Michael Cohen plea

[Belsnickel]

(08-22-2018, 07:10 PM)Dill Wrote: To the law it is a huge difference as well.

According to Alan Dershowitz, there is no limit on how much a candidate can contribute to his own campaign. So if Trump used personal funds to pay off the women, and those funds are regarded as campaign contributions, then they are perfectly legal contributions to his own campaign--even if he gave Stormy a million dollars. (Dershowitz is pretty eccentric, though, a contrarian on many legal issues.)  So no law is violated; just that something was hidden from Melania, and from voters who, for the most part, would not care if Trump paid off porn stars and playmates.

If the money originally came from the campaign itself, which would have the legal status of a corporation (not Trump's private stash of money), then Trump's actions would be subject to campaign finance laws.  If Trump reimbursed the campaign at a later date, then he could argue that even though the money was funneled through the campaign, it was not "from" the campaign since when the books are tallied, that 130,000 will not be missing.

Just rambling here, but a close look at how the record of payments to whom or what and when might also correlate to the public disclosure of the affair. If it does, that would suggest Trump only "paid back" the campaign when the transaction was in danger of investigation.

You're missing that the original payment was made by Cohen. He took out a home equity line for the payment to Daniels. Even if paid back by Trump, that constitutes a loan to the campaign because of its purpose/timing and thus a contribution by Cohen.