David Dennison’s depravity
Donald Trump almost certainly had an affair with an adult-film star while his wife raised their young son back home — and scandalously, that’s not the real scandal involving Stormy Daniels. More troubling for the 323 million of us who count on Trump not as a spouse but as President are detailed allegations from Daniels that Trump was fully aware of, in fact instigated, a secret $130,000 payment made via his lawyer to Daniels on the brink of his 2016 election to buy her silence about their relationship.
The positively pornographic claims surface in a lawsuit that Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles. It seeks to void a nondisclosure agreement that stopped her from spilling to the media, on the grounds that while Daniels signed, as “Peggy Peterson,” a signature from the other party, “David Dennison,” whom Daniels says is actually Trump, is missing.
Yep: The mistress, who signed the agreement not under her fake porn name but under another pseudonym, is fighting in court with the marital cheater to void his hush money agreement because he didn’t sign it under his own pseudonym. At least life in Trump’s America is entertaining. And maybe entertainingly illegal. If Dennison is Trump, which the record leaves virtually no doubt he is, the cash to Daniels — the agreement arranges for payment wired “on or before 1600 hours PST on 10/27/16” — is an expense plainly related to his presidential candidacy and thus, tawdry as it is, the public’s business. By law.
These dizzying days, with more norms in the shredder daily, it can be hard to remember that elections operate under strict laws designed to tell voters the source and recipient of every dollar.
Any money in, subject to size limits, must be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. Any dollar out, same deal. If those laws go by the wayside, the vanishing confidence voters already have in their elections will disappear entirely.
The good-government group Common Cause demands investigation. If the FEC and Justice Department are not already all over the evidence, they’re as good as partners in the coverup.