Well, the President’s legal defense on Twitter is going swimmingly this morning. His lawyers have the smallest possible needle to thread to avoid admitting to illegal activity and Twitter is naturally the place to go when you need to express nuance.
He or Cohen paid $130K in hush money to a woman who claimed she had an affair with Trump and was going to discuss it right before the election. Cohen said he paid for it and Trump didn’t know. Now Giuliani, acting as Trump’s lawyer, says Trump knew and paid Cohen back over time.
In the 1st scenario, there’s a political element but it might not touch Trump. So why does Trump’s lawyer now offer the 2nd scenario, which implicates Trump? Likeliest reason: Trump’s team is really worried that Cohen isn’t planning to go to jail for Trump & will tell the truth.
Now another member of the legal team has to jump into Trump’s Twitter account to say that Giuliani is correct, that all the previous statements were lies, but that the *real* truth is that Trump’s reimbursements to Cohen of hush money payments didn’t illegally use campaign funds.
The problem, I think, is that it’s still a candidate (and, if it happened over time as they say, the President-Elect) paying someone to keep quiet for political reasons. Will the FEC have a problem with that? Someone who knows election law will need to chime in here.
The other issue is that it’s *very* hard to believe Trump paid Cohen back out of his own pocket. Knowing what we know about him as a candidate since 2015 it’s much more likely that he used other people’s money for this. His candidacy and presidency has been a money-making scheme.
The best part about running for office was charging the campaign for everything and using Trump-owned stuff so the campaign was always paying him. This was widely reported. Room rentals at Trump properties, use of Trump’s private jet, etc. It’s only gotten worse since Jan 2017.
Last but not least, Trump is still desperately pushing back against the idea that he even had the affair with Stormy Daniel, a point that everyone except his most die-hard followers have taken as a given. Because it’s an accepted fact that he’s a very sleazy person.
So he has to begin each and every defense with a lame statement that they paid Daniels off even though she was obviously lying. Because he’s also facing *multiple* defamation suits for saying all the women he harassed, assaulted, or had affairs with are liars. Those will cost him
The big problem facing Trump’s lawyers is he’s a pathological liar & he’s having a very tough time keeping track of them all. It didn’t seem to matter with his die-hard followers—it still doesn’t—but it’s almost certainly going to matter in court. Liars get caught in their lies.
