Stormy in a teacup — campaign finance case against Trump is laughably weakWashington Examiner, Dec 11, 2018, Editorial Board
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York want you to know the real problem with President Trump paying off a porn star to keep her quiet about their extramarital fling is that his shady lawyer didn't use campaign funds to do it.
The legal reasoning here is tendentious and the implications are absurd, and it wouldn't be treated seriously if it were not a Republican politician being targeted for potential prosecution.
[...]
The argument is that since the hush money was paid to “influence†the election, it was a campaign expenditure. But by that logic, every dime Chris Christie spent to lose weight before his 2016 run — the diet books, the StairMaster, the bariatric surgery — was a campaign expenditure. If Christie bought a SlimFast shake with his personal money, was he a felon?
Former Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith posited another hypothetical: “If a business owner ran for political office and decided to pay bonuses to his employees in the hope that he would get good press and boost his stock as a candidate, would that be a campaign expenditure, payable from campaign funds?â€
If a candidate who normally gets a $12 haircut shells out $40 for a better cut, is he a criminal for paying out of his own pocket even though the idea is to look sharp in front of news cameras? If a candidate pays a contested past-due personal bill only to make the headache go away before the debates begin, is he legally required to pay out of his campaign coffers?
More:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/stormy-in-a-teacup-campaign-finance-case-against-trump-is-laughably-weak