Mueller, Trump, Cohen, and Stormy
We know that Michael Cohen provided money to Stormy Daniels. Cohen admitted to doing so in order to help Trump. Trump insists that this is because he wanted to prevent false allegations from getting out.
- Paying people to refrain from lying about you can′t possibly work. People lie when they have something to gain from it. Remember when Trump and a lot of other people were insisting that Obama was born in Kenya? Did Obama pay any of them to stop lying about him? Paying people not to lie only encourages them to lie when they aren′t being paid. Since nobody can afford to pay everyone off all the time, celebrities and political figures tend to accept that people are going to lie about them. (Ordinary people can sue for libel or slander if someone lies about them. )
- If Trump admitted to the affair, it′s not going to change many people′s opinion of him. So why cover it up? It could very well be that Stormy knows about something more damaging than a simple affair. Do I personally care that Trump cheated on his wife? Not anymore than I care about other men cheating on their wives. This should be a matter between Trump and his wife. And it′s easy enough to say ″boys will be boys″ when it comes to adultery. Men like to cheat and they tend to lie about it. But the lengths that they go to in order to conceal an affair can do far more damage than the affair itself. If I had a wife who cheated on me and paid the guy $130,000 to keep quiet, I would be more upset about the missing $130,000.
- Michael Cohen is either a criminal or a VERY bad lawyer. If Trump did not have sex with Stormy Daniels, there was no reason to pay her. If he did have sex with her, then the only reason to pay her is to protect the campaign. This makes it an illegal financial campaign contribution. The claim that he was hiding the affair from Mrs Trump is doubtful; she had to have known what she was getting into prior to becoming his third wife. Again, I′m not judging the Trumps as a couple, I′m judging Cohen as an attorney. To take this kind of action on behalf of a client: paying a woman of dubious repute a large sum of money without the client′s knowledge is a poor strategy at best.
Trump is going to have to fire Cohen. If Mueller decides that charges need to be filed against Cohen, Trump should let him do it.
There are two other Republicans that this case reminds me of. Richard Nixon and Matt Kelty. Kelty ran for mayor of Fort Wayne in 2007. After he won the primary, he filed a campaign report that said he loaned $140,000 to his own campaign. People asked him how he came up with the money. He was a Midwestern architect and a family ma, not the kind of fellow who would normally have that money to put into a campaign. At first he claimed that his frugal lifestyle let him save that money up over time. But then he admitted that he received a loan from a supporter. He claimed that it was a personal loan that was his to do with as he wished, and he chose to loan that money to his campaign. Finally he amended his filing and reported the loan from his supporter as a loan to his campaign. He changed his story twice. He eventually pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws. I′ve met Matt Kelty. He′s a nice guy. He makes Ned Flanders look like Vlad the Impaler. He is the Mr Rogers of convicted felons. His problem was that he was such a nice guy his whole life that he never got the hang of lying. He should have committed to his original story, or he should have found better people to get campaign advice from.
You all know Nixon, but most of you are pretty fuzzy about what the Watergate scandal was all about. In short, five Cubans broke into the Democratic Party HQ in the Watergate office building. Nixon didn′t know about about the break in until after it happened. But the operation was planned by supporters of his re-election campaign. Nixon order his chief of staff to interfere with the FBI′s investigation of the burglary. Nixon should have let the burglars and their handlers go to prison. Instead, he had to resign to avoid being impeached.
Trump is going to have to fire Cohen. If Cohen broke the law, he needs to answer for it. Trump should stop trying to protect him.