Here's the Crime!

Why Trump's actions were criminal

It’s passing strange that no one in the liberal media, let alone the NY DA, Alvin Bragg, seems able to clearly explain how President Trump’s “misdemeanors” translated into 34 felony counts — with 34 convictions that could land him in jail or at least home incarceration — for the rest of his life.

This is the elephant in the room.

If Trump had been convicted of jaywalking 34 times, he and his followers would rightfully be outraged. And this is precisely what he and they are asserting in screaming, “Where’s the crime?”

Here’s the crime.

Election Law is Serious Stuff

As some readers know, I ran for President as a registered write-in candidate in the 2016 election. I didn’t expect to win. But I did want to lay out the policy reforms economists thought we needed and still need. Download my free book, You’re Hired, to view my platform.

Registering to run as a write-in requires getting the necessary number of signatures in each state. But before you can do anything, including receiving 10 cents in campaign contributions, you need to hire an election lawyer and register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The first thing my lawyer did was make crystal clear that you don’t screw around with FEC regulations. No one can contribute, either in-cash or in-kind, beyond the legal dollar or dollar-equivalent limit and all contributors have to be by U.S. citizens. If I wasn’t prepared to set up my website in a compliant manner and monitor all contributions, immediately returning overpayments per the FEC’s instructions, I should find myself another attorney.

I got the message — the one Trump fully knew, but ignored.

Contribution Limits Are Set to Prevent Bribery

Why is there a contribution limit, which today stands at $3,300? (Yes, you can also contribute to PACs and state and national political committees based on higher limits. The limit for Super PACs is no limit.)

The extremely low ceiling on direct contribution by individuals to specific candidates was established to keep donors from secretly bribing candidates. If, say, Elon Musk were able to donate $1 billion to Trump directly and secretly and did just that, he’d surely expect lots of quid for his quo. Yes, he could try to bribe Trump via Super PAC contributions. But doing so would be in the public eye. Without an individual contribution limit, Elon could hand Donald the key to a storage bin stuffed with 100 dollar bills, with a posted sign — “For election use only!” — and no one would be the wiser.

Who Was Bribing Who?

Trump used Cohen to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to remain silent about her alleged sexual encounter with Donald. This was Trump bribing Daniels. The terms were money for silence. But one can equally say that Stormy bribed Trump. She gave him silence for money.

Had Trump not been running for office, bribing Stormy to remain silent about their supposed dalliance and its salacious details would have been perfectly legal. Bribing Stormy to remain silent right before the election would also have been perfectly legal had Trump signed the check.

But Trump didn’t want to risk public disclosure (copies of the check could have leaked) that he was bribing Stormy. Hence, he paid Cohen to pay Stormy and therein lies the election-law rub. Cohen’s payment to Stormy was clearly election-related and it far exceeded the then $2,700 campaign contribution limit.

Trump’s reimbursement to Cohen — $420,000— far exceeded $130,000. Thus, Trump not only directed Cohen to break election law. He reimbursed Cohen for more than the cost of bribing Stormy.

In fact, the bribe was miles larger than the $420,000, some of which was to cover taxes on the $130,000, which was illegally booked a legal expenses, and $50,000 of which was, it seems, paid to cover an unrelated legitimate expense. On balance, the direct dollar bribe Trump made Cohen was roughly $65,000. That’s not much for taking illegal actions that come with the risk of five years in jail.

Cohen is no dummy. Cohen knew, as did Trump, that Cohen’s lifetime income would dramatically increase were Trump elected and Cohen made a formal or informal member of the Administration.

Cohen asked to be named Chief of Staff. Instead, Trump offered Cohen the position of Assistant White House Counsel. But Cohen accurately decided he could make more money off his Trump connections working outside the White House. After the election, Cohen was hired by AT&T, Squire Patton Boggs, and other companies to lobby Trump and Administration officials. All this, of course, occurred well before January 2018, when the Wall Street Journal broke the story of the payment to Stormy.

The Invisible Part of the Elephant

Thus, the bribe to Cohn to break election law wasn’t $130,000. It wasn’t $420,000. It was the expected receipt of millions, if not tens of millions in additional lifetime income from getting Trump elected and Trump’s reciprocating, formally or informally. This is what Trump effectively paid Cohen. And since purchase prices equal sales prices, the true amount Trump paid Cohen was also the amount Cohen illegally contributed to the campaign — millions if not tens of millions of dollars for providing in-kind, silencing (capture and kill) services that came with enormous legal risk.

Cohen and Trump washed each other’s hands. Each bribed the other in a conspiracy to do exactly what election law was established to prevent. Had Musk been able to secretly hand Trump $1 billion, he could have used that payment, over time, as leverage to extract all manner of financial kickbacks. Trump “accepted” Cohen’s largely in-kind services in exchange for giving Cohen, over time, the selfsame kickbacks leverage, including simply scheduling meetings with Trump where Cohen would lobby on behalf of his clients.

The jury quickly put these pieces together in rapidly reaching its 34 guilty verdicts. But the question remains why this case was brought under New York state law, not by the Justice Department under the Federal Election Commission Act (FECA). This article provides explains the difficulties of bringing the case under FECA. Stringing up Al Capone in 1931 on tax evasion proved far easier than convicting him for murder and other major crimes. Just ask Billy McSwiggin’s descendents. Billy was the Chicago prosecutor who, in 1924, attempted to bring Capone to trial for murder. He was quickly gunned down outside a bar in Cicero, Illinois. Speaking of murder, it can be a federal as well as state crime. In Trump’s case, he broke both federal and state law and was tried where it was easiest to get a conviction.