Trump calls payments ‘private transactions’
President disputes claims that money given to women broke campaign laws
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed payments to alleged mistresses just before the 2016 presidential election as “a simple private transaction,” disputing claims by prosecutors that they amounted to a conspiracy to evade campaign finance laws.
Though some congressional Democrats cast the payments as potential cause for impeachment, Trump said investigators are looking for something to pin on him because they have been unable to prove any collusion with Russians who sought to influence the election.
“So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,” Trump said in a series of early-morning tweets.
Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is scheduled to be sentenced this week after pleading guilty to felony campaign finance violations, financial crimes and lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings in Russia. In legal filings released Friday, prosecutors said Cohen told them that when he made the payments to the women, “he acted in coordination with and at the direction of ” Trump.
On Twitter, Trump said that even if the payments amounted to campaign contributions, they would constitute a civil case, not a criminal one, and “there would not even be a fine.”
The Federal Election Commission handles campaign finance violations that aren’t “willful violations” or that involve smaller sums through civil enforcement provisions, which are typically fines.
“Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Nadler is expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee when Democrats take control of the House next year.
Trump has repeatedly denied that he directed Cohen to pay hush money to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
Trump accused Cohen of lying in an effort to get his sentence reduced.
In tweets, Trump compared his situation with one involving Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, which was fined $375,000 by the FEC for regulatory civil violations that included missing filing deadlines for disclosing large donations late in the election cycle, reporting wrong dates for some contributions and not returning excessive donations quickly enough.
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said Obama’s violation “consisted of failing to submit certain forms in time,” while the Trump allegations involve large payments through shell companies and his lawyer. “The former is negligent, and the latter is knowing and willful,” he said. “That is the difference – the mental state required.”