Michael ‘Song Bird’ Cohen has told Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he was directed by Trump to make hush money payments in 2016 to Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. The payments were made to buy their silence about the sexual affairs they had with Trump so as not to damage his presidential campaign.
Federal prosecutors believe Cohen’s hush money payments were criminal and if he acted at Trump’s direction, then Trump was directly involved in those crimes.
These accusations were revealed in court filings which were released to the media on Friday. Cohen is far from being a trustworthy person, but the court filings were heavily redacted, indicating that Mueller may have corroborating evidence that he does not want to reveal yet.
There are legal questions as to whether a sitting president can be indicted. But even if Trump is not indicted, the Democrats in the new congress are going to have a field day with the accusation that Trump ordered Cohen to make those hush money payments. There is now a better chance than ever that Trump will be impeached.
If Trump is indeed impeached, he cannot count on all Republican senators to vote against conviction. Almost all, if not all, Democratic senators will vote to convict Trump. All they need is enough Republican defections to constitute a two-thirds majority for conviction.
In my opinion, the House will impeach the President, but the Democrats will fail to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Meanwhile Trump’s administration will be beset with paralysis and the nation will be thrown into considerable turmoil.
Bill Clinton was almost brought down for lying about his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, but his ass was saved when the Republicans failed to gain a conviction in the Senate after they had impeached him in the House. Had that been in the #MeToo era, Clinton would have been toast.
I believe Donald Trump did have sex with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, given his well-known reputation as a womanizer. Remember, he was recorded saying “Grab ’em by the pussy.” Now if Trump had just kept his works in his pants when his wife was pregnant, his administration would not be facing a crisis of epic proportions.
Do the Democrats in the House really want to bring on the consequences of impeachment? You bet they do! In their zeal to bring Trump down, the Democrats do not give a damn about the state of the nation.
So, will Trump’s sexual escapades with a porn star and a former Playboy model bring down his presidency? Stay tuned starting with the new Congress in January.
It is not about the sex. The sex was inconsequential (that’s what Stormey said). Bill Clinton told a lie about it. And even though that lie was inconsequential, the GOP peasants came with torches and pitchforks because they wanted to nail Clinton on something, anything. He was running the economy better than they ever could. The GOP was really grasping straws.
Now Trump’s payoffs to strumpets are a completely different matter. Whilst we have a history of not really minding where the President’s penis goes, we have an obsessive legal interest as to where campaign funds go, to the penny. Trump had a campaign interest in two ladies NOT talking about Little Donnie’s peregrinations right before the election. But the crime would have still been illegal campaign contributions if the payoff had been to conceal how much Trump paid Sammy The Bull Gravano for Mob concrete instead of sex.
Uhhh, Pat. . . . . Clinton’s crime was that he perjured himself. Incontrovertibly. Positively. That’s why he lost his law license. By the way, didn’t Clinton end up paying Paula Jones $800K or so to keep quiet?
Fat, Clinton did not pay Paula Jones any hush money. She sued him and they settled the case for $850,000.
Sorry Pat, but it really is about sex. If Trump had never had sex with Stormy and McDougal, he wouldn’t be in the mess he’s in now. And the country would not be facing a crisis if he had just kept his pecker in his pants when Melania was pregnant.
Nope Howie, it’s not about sex. it’s about a desperate, frantic desire on the part of Democrats (and more than a few Republicans) to remove the duly elected President of the United States from office. The country knew about Stormy Daniels when the voted for Trump. They knew about Karen McDougal, at least they did if they were paying attention.
Nobody expected Trump to be a saint. He is and always has been a rude, crude womanizer. He divorced Ivanka because he was having a affair with Marla Maples. He didn’t marry Marla until after she had given birth to Tiffany. He then divorced Marla because he was having an affair with Melania. He’s a cad. So what? We didn’t elect him to be pastor-in-chief.
And, just as a note, the country isn’t facing a crisis. Even if Congress were to impeach Trump and remove him from office (which I’ll lay odds against) we would still not be facing a “crisis”. We have a Vice President, he would assume office and we would move on. The only “crisis” is in the minds of the media and those who hang on their every word.
I’m confused. It’s illegal to give someone money to keep a story quiet? Really? I don’t think it is. As for using campaign funds, given that Mr. Trump is a billionaire, I suspect that he just wrote a check.
Didn’t I heard several months ago that there were dozens of Congressmen who had been using government money to pay off potential accusers? If I were Trump I’d call a meeting. I’d tell every one of those congress critters that they better think twice, because he’s going to make sure that if he goes down they go with him.
That would be the last thing he should do. Threatening Congress with retaliation when he’s facing possible impeachment proceedings would be akin to tampering with a jury, not to mention threatening a public servant. He’d be breaking a whole bunch of laws on top of what he’s already accused of breaking.
James:
An impeachment is a political act, NOT a legal action (and certainly not a criminal action!) While the Senate ultimately must vote on whether to remove the President from office the are in no sense a “jury”. As for threatening a public official – since when is it “threatening” to tell the truth? If it is then someone should arraign Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal because that’s exactly what they did.
If Congress is going to impeach Trump for trying to hide past peccadillos, then they should absolutely be held to the same standard.
Trump needs to declassify everything. The sexual harassment payoffs at taxpayer expense of the Congress critters, all the FISA warrant stuff, everything. He’s just sitting there getting bitch slapped by seemingly everyone and not retaliating. I voted for the guy who would hit back harder. I voted for the guy who would lock up Hillary, et al, for the crap they pulled.
As far as Trump paying off the two bimbos, that’s protecting his brand, and probably something he’s done before, when he was not running for president. It’s a stretch to call those payoffs campaign expenses if campaign money wasn’t used. Hell, I’d see it more problematic if he used campaign funds to make these payments, because they don’t strike me as eligible campaign expenses.
If we are looking for an actual crime, when is Stormy getting charged with extortion? That’s a real crime, if I recall correctly.
This is all a big nothing burger, and Trump will lose ZERO support over this. Will the House hold an impeachment vote? Of course they will, and the Pubs who did it to Clinton for basically the same thing will reap some karma. Will it go anywhere? Nope. In the end, just some more useless virtue signalling to their base. It will be the real life version of Ralph Wiggum saying, “Look, I’m helping!”
Fat Albert, Doesn’t matter if Trump “just wrote a check”. If the check was for campaign purposes its a campaign expenditure and must be reported as such, whether it came out of the campaign account or his personal account. In other words if he just wanted to buy her silence to save his marriage, he probably hasn’t broken the law. If he wanted to buy her silence to save his campaign, thats a problem. One way he can make the case it wasn’t for the campaign is if he has a history of buying peoples silence over the years. Of course he’ll need to present that history of paying people off which could be very interesting. JP
Yeah, Jerry, the problem is that to prove a violation there has to be a positive proof of intent. Just because it benefited his campaign isn’t enough.
Once again, if it’s crime for politicians to give people money to keep their mouths shut, then we’re gonna have a very empty Washington D.C. For that matter, Austin’s going to look pretty sparse.
I can’t figure out what is illegal about “so-called” hush money payments to consenting adults. Using blackmail to get the payments from Donald Trump in the first place is the only likely “criminal” act I can identify. Any lawyers out there to weigh in on this.
I know that the Democrats want to kick Trump out of office and they don’t care how they do it.
I agree with Bill Daniels. And the nearly $20 million in taxpayer funded payouts for harassment need to be fully publicized to show us who the hypocrites are, what they did and how much they owes us.
My hunch is Al Greens second payout had a kickback feature since the complainant still works for him.
This article in the National Review by Conrad Black, is instructive. It called, “Mueller has Nothing.”
“. . . part of his plea bargain, Cohen claimed that the payments to the two women were illegal campaign contributions, as they were made to spare candidate Trump embarrassment in the last phase of the 2016 election, and that Trump knew about them. This has invited and created the inference in the Trump-hating media that the president is an unindicted co-conspirator. That he may be so in the mind of an American prosecutor carries no more weight than did the opinions of a few flaky West Coast federal judges last year that Trump had no right to exercise his constitutional prerogative of controlling entry by foreigners into the United States.
It’s an opinion and a headline. But the U.S. attorney catechized Cohen into the claim that it was a campaign contribution when, in fact, Trump paid Cohen’s bills and a candidate can contribute to his own campaign. It will likely be found, if necessary, that a prosecutor cannot indict an incumbent president, and has to send anything regarded as incriminating evidence to the House Judiciary Committee for possible action. Even the incoming chairman of that committee, Jerrold Nadler, whose every fifth word since the last presidential election has been “impeachment,” will have difficulty imagining that this tawdry and comical business has legs as an impeachment case.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/robert-muellers-investigations-got-nothing/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202018-12-10&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives
Let me make this crystal clear, I do not want President Trump impeached! But you do not have to be an attorney to know that any funds spent on or for a campaign are campaign funds and the law requires they be reported as such. Conrad Black’s uninstructive opinion aside, if Trump did instruct Cohen to pay Stormy and McDougal hush money to protect his campaign, and it was not reported as campaign funds, that constitutes ‘crimes and high misdemeanors’ under the Constitution.
The House Democrats are just itching to impeach Trump. They may not do so only if Nancy Pelosi or whoever takes over the House leadership becomes convinced the Democrats do not have enough Republican defectors to sustain a conviction in the Senate. Pelosi is no fool. She must know that impeachment without conviction may very well backfire on the Democrats in 2020.
I wonder where Hillary paying Perkins Coui to hire Christopher Steele to pay Russians to concoct a phony narrative…
If Trump paying off two women is a campaign expense, then it sounds like a buttload of Congress critters have all committed that exact same crime, made worse because they used taxpayer money to do it. And their crimes happened first, so they should be indicted FIRST. If we an’t prosecute those congressmen for campaign finance law violations, then why would Trump be in any danger?
Trump will be in danger because Cohen just got sentenced to three years in prison and one of the charges he was convicted of was for paying that hush money to Daniels and McDougal.
If Mueller has corroborating evidence that Trump ordered Cohen to make those payments, then the President is in deep doodoo.
Why? Prove it was a campaign expense, vs. protecting the Trump brand. And if it is indeed the worst crime ever, then I’m pretty sure Obama’s going to go to jail for paying the good Rev. Wright $ 150K for his God Damn America self to stay quiet about the gay sex club he was running there at the church.
Cohen pled guilty, that doesn’t mean he actually WAS guilty. Ain’t nobody proved nothing. They leveraged his tax evasion to get him to admit to something that has not been proven to be a crime. Trump won’t be just laying down. The NY AG ran on and got elected to make it her personal mission in life to “get Trump.” I’m sure she will try, but I bet Trump will hire the best lawyers on the planet to fight as long as it takes until she is no longer in office.
These folks have given Trump no choice but to take down all of them. It’s the only way this can end.
Better be in writing since Cohen is now an established liar.
Howie, Cohen pled guilty to not paying taxes on something like $80 million and lying to congress about the Trump/Russia real estate deal didn’t he? He did NOT corroborate Trump instructed him to pay money from his campaign.
Dan, Cohen also plead guilty to making the payoffs. He is saying that Mueller has corroborated his claim that Trump ordered him to do so and the heavily redacted court filing could indicate that.
The coming Senate will be composed of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. If the House were to impeach Trump, all the Democrats and the two Independents in the Senate would have to vote for conviction and they would have to get 20 Republicans to join them in order for Trump to be convicted. While there would be several Republican senators who would vote to convict Trump, it won’t be 20 of them. That’s why, despite as much as the Democrats want to impeach Trump, I don’t think Nancy Pelosi will let them do that.
As an additional observation, the recent outcry by the media and Democrats (I’m repeating myself here) to impeach Trump because he paid hush money to a couple of mouthy tramps is evidence of something else far more important:
Mueller’s got nothing. And the Democrats know it. After more that 2 years of desperately trying to build some kind of believable case against Trump for “Russian collusion” Mueller’s come up with a big fat zero. Hence the switch to the “campaign finance” supposed violation.
yep
It was a giant fishing expedition while the Clinton’s go free.
I agree.