she claimed
to have had with Mr. Trump. (Both the president and Mr. Cohen have denied the
affair; Mr. Trump has said he did not know of the payment to Ms. Daniels until
this February.)
Not satisfied with an
old-fashioned sex scandal—perhaps because the president seems impervious to
that—some want to turn this into a violation of campaign-finance law. Trevor
Potter, a former member of the Federal Election Commission told “60 Minutes”
the payment was “a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump
campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he’s allowed to give.” The FBI
raided Mr. Cohen’s office, home and hotel room Monday. They reportedly seized
records related to the payment and are investigating possible violations of
campaign-finance laws.
But let’s remember a basic
principle of such laws: Not everything that might benefit a candidate is a
campaign expense.
Campaign-finance law aims to
prevent corruption. For this reason, the FEC has a longstanding ban on
“personal use” of campaign funds. Such use would give campaign contributions a
material value beyond helping to elect the candidate—the essence of a bribe.
FEC regulations explain that the
campaign cannot pay expenses that would exist “irrespective” of the campaign,
even if it might help win election. At the same time, obligations that would
not exist “but for” the campaign must be paid from campaign funds.
If paying hush money is a
campaign expense, a candidate would be required to make that payment with
campaign funds. How ironic, given that using campaign funds as
hush money was one of the articles of impeachment in the Watergate scandal,
which gave rise to modern campaign-finance law.
++++++++++++++++++
Fmr head of the FEC blows up
media narrative that Trump broke the law, by referring to the actual law
August 22, 2018
No sooner had Michael Cohen pleaded guilty than a
Democrat lawmaker called for a new investigation to determine if President
Donald Trump committed a crime.
Rep. Joaquin Castro accused Trump of being an
“unindicted co-conspirator” and called on Congress to launch a probe into
possible criminal action by the president.
VIDEO: Michael
Cohen Pleads Guilty, Implicates Trump – MSNBC
“And now the question is what will the US Congress do about
that,” Castro, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said. “I
believe that the judiciary committee in both the House and the Senate should
open an investigation tomorrow morning.”
But conservative author and radio-TV host Mark Levin
provided a hard lesson in how the law actually works, noting how what the
president is accused of doing is not even illegal.
“I want to help the law professors, the constitutional
experts, the criminal defense lawyers, the former prosecutors and of course the
professors and I want to help them understand what the law is,” Levin
told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday.
[Posted by Fox News
Published on Aug 21, 2018
'Life, Liberty & Levin' host
Mark Levin says Lanny Davis had Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of
criminality that don't exist on 'Hannity'.
FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour
all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as
political and business news. The number one network in cable, FNC has been the
most watched television news channel for more than 15 years and according to a
Suffolk University/USA Today poll, is the most trusted television news source
in the country. Owned by 21st Century Fox, FNC is available in more than 90
million homes and dominates the cable news landscape, routinely notching the
top ten programs in the genre.]
The general counsel for the Clinton mob family Lanny Davis,
he had his client plead to two counts of criminality that don’t exist,” he
added. “It is a plea bargain between a prosecutor and criminal. A criminal
who doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison. That is not
precedent. That applies only to that specific case. Nobody cites plea bargains
for precedent.”
“Just because a prosecutor says that somebody violated a
campaign law doesn’t make it so. He is not the judge. He is not the jury. We
didn’t adjudicate anything,” Levin argued, using an example to drive home his
point.
“Say a candidate had said we owe vendors a whole lot of
money. We have had disputes with them. But I want you to go ahead and pay them.
I’m a candidate, I don’t want the negative publicity. So he says to the private
lawyer, you pay them, I’ll reimburse you, get it done,” Levin explained. “Is
that illegal? It’s perfectly legal. Yet according to the prosecution of the
Southern District of New York, it’s paid at the direction of the candidate to
influence the election. Yes, Mr. Prosecutor, how stupid is your point?”
The former head of the Federal Election Commission,
appearing on Levin’s show, also clarified how Cohen’s alleged “hush” payment to
porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election is not an in kind
contribution to the Trump campaign or a violation of campaign finance law.
VIDEO of Audio: Levin Lays Out a Case That There is no
Campaign Violation [SEE ABOVE in The Gateway Pundit post]
“When the FEC wrote the regulation that says what
constitutes campaign expenditures and what constitutes personal use, it
rejected specifically the idea that a campaign expenditure was anything related
to a campaign, and instead says it has to be something that exists only because
of the campaign and solely for that reason,” Professor Bradley Smith told
Levin Tuesday.
The expenditures alleged by Cohen, Smith explained, are not
violations of campaign finance law even though they “might incidentally benefit
your campaign,”
“The argument seems to be, and it hasn’t changed,” Levin
summed up, “is that, if I spend money to make myself look better, or to take
away negative issues in my private life, my business life, my employment life
and use my own money, then somehow that is a campaign contribution…which it is
not.”
____________________
Leftist Shark-fest over
Manafort-Cohen Guilt Verdicts-Pleas
John R. Houk
© August 22, 2018
___________________
MUST SEE: Former Head of
Federal Elections Says Cohen Payment IS NOT an In Kind Campaign Contribution
(AUDIO)
_________________
Fmr head of the FEC blows
up media narrative that Trump broke the law, by referring to the actual law
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