Trump repaying the Stormy Daniels money doesn't mean there were no campaign finance violations
It will all come out in the wash. yes. it will.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-repaying-the-stormy-daniels-money-doesn%e2%80%99t-mean-there-were-no-campaign-finance-violations/ar-AAwFdqZ
Trump repaying the Stormy Daniels money doesn’t mean there were no campaign finance violations
Philip Bump
1 hr ago
......................According to Lawrence Noble, senior director and general counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, that’s true: How the payment was made doesn’t affect the legality.
There was still almost certainly a campaign finance violation.
“We still have the same question: What was the purpose of this,” Noble said when we spoke by phone Wednesday evening. We’ve noted in the past that the question of whether the payment was meant to aid Trump’s candidacy is central to campaign finance considerations — and that it’s hard to argue that this payment wasn’t related to the campaign.
“If the purpose of this was to stop [Daniels] from hurting the campaign,” Noble continued, “then what you have is Cohen made a loan to the campaign. And it was an excessive loan because lending the campaign money is a contribution. It was an excessive contribution until it’s repaid.”
Trump, he said, can make contributions of any size to his own campaign. (Giuliani alluded to this, too.) But the campaign can’t just take loans of any size from anyone without reporting them as long as Trump pays them back later. If that were legal, there would be no point in having campaign finance laws: Candidates could accept giant loans, not report them, and pay them back after the election had ended. (The Wall Street Journal reports that the repayment occurred after the campaign.) By not reporting a loan from Cohen meant to aid the election of Donald Trump, the campaign would have violated the law. Had Cohen not been repaid, the violation was his own, as an agent of the campaign making a contribution to it of that size......................................
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