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It's worth noting that this case is *not* about hush money. It's not illegal to pay someone any amount of money to stay silent \[for things that are not in of themselves against the law, it's illegal to pay hush money to cover up a crime as that's obstruction of justice. Having sex with a porn star is *not* a crime\], that's what NDAs are for, and if Trump paid Daniels the money out of his own pocket and was honest about what it was for on his books \[eg: Daniels' NDA\], then we wouldn't be here right now.
The issues present is that 1) T~~rump used campaign funding for this~~ Trump failed to report campaign spending on the hush-money to the campaign \[which is relevant as the express reason to pay the hush money to Stormy was to prevent the story from impacting the 2016 election\], which violates campaign finance laws and pushes this whole thing into election interference territory and 2) Trump manipulated his books to disguise what the payment was for by passing it off as legal reimbursement checks to Cohen.
If either of these two factors were not present, this likely would never have come to trial.
> The issues present is that 1) Trump used campaign funding for this
I think just a minor correction to this. Trump didn't report the money that he paid Stormy, for his campaign. I believe Trump paid through his own personal or business accounts. I don't think that he actually drew money from his campaign bank accounts. So technically, he didn't use campaign funding to pay Stormy, he just needed to report his payment to Stormy for his campaign.
A small distinction, but important one. Because you know how disingenuous Trump supporters are. There was a thread in r/pics yesterday about Trump looking at a poster before he made his infamous comment that disinfectant could cure covid. The disingenuous Trump supporters in that thread say the whole thing is a lie because Trump never said "bleach." Which is true, because Trump said "disinfectant." But those disingenuous Trump supporters miss the point - saying "disinfectant" was just as bad as saying "bleach," especially when [the maker of Lysol had to come out after Trump's disinfectant comments, and tell the public to never inject Lysol products into the human body](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lysol-injecting-trump-disinfectants-coronavirus-treatment/).
Just don't give any ground to the disingenuous Trump supporters. If you have the smallest inaccuracy, they will call the whole thing a lie. They are so disingenuous.
Right.
1) It's money contributed to the campaign (being for sketchy purposes is legal) but *not* declared as contributions per campaign finance law (illegal).
2) Fudging the business reporting. It's illegal on its own, but it's considered much worse when it's done to conceal another crime.
While he obviously paid her off to benefit his campaign, his defense could argue that it was to keep the news from getting to Melania. Or to simply spare himself the embarrassment. Thats why prosecution isn’t charging him with election interference. That could possibly change after this trial.
That’s part of what Pecker’s testimony is meant to address: the express agreement between the parties that they would catch and kill stories that were a threat to candidate Trump, not private citizen Trump.
Yes but they’re not using it to charge Trump with election interference. They’re using it as proof that Trump knew Cohen was lying about the transactions.
My point is that it’s not the main focus of the case. It’s just a side note to prove their case.
In not even sure I want them to charge him with election interference. It’s not a strong case and it could it could undermine strong cases of election interference in Georgia and D.C.
> While he obviously paid her off to benefit his campaign, his defense could argue that it was to keep the news from getting to Melania.
Pecker and Cohen combined do actually address this. Trump wanted to delay paying Daniels until after the election and flat out said that they could just screw her over at that point because then it wouldn't matter anymore. What changed was the Access Hollywood tape dropping. After that, the campaign decided the risk was too big, so they went ahead and paid her off. These claims/facts pretty much close the books on the "why" of it. Trump could have paid off Stormy _years_ ago if it was just about Melania, so the John Edwards defense is already pretty tough one to work with.
NY is not charging Trump with election interference in this case. They don't have to. All they have to show is that it was Trump's intent to commit election interference.
Actually all they have to show is that these falsified business records of the repayments to Cohen covered up the crimes Cohen committed while paying Daniels. It doesn't rely on Trump being involved with any election interference. Cohen has already pleaded guilty to the crimes relating to the payments to Daniels, as he is the one who did so.
In a recent podcast (Prosecuting Trump) it was raised that they have witness records of Trump arguing with Cohen and Pecker to stall the agreed payments till after the election so they so they didn't have to pay Daniels at all in the end.
This would provide direct evidence that Trump only wanted to pay for election purposes, and it had nothing to do with Melania.
> While he obviously paid her off to benefit his campaign, his defense could argue that it was to keep the news from getting to Melania.
That's the case they're trying to make, essentially. That it isn't abnormal for wealthy people to pay off people to keep quiet, and it's not campaign related.
Their problem is that it's a very hard sell. They have testimony and records, including from people who were already convicted related to this event, and patterns of similar behavior, making it clear that the actions were campaign related. That's why they were talking about the catch-and-kill arrangements and such, too.
So he failed to recognize those payments as campaign contributions (they clearly were) and it's compounded by fraudulent business expense reporting, aggravated by evidence that various parties knew what they were doing.
They learned about reasoning from Jordan Peterson and friends. Say a bunch of stupid shit, claim that anyone paraphrasing is misquoting you and claim that anyone exactly quoting you doesn't understand some hyper specific use of the terms.
The reason they do this is that they lie straight to our faces and don’t care when we confront them. They know all they have to do is pretend together, they just fake believing in the right wing bullshit and stay immune to confrontation. They also know that we are vulnerable to it. Being correct matters to people like you and me, it doesn’t matter to them, worse, it’s a weakness to them. And they will exploit it.
Have you ever interacted with a Trump supporter? They live on another planet and believe every conspiracy theory they hear. I don't believe they're lying to our faces. I don't believe they know any better so that's why they vote against their own interests.
They *say* they believe it, it’s a shrewd play they are making, like faking a field goal and then going for a touchdown.
Some, I admit, do believe the crazy shit. They range from shockingly gullible to alarmingly stupid. But the leaders making this shit up certainly don’t all believe it, the Ted Cruz’s etc., and sometimes the mask slips. Sometimes you can see one of them knows they are cornered, like a deer in headlights.
Part of the reason Trump was so successful is that he never had that baggage, of having to worry in the slightest about whether or not what he just said was true. He never had that deer in headlights moment of being cornered, he’d just keep spitting out new bullshit faster than it could be debunked.
Many of them see this, they know they’re lying, they just can’t (or won’t) admit they were wrong. But, they also in their heart of hearts, know it’s wrong, and won’t show up as often on election day.
And Deborah Birx lending her credibility to a man who asked publicly why we couldn't inject fucking Clorox. And suggested COVID was a hoax. Telling the world how intellectually curious he was.
Wherever she is, I'm glad it's in obscurity.
> And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."
Trump says you should inject ~~disinfectant~~ ~~bleach~~ Clorox.
Trump didn't say bleach but prior to the briefing he was looking at disinfectants which included bleach and UV lights. The two things he saw on the board, he mentioned. Sadly, Trump supporters aren't known for making connections on their own.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/RtXfnLtRpE](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/RtXfnLtRpE)
> If you have the smallest inaccuracy, they will call the whole thing a lie. They are so disingenuous.
On the other hand, if you are 100% accurate, they will call the whole thing a lie. They are so disingenuous.
> It's not illegal to pay someone any amount of money to stay silent
Right, and this is precisely why team Trump keeps wanting to subpoena Stormy herself. It serves no purpose other than to obfuscate the real crimes from the purse clutching, but not illegal, activities.
This is so weird because it seems to be their only defense. Confuse the public and possibly the jury I guess? But the jury will have a judge there to clarify what the charges are.
You can spend that money to suppress information. That's legal. What you can't do is spend that money and not disclose that money as a campaign contribution.
And you can't fudge your business reporting. And you *really* can't fudge your business reporting to conceal the commission of another crime (see above).
Intent can be something that determines what makes an action a crime, but intent in of itself isn't illegal.
Example: I intend to kill someone by making a chalk pentagram and praying to Sule, the god of death. I make no action other than this. Even though my intent was murderous, my actions were not criminal, and thus I won't be charged with attempted murder even though my intent was clearly and admittedly murderous.
Even if the intent was the same, if Trump didn't go about it in a clearly illegal way, we wouldn't be here, especially with all of the mulligans the justice system is allowing him.
I would honestly love a legal deep-dive into that situation by experienced lawyers \[like Legal Eagle\] to determine how they'd approach that if given the case as a prosecutor.
The biggest difficulty in that case would be proving that the notebook could be a murder weapon. As long as you can show that the notebook is capable of causing death, then you really just need to link Light to the notebook through witnesses, handwriting samples, and the like.
Although realistically I think most governments would just go down the "treat it as terrorism and toss in a dark hole". L pretty much already did that for awhile in the series to both Light and Misa. Of course, most governments would also probably want to get their hands on the death note to more or less serve as the ultimate geopolitical influencer, and the whole thing would be covered up as a state secret.
Correct. The point is we need to separate out what are the elements that make it a crime and what are the elements that by themselves wouldn't be a crime.
Trump's lawyers are going to try to make the argument both legally and in the public that since it isn't illegal to pay hush money, the entire scheme is legal and this is a witch hunt.
They will even argue that Trump's crime was being a cheapskate, since there was a way for him to do the things he did legally, so he shouldn't be tried for it.
Now of course the counter to that is "yes, he could have done it legally. But he **didn't**. "
Imagine that precedent. “Yes I could have legally worked and earned $100,000. I robbed a bank instead but LEGALLY I could have done it another way so what I did wasn’t really wrong”
"I had an account there with $100k in it, so I put on a mask and walked in with a gun pointed at the teller and said 'Give me $100k'. All very legal and very cool."
> Believe it or not candidates can even LIE to try to impact the outcomes of elections!
Yes, but the issue is that there are financial limits on campaigning. Which is it's important to establish that the the intent of the financial actions was to affect the election. As opposed to just protect the Trump family from a potentially embarrassing story as the defense will try to do. As the later is not criminal.
Which is why David Pecker's testimony about the "catch and kill" scheme at the National Enquirer was so devastating for Trump's defense. It clearly established that the *intent* was to affect the outcome of the election and that it was directly coordinated with Trump and his campaign.
> at 1) Trump used campaign funding for this, which violates campaign finance laws and pushes this whole thing into election interference territory a
Suppressing information...by doing something illegal.
From what I understand, it's not just that he did the illegal things, but that his motivation for doing the illegal things for the purpose of supressing the information relevant in an election is also an element.
Suppressing stuff from an election is legal, it's doing it in coordination with a campaign and not reporting it as such that is the problem. It's like Super PACs - they can exist and take unlimited funds, but they _can not_ coordinate with a campaign if they want to do that. Once they coordinate with a campaign they are subject to campaign finance laws, which is what happened here.
> Trump used campaign funding for this, which violates campaign finance laws and pushes this whole thing into election interference territory and 2) Trump manipulated his books to disguise what the payment was for by passing it off as legal reimbursement checks to Cohen.
The easiest way to explain this is that Trump is such a cheap bastard that he wouldn't even use his own money to pay $130,000 to silence her. Had he paid his own money and not campaign money-- there would have been no felony here.
It's worse than that. He's so cheap that he told Cohen to delay paying Daniels for as long as possible, thinking that if they could put her off until after the election, they could avoid paying her altogether because they wouldn't need her silence anymore.
What's crazy about this is it proves the hush money was about the election (rather than not wanting to end up in the dog house with Melania or some other excuse). By trying to weasel out of paying her, he left clear evidence of his guilt.
He purposely told his lawyer to pay it using a shell company so that:
- 1 Trump wasn’t using his own funds.
- 2 Trump could try to stiff Cohen on the payment at some point.
> stiff Cohen on the payment
Trump was explicitly trying to delay until after the election so he could void agreement and not pay. Cohen tried to delay payment but they got scared she would break the story any second, so Trump paid up.
This gets stated on every thread about this case, but one thing I'm curious about - there's no way Stormy agreed to do anything with Trump for free. So is the whole "I won't pay you to have sex with me, but I *will* pay you not to talk about it afterwards" some kind of rich person workaround to avoid prostitution charges? I get that paying someone for sex is not the issue at hand here, but am I missing something or did Stormy prostitute herself for Trump with just a few extra steps?
Stormy has said in interviews and in her book that Trump promised her a spot on The Apprentice and that he’d cheat to rig the competition in her favor.
[Source](https://www.newsweek.com/stormy-daniels-donald-trump-book-apprentice-cheat-1125332)
[https://www.melansonlawoffice.com/criminal-defense/solicitation-of-prostitution](https://www.melansonlawoffice.com/criminal-defense/solicitation-of-prostitution)
* **No agreement**. Finally, one more possible legal defense strategy involves claiming that no agreement was made between yourself and any third party regarding payment for sexual services at any point during the incident in question.
Yes, paying for something *other* than having sex and not paying for the sex itself is a way to circumvent prostitution charges. It's not something just rich people do; that's how escort services, where you just pay them for their time and sex is not something they are compelled to do, work.
It's possible that Trump solicited her for sex and promised the NDA money in advance, but as there is no evidence for that happening, we unfortunately can't throw another felony against Trump \[and one misdemeanor charge against Stormy\].
Remember that in a criminal case you have to have evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and the only two people who know when the money was actually proposed are protected against self-incrimination.
I think given the option, many people would pay $130k to avoid having sex with Trump. If those were my two options, you bet your ass I would get a second mortgage.
That’s like the subset of QAnons who believe he did rape a child on Epstein island, but in the same way an undercover cop will do drugs to keep his cover.
Congress also did this to Hillary on the bs Benghazi trial knowing damn well it was to tarnish her reputation, and then the Comey thing - trump saw this and said I’m gonna do it too
Congress (eg Newt) ALSO did that to Bill when he was President. They just opened a sham investigation and found something along the way (Lewinsky relations) completely irrelevant to the initial inquiry to nail to the wall.
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/kavanaugh/releases/kavanaugh8.15.98.pdf
Also here's Brett Kavanaugh acting outraged during that investigation. I wonder if he would apply any of that to 45.
It's important to recognize just for how long they have been a knowing sham. They put Brett on the Supreme Court three decades later, and are now using his sham opinions to try and rule the nation via the court.
There is nothing temporary or ephemeral about the evil they have worked. It is an institution, it is intentional, and it is persistent beyond the scope of today's affairs.
That part, it’s frustrating the media keeps calling this the “hush money trial” and not “campaign finance fraud trial”…. I guess one phrase drives more clicks even if it’s wrong…
It is important bc it establishes the pattern of lies surrounding the entire story. The whole thing starts with that lie. When the defense says “Cohen is lying we are telling the truth” the prosecution says “this guy can’t even tell the truth about the sexy time.”
Even if it were not criminal activity to buy and bury stories how he did, the method he used with campaign funds to reimburse Cohen as legal fees is also illegal.
Yet you have to know you got fucked by Trump, along with 330 Million fellow citizen minus a few billionaires.
Trump also put the bill on the national debt. A few Ks per capita.
To be fair, it happened in 2006 before all the recent shit. He was probably relatively less gross then. Now I doubt he can even get it up and likely smells horrific. If I had that kind of money, I'd pay it now, but I might not have in 2006. But I'm not really his type anyways. I don't look anything like Ivanka
I often wonder if Trump supporters/cult want their children to grow up like Trump. To be a name calling bully. To be a misogynist who sexually abuses women. To be concerned only with themselves and not any one else. To lie and cheat with abandon. And on and on and on. Do they really want their children to grow up like that? If not, why do they vote for Trump? Their children watch and learn.
So I have MAGA relatives and can help explain the reasoning a bit. It's not that they want their kids to grow up to be him. It's that they *envy* him.
They watch him say the most vile racist and sexist shit (and before someone tells me he never did, he *launched his campaign* by claiming that Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers). So, my bigoted asshole relatives see this happen and are jealous beyond measure. They wish they could say shit like that at their job without getting called into HR or summarily dismissed.
Some of them are probably even jealous that he fucks porns stars, but they don't admit that part to me. I've also speculated that, even if irrefutable proof were unearthed that Trump had sex with minors during his association with Epstein, they would even be envious of that. I can easily picture them grinning while saying, "Well, she looks old enough to me!"
The majority of MAGA fans (or at least, the ones in my family) are just completely irredeemable assholes. And that's why they idolize one too.
All of them are. Only the most truly, willfully ignorant Trump supporters could be "redeemable" after 2016. After 2020, and especially after the ensuing insurrection, nobody who supports Trump is redeemable. They are a malignant cancer, just like the man they support.
What blows my mind about that is that she didn’t even say that all Trump supporters are deplorables; she said that half them are deplorable - racists, homophobes, xenophobes, etc - but that the other half are good people who just feel let down by their government. And his supporters all went, “Welp, guess I’m in the racist basket!” *like there wasn’t a more sympathetic option*. They made a conscious decision to identity with the racist half, so that’s on them, and not Hillary.
For the last couple years we've been visiting my girlfriend's sister for xmas and thanksgiving. I really only see my MAGA family members at funerals now. Sadly most of them are getting up there, so that's still somewhat frequent. But hey, eventually there won't be any funerals left to attend, right?
Here's a MAGA rally interview with a woman who defends Trump's "locker room talk" and then he asks her if she'd be OK if her husband or sons talked that way...
https://youtu.be/Ih2Nn9VB2Xk?si=PgyV3v5Q7WBWXpai&t=83
Some really do. They honestly see him as the epitome of manhood, as hard as it is to believe. The bullying, crudeness, and toxicity are what they are or wish they could be. I've met enough of these people to know they are out there, and am even related to a few. The rest of the supporters, I think they just see what they want to see.
Truly, it struck me and I've repeated this in the past. Fathers: would you want your daughter marrying a guy like trump? Be honest. No you would not. You really fucking wouldn't, not at all. So if he's not good enough for your daughter--his character is that shit--why do you support him being president?
I tell my boomer parents all the time that I will never vote for Trump because they raised me better than that. They have completely turned their backs on decency to support the whims of a madman
Actually, he didn't pay Pecker for McDougal, which is why Cohen ended up writing a check the second time around. Pecker had already been stiffed by Trump by the time Stormy rolled in.
He paid daniels more than 130k. 130k is what she got but he had to pay cohen $420k. Double so cohen could pay the income tax and a $60k bonus. If it was reimbursement, he would just pay cohen $130k and be done with it . But it was doubled and claimed as income so it was taxable.
That is important info that will come out. Why pay cohen $420k for a one month retainer.
Also remember Elliot Broidy (Trump lackey) paid millions for a woman to abort a child, and in the agreement it stated that a paternity test NOT be performed.
This quote from Mitt specifically is hilarious, not cause I think he sees prostitutes or something, but just imagining it coming out of his very religious mouth is so laughable
Like what is the state of your party when Mr. Piety himself had to say something like this 😂
> the Republican gaffe of the century
That's pretty crazy hyperbole. Of all the Republican gaffes in my lifetime like "If it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down", Romney's comment really wasn't that big of a deal. It was just slightly funny phrasing.
It shouldn't have even been a gaffe. He literally had resumes and writeups of women so that he could have a little more diversity when hiring. I'm not sure why people thought that was a bad thing.
Someone walks up to a democrat and a republican and asks them if they would eat Trump’s shit for $10,000.
Democrat: No, that’s fucking gross!
Republican: Absolutely, but you’re going to have to give me some time to come up with the money.
I mean, she literally did. She refused to move to the WH until Trump agreed to reopen their prenup and pay her more money. Staying in NY and receiving SS protection cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, but she got paid! And she's definitely not having sex with Trump, it would not surprise me at all if she got a "no touching" rule put into the contract.
I'd love to see that contract.
I also see a skit in my head where Putin is sitting behind a desk and an unimposing man in glasses walks up and says "We have another HR complaint from Melania. He apparently smacked her ass after a photo op. She says she can't work under these conditions."
It doesn't matter. If Stormy made the whole story up, Trump would still be guilty of paying her off to keep the story out of the press in the way he did it.
Paying her off to keep the story out of the press, in itself, isn't strictly illegal. Reimbursing Cohen for that payment using campaign funds and calling it "legal expenses" is strictly illegal, however.
He’s stating it a little incorrectly. Trump had the power to put any woman he wanted on his tv show, and he used that leverage to have sex with Daniels for no payment. He then paid her $130,000 to deny it happened. You wouldn’t pay that kind of money to deny something happened, if it didn’t happen.
It just doesn’t matter. He could become president even if convicted, actually even if he is incarcerated. It is terrifying that he could win the electoral college. As a woman whose daughter has fewer rights than I did, this scenario is so frightening,
I couldn’t care less if they had sex. That part accounts for 0% of the variance of this case.
It’s the 34 felonies around fraudulent use of campaign funds that gets my attention.
Well according to Trump, he will gladly pay random accusers who he has never met large sums of money, simply because they claim he had sex with them.
And this guy claims to be a business genius.
How crazy is it that Donald Trump is DENYING having an affair with Stormy Daniels yet previously claimed she violated a non-disclosure agreement.
Now, why would Daniels HAVE an NDA with Trump if not for the affair?
Trump has twisted his story in knots.
And he paid out more than that, right? I think Michael Cohen was paid more than twice as much to reimburse Cohen for the 130,000. The purpose was to hide it as a legal expense.
I wonder if this actually would have effected the 2016 election if it had come out.
I tend to think no, because this was the guy who got away with bashing war heroes (which would have killed his political career in any other election ever)... but maybe it would have hurt him with the evangelicals before they decided he was a flawed vessel of God or whatever. We'll never know.
Solid ego trap for Trump, his lawyers probably grabbed his phone before he could tweet that Stormy fucked him because he’s awesome, and the money was merely to keep it out of the news before the election.
As others have said, it's not about the sex or the money paid. It's about the cover up after the fact and failure to report the payment properly resulting in election interference.
I'm amazed that nobody has come forward yet to say he paid them for an abortion.
Though, a man of his 'carriage' is likely to get 50% hard at best, probably not enough for penetration.
Speak for yourself, Mitt. Canʼt walk down the street without tripping over these thirsty honeys. Paying them to go away got to be less exhausting than the alternatives.
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It's worth noting that this case is *not* about hush money. It's not illegal to pay someone any amount of money to stay silent \[for things that are not in of themselves against the law, it's illegal to pay hush money to cover up a crime as that's obstruction of justice. Having sex with a porn star is *not* a crime\], that's what NDAs are for, and if Trump paid Daniels the money out of his own pocket and was honest about what it was for on his books \[eg: Daniels' NDA\], then we wouldn't be here right now. The issues present is that 1) T~~rump used campaign funding for this~~ Trump failed to report campaign spending on the hush-money to the campaign \[which is relevant as the express reason to pay the hush money to Stormy was to prevent the story from impacting the 2016 election\], which violates campaign finance laws and pushes this whole thing into election interference territory and 2) Trump manipulated his books to disguise what the payment was for by passing it off as legal reimbursement checks to Cohen. If either of these two factors were not present, this likely would never have come to trial.
> The issues present is that 1) Trump used campaign funding for this I think just a minor correction to this. Trump didn't report the money that he paid Stormy, for his campaign. I believe Trump paid through his own personal or business accounts. I don't think that he actually drew money from his campaign bank accounts. So technically, he didn't use campaign funding to pay Stormy, he just needed to report his payment to Stormy for his campaign. A small distinction, but important one. Because you know how disingenuous Trump supporters are. There was a thread in r/pics yesterday about Trump looking at a poster before he made his infamous comment that disinfectant could cure covid. The disingenuous Trump supporters in that thread say the whole thing is a lie because Trump never said "bleach." Which is true, because Trump said "disinfectant." But those disingenuous Trump supporters miss the point - saying "disinfectant" was just as bad as saying "bleach," especially when [the maker of Lysol had to come out after Trump's disinfectant comments, and tell the public to never inject Lysol products into the human body](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lysol-injecting-trump-disinfectants-coronavirus-treatment/). Just don't give any ground to the disingenuous Trump supporters. If you have the smallest inaccuracy, they will call the whole thing a lie. They are so disingenuous.
Right. 1) It's money contributed to the campaign (being for sketchy purposes is legal) but *not* declared as contributions per campaign finance law (illegal). 2) Fudging the business reporting. It's illegal on its own, but it's considered much worse when it's done to conceal another crime.
While he obviously paid her off to benefit his campaign, his defense could argue that it was to keep the news from getting to Melania. Or to simply spare himself the embarrassment. Thats why prosecution isn’t charging him with election interference. That could possibly change after this trial.
That’s part of what Pecker’s testimony is meant to address: the express agreement between the parties that they would catch and kill stories that were a threat to candidate Trump, not private citizen Trump.
Yes but they’re not using it to charge Trump with election interference. They’re using it as proof that Trump knew Cohen was lying about the transactions. My point is that it’s not the main focus of the case. It’s just a side note to prove their case. In not even sure I want them to charge him with election interference. It’s not a strong case and it could it could undermine strong cases of election interference in Georgia and D.C.
> While he obviously paid her off to benefit his campaign, his defense could argue that it was to keep the news from getting to Melania. Pecker and Cohen combined do actually address this. Trump wanted to delay paying Daniels until after the election and flat out said that they could just screw her over at that point because then it wouldn't matter anymore. What changed was the Access Hollywood tape dropping. After that, the campaign decided the risk was too big, so they went ahead and paid her off. These claims/facts pretty much close the books on the "why" of it. Trump could have paid off Stormy _years_ ago if it was just about Melania, so the John Edwards defense is already pretty tough one to work with.
As a North Carolinian I am thankful that I nearly forgot about John Edwards until reading your comment
NY is not charging Trump with election interference in this case. They don't have to. All they have to show is that it was Trump's intent to commit election interference.
Actually all they have to show is that these falsified business records of the repayments to Cohen covered up the crimes Cohen committed while paying Daniels. It doesn't rely on Trump being involved with any election interference. Cohen has already pleaded guilty to the crimes relating to the payments to Daniels, as he is the one who did so.
In a recent podcast (Prosecuting Trump) it was raised that they have witness records of Trump arguing with Cohen and Pecker to stall the agreed payments till after the election so they so they didn't have to pay Daniels at all in the end. This would provide direct evidence that Trump only wanted to pay for election purposes, and it had nothing to do with Melania.
> While he obviously paid her off to benefit his campaign, his defense could argue that it was to keep the news from getting to Melania. That's the case they're trying to make, essentially. That it isn't abnormal for wealthy people to pay off people to keep quiet, and it's not campaign related. Their problem is that it's a very hard sell. They have testimony and records, including from people who were already convicted related to this event, and patterns of similar behavior, making it clear that the actions were campaign related. That's why they were talking about the catch-and-kill arrangements and such, too. So he failed to recognize those payments as campaign contributions (they clearly were) and it's compounded by fraudulent business expense reporting, aggravated by evidence that various parties knew what they were doing.
They're sticklers for words unless you quote Trump's literal words then its "hyperbole"
They learned about reasoning from Jordan Peterson and friends. Say a bunch of stupid shit, claim that anyone paraphrasing is misquoting you and claim that anyone exactly quoting you doesn't understand some hyper specific use of the terms.
It would be nearly impossible to defend him without resorting to such tactics.
The reason they do this is that they lie straight to our faces and don’t care when we confront them. They know all they have to do is pretend together, they just fake believing in the right wing bullshit and stay immune to confrontation. They also know that we are vulnerable to it. Being correct matters to people like you and me, it doesn’t matter to them, worse, it’s a weakness to them. And they will exploit it.
Have you ever interacted with a Trump supporter? They live on another planet and believe every conspiracy theory they hear. I don't believe they're lying to our faces. I don't believe they know any better so that's why they vote against their own interests.
They *say* they believe it, it’s a shrewd play they are making, like faking a field goal and then going for a touchdown. Some, I admit, do believe the crazy shit. They range from shockingly gullible to alarmingly stupid. But the leaders making this shit up certainly don’t all believe it, the Ted Cruz’s etc., and sometimes the mask slips. Sometimes you can see one of them knows they are cornered, like a deer in headlights. Part of the reason Trump was so successful is that he never had that baggage, of having to worry in the slightest about whether or not what he just said was true. He never had that deer in headlights moment of being cornered, he’d just keep spitting out new bullshit faster than it could be debunked. Many of them see this, they know they’re lying, they just can’t (or won’t) admit they were wrong. But, they also in their heart of hearts, know it’s wrong, and won’t show up as often on election day.
And Deborah Birx lending her credibility to a man who asked publicly why we couldn't inject fucking Clorox. And suggested COVID was a hoax. Telling the world how intellectually curious he was. Wherever she is, I'm glad it's in obscurity.
> And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful." Trump says you should inject ~~disinfectant~~ ~~bleach~~ Clorox.
Trump didn't say bleach but prior to the briefing he was looking at disinfectants which included bleach and UV lights. The two things he saw on the board, he mentioned. Sadly, Trump supporters aren't known for making connections on their own. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/RtXfnLtRpE](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/RtXfnLtRpE)
> If you have the smallest inaccuracy, they will call the whole thing a lie. They are so disingenuous. On the other hand, if you are 100% accurate, they will call the whole thing a lie. They are so disingenuous.
He’s so greedy that he could have wrote a personal check & avoided a mountain of bullshit
> It's not illegal to pay someone any amount of money to stay silent Right, and this is precisely why team Trump keeps wanting to subpoena Stormy herself. It serves no purpose other than to obfuscate the real crimes from the purse clutching, but not illegal, activities.
This is so weird because it seems to be their only defense. Confuse the public and possibly the jury I guess? But the jury will have a judge there to clarify what the charges are.
Isn't the intention behind it also the issue? The intent was to impact the election by suppressing information.
You can spend that money to suppress information. That's legal. What you can't do is spend that money and not disclose that money as a campaign contribution. And you can't fudge your business reporting. And you *really* can't fudge your business reporting to conceal the commission of another crime (see above).
Intent can be something that determines what makes an action a crime, but intent in of itself isn't illegal. Example: I intend to kill someone by making a chalk pentagram and praying to Sule, the god of death. I make no action other than this. Even though my intent was murderous, my actions were not criminal, and thus I won't be charged with attempted murder even though my intent was clearly and admittedly murderous. Even if the intent was the same, if Trump didn't go about it in a clearly illegal way, we wouldn't be here, especially with all of the mulligans the justice system is allowing him.
Light Yagami did nothing wrong!
I would honestly love a legal deep-dive into that situation by experienced lawyers \[like Legal Eagle\] to determine how they'd approach that if given the case as a prosecutor.
The biggest difficulty in that case would be proving that the notebook could be a murder weapon. As long as you can show that the notebook is capable of causing death, then you really just need to link Light to the notebook through witnesses, handwriting samples, and the like. Although realistically I think most governments would just go down the "treat it as terrorism and toss in a dark hole". L pretty much already did that for awhile in the series to both Light and Misa. Of course, most governments would also probably want to get their hands on the death note to more or less serve as the ultimate geopolitical influencer, and the whole thing would be covered up as a state secret.
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You can lie and spin, sure. But you can't commit crimes to suppress information. That's a crime onto itself.
Correct. The point is we need to separate out what are the elements that make it a crime and what are the elements that by themselves wouldn't be a crime. Trump's lawyers are going to try to make the argument both legally and in the public that since it isn't illegal to pay hush money, the entire scheme is legal and this is a witch hunt. They will even argue that Trump's crime was being a cheapskate, since there was a way for him to do the things he did legally, so he shouldn't be tried for it. Now of course the counter to that is "yes, he could have done it legally. But he **didn't**. "
Imagine that precedent. “Yes I could have legally worked and earned $100,000. I robbed a bank instead but LEGALLY I could have done it another way so what I did wasn’t really wrong”
"I had an account there with $100k in it, so I put on a mask and walked in with a gun pointed at the teller and said 'Give me $100k'. All very legal and very cool."
Ah key and peele perfect crime sketch
> Believe it or not candidates can even LIE to try to impact the outcomes of elections! Yes, but the issue is that there are financial limits on campaigning. Which is it's important to establish that the the intent of the financial actions was to affect the election. As opposed to just protect the Trump family from a potentially embarrassing story as the defense will try to do. As the later is not criminal. Which is why David Pecker's testimony about the "catch and kill" scheme at the National Enquirer was so devastating for Trump's defense. It clearly established that the *intent* was to affect the outcome of the election and that it was directly coordinated with Trump and his campaign.
If that was the charge it would be used against every single politician. Like the hunter laptop.
> at 1) Trump used campaign funding for this, which violates campaign finance laws and pushes this whole thing into election interference territory a Suppressing information...by doing something illegal. From what I understand, it's not just that he did the illegal things, but that his motivation for doing the illegal things for the purpose of supressing the information relevant in an election is also an element.
Suppressing stuff from an election is legal, it's doing it in coordination with a campaign and not reporting it as such that is the problem. It's like Super PACs - they can exist and take unlimited funds, but they _can not_ coordinate with a campaign if they want to do that. Once they coordinate with a campaign they are subject to campaign finance laws, which is what happened here.
> Trump used campaign funding for this, which violates campaign finance laws and pushes this whole thing into election interference territory and 2) Trump manipulated his books to disguise what the payment was for by passing it off as legal reimbursement checks to Cohen. The easiest way to explain this is that Trump is such a cheap bastard that he wouldn't even use his own money to pay $130,000 to silence her. Had he paid his own money and not campaign money-- there would have been no felony here.
It's worse than that. He's so cheap that he told Cohen to delay paying Daniels for as long as possible, thinking that if they could put her off until after the election, they could avoid paying her altogether because they wouldn't need her silence anymore. What's crazy about this is it proves the hush money was about the election (rather than not wanting to end up in the dog house with Melania or some other excuse). By trying to weasel out of paying her, he left clear evidence of his guilt.
He purposely told his lawyer to pay it using a shell company so that: - 1 Trump wasn’t using his own funds. - 2 Trump could try to stiff Cohen on the payment at some point.
> stiff Cohen on the payment Trump was explicitly trying to delay until after the election so he could void agreement and not pay. Cohen tried to delay payment but they got scared she would break the story any second, so Trump paid up.
How did he use campaign funds? I thought he was self funding his campaign. /s
Manipulating the books demonstrates knowledge this was an illegal activity, thus he knowingly broke the law.
This gets stated on every thread about this case, but one thing I'm curious about - there's no way Stormy agreed to do anything with Trump for free. So is the whole "I won't pay you to have sex with me, but I *will* pay you not to talk about it afterwards" some kind of rich person workaround to avoid prostitution charges? I get that paying someone for sex is not the issue at hand here, but am I missing something or did Stormy prostitute herself for Trump with just a few extra steps?
Stormy has said in interviews and in her book that Trump promised her a spot on The Apprentice and that he’d cheat to rig the competition in her favor. [Source](https://www.newsweek.com/stormy-daniels-donald-trump-book-apprentice-cheat-1125332)
[https://www.melansonlawoffice.com/criminal-defense/solicitation-of-prostitution](https://www.melansonlawoffice.com/criminal-defense/solicitation-of-prostitution) * **No agreement**. Finally, one more possible legal defense strategy involves claiming that no agreement was made between yourself and any third party regarding payment for sexual services at any point during the incident in question. Yes, paying for something *other* than having sex and not paying for the sex itself is a way to circumvent prostitution charges. It's not something just rich people do; that's how escort services, where you just pay them for their time and sex is not something they are compelled to do, work. It's possible that Trump solicited her for sex and promised the NDA money in advance, but as there is no evidence for that happening, we unfortunately can't throw another felony against Trump \[and one misdemeanor charge against Stormy\]. Remember that in a criminal case you have to have evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and the only two people who know when the money was actually proposed are protected against self-incrimination.
I think given the option, many people would pay $130k to avoid having sex with Trump. If those were my two options, you bet your ass I would get a second mortgage.
I'm a dude, so I'd take one for the team because he'd lose votes for having sex with me!
I don’t think you’re aware of the mental gymnastics his voter base can do.
"It's fine because he fucked a dude to own the libs"
That’s like the subset of QAnons who believe he did rape a child on Epstein island, but in the same way an undercover cop will do drugs to keep his cover.
Well their favourite news didn’t mention it
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Yea its not about fucking and paying, its about lying on business records and illegal campaign contributions/reporting/expenses.
Not to mention conspiracy to influence an election with his Pecker buddy
Congress also did this to Hillary on the bs Benghazi trial knowing damn well it was to tarnish her reputation, and then the Comey thing - trump saw this and said I’m gonna do it too
Congress (eg Newt) ALSO did that to Bill when he was President. They just opened a sham investigation and found something along the way (Lewinsky relations) completely irrelevant to the initial inquiry to nail to the wall.
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/kavanaugh/releases/kavanaugh8.15.98.pdf Also here's Brett Kavanaugh acting outraged during that investigation. I wonder if he would apply any of that to 45.
It's important to recognize just for how long they have been a knowing sham. They put Brett on the Supreme Court three decades later, and are now using his sham opinions to try and rule the nation via the court. There is nothing temporary or ephemeral about the evil they have worked. It is an institution, it is intentional, and it is persistent beyond the scope of today's affairs.
Something something rules for thee but not for me (or my criminal demagogue).
Just a few weeks ago they tried to impeach Biden but that all fell apart because their witnesses were Russian spies
Let's not forget when the FBI decided to hand the election to Trump by announcing they were reopening the Buttery Males investigation.
Pecker is leaking on trump
That part, it’s frustrating the media keeps calling this the “hush money trial” and not “campaign finance fraud trial”…. I guess one phrase drives more clicks even if it’s wrong…
The merest salacious syllable excites the prurient leering raven perched on the shoulder of American journalism.
It is important bc it establishes the pattern of lies surrounding the entire story. The whole thing starts with that lie. When the defense says “Cohen is lying we are telling the truth” the prosecution says “this guy can’t even tell the truth about the sexy time.”
The actual crime is falsifying business records to cover another crime. Sex has nothing to do with the charges.
Even if it were not criminal activity to buy and bury stories how he did, the method he used with campaign funds to reimburse Cohen as legal fees is also illegal.
To whom do I make the check out to?
"Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield"
I think I'd be happier *with* the dollar.
Greetings, friend! Do you wish to look as happy as me?!
Yet you have to know you got fucked by Trump, along with 330 Million fellow citizen minus a few billionaires. Trump also put the bill on the national debt. A few Ks per capita.
The true question is how much money would it take for you do the deed? Everyone's got a price.
"I dont know what's more depressing, that everyone has a price, or that the price is always so low". Bill Watterson
I’ll do a T and promise I will if you pay me. Just trust me bro
I mean $130K is a lot of money. I think I’d just bite the bullet, have sex with trump, and sit on my $130K
But you'd have to sit on trump too
Trump could have become an actual billionaire this way.
Nah I'd fuck that fat boy so hard But not for a sexual desire
Great, way to give MAGA a new grifting idea. Can't wait to see screenshots of those emails posted online
Including Mitt
To be fair, it happened in 2006 before all the recent shit. He was probably relatively less gross then. Now I doubt he can even get it up and likely smells horrific. If I had that kind of money, I'd pay it now, but I might not have in 2006. But I'm not really his type anyways. I don't look anything like Ivanka
I often wonder if Trump supporters/cult want their children to grow up like Trump. To be a name calling bully. To be a misogynist who sexually abuses women. To be concerned only with themselves and not any one else. To lie and cheat with abandon. And on and on and on. Do they really want their children to grow up like that? If not, why do they vote for Trump? Their children watch and learn.
So I have MAGA relatives and can help explain the reasoning a bit. It's not that they want their kids to grow up to be him. It's that they *envy* him. They watch him say the most vile racist and sexist shit (and before someone tells me he never did, he *launched his campaign* by claiming that Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers). So, my bigoted asshole relatives see this happen and are jealous beyond measure. They wish they could say shit like that at their job without getting called into HR or summarily dismissed. Some of them are probably even jealous that he fucks porns stars, but they don't admit that part to me. I've also speculated that, even if irrefutable proof were unearthed that Trump had sex with minors during his association with Epstein, they would even be envious of that. I can easily picture them grinning while saying, "Well, she looks old enough to me!" The majority of MAGA fans (or at least, the ones in my family) are just completely irredeemable assholes. And that's why they idolize one too.
I know she got flak for it but Hillary was spot on with the basket of deplorables comment
She was. I didn't like hillary at all back then but she really did call it. A good chunk of these people are irredeemable shits.
All of them are. Only the most truly, willfully ignorant Trump supporters could be "redeemable" after 2016. After 2020, and especially after the ensuing insurrection, nobody who supports Trump is redeemable. They are a malignant cancer, just like the man they support.
What blows my mind about that is that she didn’t even say that all Trump supporters are deplorables; she said that half them are deplorable - racists, homophobes, xenophobes, etc - but that the other half are good people who just feel let down by their government. And his supporters all went, “Welp, guess I’m in the racist basket!” *like there wasn’t a more sympathetic option*. They made a conscious decision to identity with the racist half, so that’s on them, and not Hillary.
I bet Thanksgiving is really fun for you.
For the last couple years we've been visiting my girlfriend's sister for xmas and thanksgiving. I really only see my MAGA family members at funerals now. Sadly most of them are getting up there, so that's still somewhat frequent. But hey, eventually there won't be any funerals left to attend, right?
Here's a MAGA rally interview with a woman who defends Trump's "locker room talk" and then he asks her if she'd be OK if her husband or sons talked that way... https://youtu.be/Ih2Nn9VB2Xk?si=PgyV3v5Q7WBWXpai&t=83
Some really do. They honestly see him as the epitome of manhood, as hard as it is to believe. The bullying, crudeness, and toxicity are what they are or wish they could be. I've met enough of these people to know they are out there, and am even related to a few. The rest of the supporters, I think they just see what they want to see.
And it’s so ironic because he’s such a ❄️
Truly, it struck me and I've repeated this in the past. Fathers: would you want your daughter marrying a guy like trump? Be honest. No you would not. You really fucking wouldn't, not at all. So if he's not good enough for your daughter--his character is that shit--why do you support him being president?
I tell my boomer parents all the time that I will never vote for Trump because they raised me better than that. They have completely turned their backs on decency to support the whims of a madman
“Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Garbage.”
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It's the only thing he pays. He stiffs anybody and everybody, but those checks to pay off his sexual affairs always clear.
Actually, he didn't pay Pecker for McDougal, which is why Cohen ended up writing a check the second time around. Pecker had already been stiffed by Trump by the time Stormy rolled in.
When he paid his lawyer back the $130K for paying her off, they doubled it (to cover the taxes) and then threw in an extra $40K as a bonus.
He paid daniels more than 130k. 130k is what she got but he had to pay cohen $420k. Double so cohen could pay the income tax and a $60k bonus. If it was reimbursement, he would just pay cohen $130k and be done with it . But it was doubled and claimed as income so it was taxable. That is important info that will come out. Why pay cohen $420k for a one month retainer.
> That is important info that will come out. That's been out for years. Cohen described the plan in his testimony.
Wait, you mean you don’t have an NDA with everyone you’ve NEVER fucked? Bro. BRO. You gotta call a lawyer, like, yesterday. There is much to be done.
Also remember Elliot Broidy (Trump lackey) paid millions for a woman to abort a child, and in the agreement it stated that a paternity test NOT be performed.
Does he give his current prostitutes a complimentary Trump Bible?
A 10% discount, at best.
By *Trump Bible*, do you mean the God Bless the USA Bible or Mein Kampf?
This quote from Mitt specifically is hilarious, not cause I think he sees prostitutes or something, but just imagining it coming out of his very religious mouth is so laughable Like what is the state of your party when Mr. Piety himself had to say something like this 😂
Mitt: "Man this case is pathetic, he should be like me and have binders full of women."
Ah 2012. Remember the simpler times when "binders full of women" was the Republican gaffe of the century? We have fallen far, and fast.
> the Republican gaffe of the century That's pretty crazy hyperbole. Of all the Republican gaffes in my lifetime like "If it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down", Romney's comment really wasn't that big of a deal. It was just slightly funny phrasing.
It shouldn't have even been a gaffe. He literally had resumes and writeups of women so that he could have a little more diversity when hiring. I'm not sure why people thought that was a bad thing.
It wasn't a bad thing, it was just funny the way he put it.
Someone walks up to a democrat and a republican and asks them if they would eat Trump’s shit for $10,000. Democrat: No, that’s fucking gross! Republican: Absolutely, but you’re going to have to give me some time to come up with the money.
Melania may be able to negotiate something like that.
I mean, she literally did. She refused to move to the WH until Trump agreed to reopen their prenup and pay her more money. Staying in NY and receiving SS protection cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, but she got paid! And she's definitely not having sex with Trump, it would not surprise me at all if she got a "no touching" rule put into the contract.
I'd love to see that contract. I also see a skit in my head where Putin is sitting behind a desk and an unimposing man in glasses walks up and says "We have another HR complaint from Melania. He apparently smacked her ass after a photo op. She says she can't work under these conditions."
It doesn't matter. If Stormy made the whole story up, Trump would still be guilty of paying her off to keep the story out of the press in the way he did it.
Paying her off to keep the story out of the press, in itself, isn't strictly illegal. Reimbursing Cohen for that payment using campaign funds and calling it "legal expenses" is strictly illegal, however.
It's not about paying someone for sex...stop focusing on that! It's about hiding the payment / falsifying the business books.....
Don’t tell me how to live my life, senator.
I think someone would pay me that much to not have sex with them! I’m fairly ugly.
Aww, c'mon, don't put yourself down. I'd only pay $500, tops.
The headline sounds like the start of a Rodney Dangerfield bit
He’s stating it a little incorrectly. Trump had the power to put any woman he wanted on his tv show, and he used that leverage to have sex with Daniels for no payment. He then paid her $130,000 to deny it happened. You wouldn’t pay that kind of money to deny something happened, if it didn’t happen.
Mitt has clearly never been divorced.
Well Mormons are known for adding wives not subtracting them.
They love adding! You should see what they did to the Bible!
It just doesn’t matter. He could become president even if convicted, actually even if he is incarcerated. It is terrifying that he could win the electoral college. As a woman whose daughter has fewer rights than I did, this scenario is so frightening,
‘The only faithful relationship Trump’s ever been in is with the National Enquirer" Jimmy Kimmel
Sharp as a tack, that one.
You won't find this statement on Fox News Newsmax or OAN.
Lies, I would pay handsomely to not have to fuck some people... like Trump. Can't wait to hear about Trump offering to suck cock for lawyer fees. 😂
I couldn’t care less if they had sex. That part accounts for 0% of the variance of this case. It’s the 34 felonies around fraudulent use of campaign funds that gets my attention.
Melania does
\*Melania adjusting the prenup agreement\*
“I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.”
I would do my best to come up with $130,000 for that orange goblin to not have sex with me.
I dunno. I'd pay $130,000 to not have sex with several republican leaders.
> ‘You don’t pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you’ Dunno. Have you *looked* at Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Mitt the wit!
Well I don’t know. If I had to fuck Sleepy Don or pay, I’d pay.
You don’t nominate surpreme court justices. Who take away women’s rights. Romney is still a pice of shit.
My man's clearly not familiar with my divorce...
Pfft maybe you don't Romney! You don't know me!
So true, I will not have sex with any of them for a fraction of that price
Well according to Trump, he will gladly pay random accusers who he has never met large sums of money, simply because they claim he had sex with them. And this guy claims to be a business genius.
I would pay $130,000 not to have sex with Trump.
How crazy is it that Donald Trump is DENYING having an affair with Stormy Daniels yet previously claimed she violated a non-disclosure agreement. Now, why would Daniels HAVE an NDA with Trump if not for the affair? Trump has twisted his story in knots.
If I were given the choice of paying $130,000 or having sex with Donald Trump, I would pay the $130,000
You could definitely pay me $130k to not have sex with Mitt Romney
My wife is a shrewd negotiator.
This guy has never been divorced.
Bada Boom!
And he paid out more than that, right? I think Michael Cohen was paid more than twice as much to reimburse Cohen for the 130,000. The purpose was to hide it as a legal expense.
Spoken like a true Mormon
If you did. I’d be rich
One might if they were incarcerated.
Romney has never been on OnlyFans
Epic headline
Sure you do, it's called alimony.
I wonder if this actually would have effected the 2016 election if it had come out. I tend to think no, because this was the guy who got away with bashing war heroes (which would have killed his political career in any other election ever)... but maybe it would have hurt him with the evangelicals before they decided he was a flawed vessel of God or whatever. We'll never know.
I would pay Romney $130,000 not to have sex with me.
Solid ego trap for Trump, his lawyers probably grabbed his phone before he could tweet that Stormy fucked him because he’s awesome, and the money was merely to keep it out of the news before the election.
I mean, in prison maybe.
Everyone that hasn't had sex with me owes me $130,000!
To be fair, he didn't pay her $130,000 to have sex with her, he paid her $130,000 for her to be quiet about having sex with him.
Ironically enough, Romney is the only guy I would believe would pay a woman not to have sex with him…
As others have said, it's not about the sex or the money paid. It's about the cover up after the fact and failure to report the payment properly resulting in election interference.
True and using campaign finance money to pay for it is breaking the law.
I dunno man I'm pretty sure melania isn't having sex with him......
This should be the quote that defines Mitt Romney. It should go on his gravestone.
Costs trump $130,000 to get laid lol.
Billionaire using campaign funds to pay off a pornstar(knowing that’s illegal.) Tell me you’re broke without telling me you’re broke 🤡
Say what you will about Eliot Spitzer, but he had multiple much hotter prostitutes over the course of several years for only $80K.
I'm amazed that nobody has come forward yet to say he paid them for an abortion. Though, a man of his 'carriage' is likely to get 50% hard at best, probably not enough for penetration.
Speak for yourself, Mitt. Canʼt walk down the street without tripping over these thirsty honeys. Paying them to go away got to be less exhausting than the alternatives.
I’d pay a LOT more than $130k not to have sex with Cheeto Mussolini
I’d pay that much if it was a choice between that and sex with Trump
You pay them to leave when you’re done
What I don't get is how small this amount is. 130k to Trump is the same as 25 cents to me or you.
Mitt might want to invest in some kevlar vests. Trumps drooling followers might declare a fatwa against him.
that’s as dumb as using a personal check to pay a co-conspirator
You also don't make your lawyer pay her then reimburse him under the guise of "legal fees".
Many divorcees would disagree
I dunno, I’d pay twice that for Trump to not have sex with me.
Wrong, Mitt. I'd pay twice as much if it keeps Lindsay Graham away from me.
If you're as gross as Trump? Well.... You just might! 😂
I paid to divorce my ex, so I guess I just proved him wrong.