re: #18 KGxvi

It’s a Catch-22 for them. They didn’t want anyone to know about the payments, so they hid everything. Because they knew if the payments were disclosed, reporters would investigate and everything would come out. Which was the opposite of what they wanted to happen, so the only way to hide the story is to also hide the payments. But to knowingly hide the payments is (apparently) a criminal violation of campaign finance law. Compared to the more typical civil violations of campaign finance law where a campaign unintentionally miscategorizes a payment of some sort and later has to change it; or unintentionally authorizes a payment that isn’t allowed under the law.

The big difference here is “knowingly” vs “unknowingly”.

Trump’s actions by and through Cohen (and Trump Org) went several steps further, by creating shell companies, creating phony invoices, and sending payments back and forth to try and claim that these were regular business costs, and not payments to silence those Trump had affairs with. He turned this into a huge money laundering operation because he was repeatedly having affairs with women while married.

That also raises tax implications too, as these business entities had to file tax returns. That’s felony conduct too. And here’s where things get squirrely for Trump. There’s no statute of limitations on tax fraud. The IRS and NYS Division of Tax and Finance (and NYC for that matter) can all go after Trump Org and Trump personally for this.