DONALD TRUMP FACES JUSTICE
Why his hush money payments are his Watergate
Donald Trump is finally set to face a criminal trial on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, which carry a possible jail sentence. The indictment centers around allegations that Trump directed the payment of $130,000 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to silence her about their sexual encounter years before — and covered up facts about that payment.
Many people have downplayed the significance of the case. But what is at stake here is nothing less than a cover-up amounting to presidential election interference — the likes of which the country has not seen since Watergate, as Sidney Blumenthal recently outlined in painstaking detail.
Having served on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate, the appalling similarities between Nixon’s conspiracy to hide damaging information from voters and the charges against Trump are clear to me. Just more than 50 years ago, the Watergate scandal began when men working for President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington.
That, too, was a crime of election interference committed for the purpose of winning the presidential election, just months away. Nixon’s White House called it a “third-rate burglary,” perhaps hoping that minimizing the incident would make it disappear.
That strategy, coupled with a massive criminal cover-up that Nixon himself orchestrated, caused the break-in to fade from public consciousness by the time the 1972 presidential election took place — and Nixon won in a landslide.
As part of the cover-up, Nixon approved hush money payments to the Watergate burglars to keep them quiet about the involvement of his higher-level campaign and White House aides — which could also have revealed his own involvement. Nixon almost certainly would have lost the election had the public known of his role in those payments, not to mention the rest of the cover-up.
Trump is alleged to have done essentially the same with the payment to Stormy Daniels. What the jury will determine in Trump’s trial is whether he used criminal means to conceal information that could have torpedoed his upcoming election, as Nixon did.
Also like Nixon, Trump had good reason to worry about disclosure only days before the November 2016 election about a tryst with Daniels. Disclosure could have cost Trump his election, especially because it would have reminded voters about the notorious “Hollywood Access” tape which recorded Trump’s shocking boast that he could grab women by the genitals at will.
When the Watergate cover-up fell apart and the impeachment process against Nixon began, we learned that the break-in was part of a larger pattern of criminal interference by Nixon’s reelection campaign. Break-ins and criminal surveillance were also integral to Nixon’s presidency.
The Watergate burglary was a key to unlocking the criminality that lay at the heart of his tenure in office. Unfortunately, because of his efforts to conceal it, the public didn’t find that out until after he was reelected.
Just as the Watergate break-in was not a “thirdrate burglary,” the New York case against Trump is not a “third-rate” sex scandal — it is not even primarily about sex, a porn star or adultery. Rather, as the prosecutors claim, it involves Trump’s “scheme” to hoodwink and defraud the American people in the presidential election by covering up his alleged crimes.
As with the Watergate burglary, the New York case may cast light on a larger pattern of Trump’s lawbreaking. Recently, another court ruled that Trump systematically defrauded banks, setting a $454 million civil penalty. About a year before that, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud — and its CFO was sent to prison.
Trump himself was found civilly liable for sexual assault and defamation, incurring a $5 million penalty, and a different jury recently imposed a civil penalty on Trump of $83.3 million for defaming the victim of that assault, E. Jean Carroll.
Close attention must be paid to Trump’s criminal trial on charges of falsifying business documents. Did he commit crimes to hide information from the American people that could have caused him to lose the 2016 presidential election? Americans need to know the answer before they vote in November. This is especially true because polling shows that many people, particularly independent voters, will not cast a ballot for Trump if he is convicted of a crime.
Americans will be able to learn the answer from the evidence produced, including witness testimony given under oath and tested through cross-examination. It will help them conclude, as I already have, that Trump poses a grave threat to the rule of law and fair elections — and is utterly unfit to hold the office of president of the United States.