USA TODAY International Edition
Cohen case may focus attention on campaign law
Hush money could offer roadmap to fixing system
WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen stood in a courtroom last week and pleaded guilty to paying hush money to a porn star, he was handing good-government advocates something they haven’t had in a while: a win.
Despite a campaign-finance system that members of both parties acknowledge is broken and a series of fumbled high-profile corruption trials, the Cohen plea became the rare case to focus public attention on the vagaries of campaign law.
The case has brought the staid world of campaign-finance rules to the fore in large part because it involves the president, but also because of the scintillating details. Cohen admitted Tuesday to paying off women to quiet allegations of relationships with Trump.
“Before, you would talk to people about campaign-finance issues, and their eyes would glaze over,” said Ann Ravel, a former Federal Election Commission chairwoman who left the commission last year in frustration. “But now the public is getting a flavor of why it’s so important.”
Enforcement lacking
It’s been a vexing decade for campaign-finance reform advocates. Partisan gridlock at the Federal Election Commission has meant the six-member board charged with enforcing campaign-finance regulations has deadlocked in roughly a third of its cases – up significantly from a decade ago.
More than a year after Ravel’s departure, her seat remains open, and the commission is working with a bareminimum four members. All are serving expired terms. Members are appointed by the president – with recommendations from congressional leaders – and must be confirmed by the Senate.
Congress has been unwilling to touch the issue of campaign finance in a substantive way since it approved the bipartisan McCain-Feingold Act in 2002.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has had a spotty record closing highprofile public corruption cases. The Supreme Court overturned the felony conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, two years ago. Prosecutors’ yearslong pursuit of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., ended in a mistrial last year.
In the most on-point historic example, the Justice Department failed to convict former presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat, for a $1 million scheme to hide his pregnant mistress during the 2008 campaign.
Edwards relied on a defense that some of Trump’s allies have embraced: that he paid the money to shield his family, not his political ambitions.
Lessons learned
In Cohen’s case, prosecutors said they were armed with reams of documents, text messages and phone records they said proved Trump directed the payments in the weeks before the election. They also said Cohen coordinated the payment with “one or more members of the campaign.”
Jeff Tsai, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said it was rare for the government to have a case in which it alleges an illegal contribution that was coordinated with a campaign.
Another takeaway from the Edwards case, Tsai said, is that the government should only pursue violations if prosecutors are certain they can prove them.
“The chief lesson is to be narrowly tailored,” Tsai said.
Longtime Republican campaign-finance attorney Jan W. Baran said the decision to pursue Cohen could be an indication that prosecutors are feeling more comfortable with cases involving in-kind contributions that involve both personal and political benefit.
Most campaign violations fly under the radar, despite polls showing voters oppose the way money influences elections. Campaign law is complicated. In fact, it’s so arcane that Trump himself this week made the argument that the campaign-finance felonies to which Cohen pleaded guilty aren’t criminal acts.
In a Fox News interview Thursday, Trump said he learned from watching “lawyers on television” that the things Cohen admitted to aren’t “even crimes.”
“You would talk to people about campaign-finance issues, and their eyes would glaze over. But now the public is getting a flavor of why it’s so important.” Ann Ravel A former Federal Election Commission chairwoman who left the commission last year in frustration