USA TODAY International Edition

Opposing view: There’s no fire here. There isn’t even smoke.

- Dan Backer

In light of Michael Cohen’s plea deal, Democrats and the liberal news media are out for blood. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., called for a congressio­nal hearing to “obtain sworn testimony directly from Mr. Cohen.” Time magazine proclaimed: “Trump is in trouble. Here’s how much worse it can get.”

Except he’s not, and it won’t get “worse.” Actual campaign-finance experts, outside the liberal outrage mob, generally agree: Even if Cohen’s activities are campaign-related — though they probably aren’t — they amount to a Federal Election Commission speeding ticket.

President Donald Trump didn’t violate campaign-finance law; the payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal came from his personal finances, not campaign funds, for something he believed was unrelated to the campaign. As the president told Fox News, “They didn’t come out of the campaign; they came from me.”

At the very worst, even if re-characteri­zed to be campaign-related, the “violation” amounts to underrepor­ting relatively insignific­ant contributi­ons from a candidate to his own campaign.

But the liberal mob never misses an opportunit­y to undermine the Trump presidency, lobbying for an endless investigat­ion into President Trump. All this after the Mueller investigat­ion has already cost roughly $20 million — and no Russian collusion found.

Why should Congress perpetuate this witch hunt? The Mueller investigat­ion has morphed from chasing after paid-for allegation­s of Russian collusion to chasing down Paul Manafort’s and Michael Cohen’s transgress­ions — a testament to the investigat­ion’s ineffectiv­eness. However justified, albeit politicall­y motivated, the underlying prosecutio­ns of Manafort and Cohen may be, they stem from business dealings long before there was a Trump campaign.

Mueller and his team of Democratic lawyers should either produce actual evidence of collusion or pack it up.

There’s no fire here; there isn’t even any smoke. In the face of a booming economy, the left is just running out of ways to attack President Trump — and hoping you won’t notice.

Dan Backer is founding attorney of political.law, a campaign-finance and political law firm in Alexandria, Va.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States