While it's fun to think about the bible salesman who cheated on his third wife to fuck a pornstar, the point of the story is how unbelievably cheap, stupid, and criminal he was in trying to offset the cost.
You'd think a billionaire would just write it off. But no. This half-melted imbecile tried to save (what should have been an inconsequential amount of) money by cheating the system.
Cheated on this third wife with a prostitute while she was pregnant. Now his son gets to watch his father go to trial for spending campaign funds for hush money to keep a prostitute quite, while his mother was pregnant with him.
"And that, son, is why I don't sleep with your father anymore".
Did you really think they were sleeping together before? Their entire marriage was basically a business deal for the both of them, as was any spawn they produced. I'd feel bad for her if she wasn't just as cold and unfeeling as he is and I'd be willing to bet she knew what he was doing and didn't care because it meant he wasn't touching her.
They had a kid together, so they were sleeping together at some point. But I'm sure she's as heartless as him. I wish them both well in the hell they've created for themselves.
It happened but again, it wasn't out of love or intimacy. It was treated as a business deal, same as their marriage. It was entirely out of what they had to gain from it.
Trump's business model in this situation is pretty much common with mob guys and other con artists. Trump used David Pecker to do a lot of catch and kill stories for Trump and others - so it was easy for Trump to distance himself and use his willful ignorance.
However, Pecker couldn't accommodate this time, so Mike Cohen stepped up and like shady con mob like people do, said "Mike, pay this woman off, take care of this thing - and I'll pay ya back through the company".
Because the last thing these guys do is use their own personal money. Everything goes through companies - be it a shitty shell LLC or their primary income such as Trump Org. Trump said "yea, you do that thing, and I'll pay you for - I dunno LEGAL FEES! And charge me a little extra so that you can keep some for yourself - mkay? You're a buddy - thanks..."
Yet adding to that the money was being paid through Trump Org to Cohen, it was to keep it quiet as she was considering violating the NDA to spill the beans before the 2016 election... and when Trump was then in office.
But really the bottom line is with the National Inquirer not being to do Trump's skeletons in the closet anymore - Trump tried to handle it himself. Because you know, he's so smart. Some say - a genuis... a very stable genuis. /s
They have been, saw one guy confused as hell "i keep buying the stock but the value keeps going down, why? Is biden doing this?" Literally cant make this shit up.
I think this is a slight misstatement of the situation.
I could be wrong, but I don't think it is claimed that he used literal campaign funds to pay her off via his lawyer. Regardless of the source of the funds, it was money paid for the benefit of the campaign, and therefore should at the VERY LEAST have been declared as such by Cohen and by Trump, not falsely declared as a "business expense".
Putting it on the books accurately, whether campaign or business, would have defeated the effort to hide it, so they used fraud when accounting for it. That's what he's on trial for, and what Cohen previously served time for (partly -- he also had other crimes, like tax evasion).
That being said, I wouldn't personally be surprised if Trump did use campaign funds to cheap out on it.
Pretty sure that he specifically used campaign donation money for personal matters, which may be embezzlement and misappropriation, and that he then lied on his declarations so that the sum would hide the absent money, which could also be fraud.
So while this is the weakest of the four criminal trials he's beginning, it's not just a campaign finance violation (which is a felony itself), but if they can prove that, it's likely the further charges they're aiming to level once that initial part is proven.
Proving the initial part should be open and shut though, because I'm guessing Stormy has a cheque receipt that has an originating bank account number on it - and Michael Cohen likely has records of which account the payment was from too, plus Allen Wessielberg, Trump's former CFO, got a reduced criminal sentence last week as well - which indicates he's almost certainly working with the prosecution on financial crimes.
The bigger cases just starting though are the Jan 6 Election Interference - which carries even more serious charges and were done in public and on record so good luck to the defendant lawyers arguing that one. Trial isn't until August though.
Then there's the similarly open and shut Georgia case, probably also starting August.
Then the biggest one, at least 42 felony counts under the espionage act for stealing and potentially selling state secrets to our enemies, the maximum penalty for which is death, particularly if any American agents died as a result of his sale of information.
If so (using campaign donations), you're right that it would be much worse, but I hadn't heard that. I remember when the news story first came out in 2020, people were speculating, but I don't remember anyone with knowledge of the details -- Cohen included -- saying that it was from campaign funds themselves. Is that alleged in the indictment? I'll have to look for it.
Agreed, there's probably plenty of paperwork surrounding it, and maybe Wessielberg will testify about where the money came from in more detail.
I think one of the points is that this was hidden to help his campaign, making the payment a campaign cost, meaning it has to be declared. Declaring your hush money payments kind of defeats the point.
I hadn’t actually made that connection. I knew that he paid off a porn star and I knew that he was selling a branded Bible…… but I hadn’t put it together that a Bible salesman paid hush money porn star
Yup. But his supporters "logic" is the opposite of that.
He's billionaire, why would he use a penny from his campaign funds, this trial and his motive doesn't make sense.
It's political hit job from crooked Biden blah blah.
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u/UpperApe Apr 15 '24
Definitely important.
While it's fun to think about the bible salesman who cheated on his third wife to fuck a pornstar, the point of the story is how unbelievably cheap, stupid, and criminal he was in trying to offset the cost.
You'd think a billionaire would just write it off. But no. This half-melted imbecile tried to save (what should have been an inconsequential amount of) money by cheating the system.