Except is Wasn't

[GURPS]

When confronted about his convictions for lying to Congress and for tax evasion and banking crimes, Cohen said he was “done with the lying. I am done being loyal to President Trump and my first loyalty belongs to my wife, my daughter, my son and this country.”

“Why should we believe you now?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Because the special counsel stated emphatically that the information that I gave to them is credible and helpful,” Cohen replied. “There’s a substantial amount of information that they possessed that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth.”



Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen says Trump knew it was wrong to make hush-money payments during campaign



Trump used his OWN Money to pay back Cohen - everything else is irrelevant

 

[glhs837]

You know what I do to people I'm blindly loyal to? I make sure to surreptitiously record my interactions with them. Just in case my blind loyalty seems to not have been so blind after all.

 

[GURPS]

Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is one of the strongest voices in opposition to much of the current campaign finance law structure. He doesn't believe the Trump-Cohen Stormy Daniels payoff was a campaign finance violation because he doesn't believe it was a campaign expenditure. In a recent email exchange, Smith explained his position at some length:

Not everything that is subjectively intended to influence an election is a campaign expenditure. For example, if Trump (or any other businessman running for office) settled lawsuits against the business in order to get them off the table, so that they wouldn't become campaign issues, those settlements would not be campaign expenses, but would remain personal expenses, payable by Trump or the company sued. That is true even if the suits were deemed totally meritless by Trump's lawyers and paid solely as nuisance settlements to prevent bad campaign press.

The standard "for the purpose of influencing a campaign" must be read in pari materia with the prohibition in the statute on personal use of campaign funds. That section and its regulations define things that are not campaign expenditures, and personal use includes any obligations that would exist irrespective of the campaign. The obligations to Daniels or others (such as they were) were not created as a candidate. Moreover, even if Trump decided to pay the blackmail in part because he was running for president, in its implementing regulations, the FEC specifically rejected a mixed motive test, i.e. that something would count as a campaign expense if one of multiple motives was to help the campaign. It must exist solely because the candidate is running for office. But Daniels' blackmail threat exists whether or not Trump was running for office. Clearly, Trump may be more inclined to pay it because he was running for office, but it still existed. Indeed, Daniels has said she was threatened way back in 2012. And if she only came forward after Trump were elected, he might still pay it — yet the campaign would be over. In short, it doesn't arise solely from the campaign.​

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...-republicans-shrug-off-the-michael-cohen-case

 

[GURPS]

You know what I do to people I'm blindly loyal to? I make sure to surreptitiously record my interactions with them. Just in case my blind loyalty seems to not have been so blind after all.

Slimy Lawyer is Slimy

 

[NextJen]

“Because the special counsel stated emphatically that the information that I gave to them is credible....,” Cohen replied.

Credible. Hmmmmm, where have we heard that before?

 

[Hijinx]

We are supposed to believe a man that is trying to save himself by selling out.
A man with every reason to sell out to get the monkey (Mueller) off his back.
Will he lie?? Of course.

Coercion is a strong force that Mueller is using to the limit.
Nothing anyone says to save themselves is worth a pint of sour owl piss.