Wrong, there is a crime, and there are 10s of millions of victims. Whilst you might not care if someone, whilst standing for election, and having a new born at home, had an affair with an escort, you are in the minority in the States. You only have to look at the Evangelicals, and GOP "Family First" values, to see that a non-neglible number of voters who voted for Trump in swing States would not have voted for him if they knew all the sordid details.
Whilst that covering up isn't a criminal crime, per se - as some on here said if he had paid her from his own money he wouldn't have committed a felony. But he didn't - he fleeced his own supporters for money to support a campaign, and then spent that money to dupe them and make sure they didn't know about the affair instead of on the campaign. I think it is fairly clear that, given the narrow win in many of the key swing states, Trump could easily have lost the election if he hadn't paid Stormy the hush money to deliberately suppress the information about his suitability and the Democrats could have campaigned on the issue.
Yeah, I take your point. But only because Trump is so abhorrent, I'll grasp onto any straw that would have possibly stopped him being elected.
On a fundamental level though, I just don't think what goes on in a politician's (or any public figure - free Phillip Schofield!) private life is anyone's business, as long as it's not illegal. Why should an election be decided by a one-night stand that happened 10 years prior? It's completely irrelevant, or at least it should be. I have no moral qualm with Stormy getting some money out of the deal, and no moral qualm with Trump paying her to keep a private matter private.
And to take the unprecedented step of trying a former president - one who is running for re-election and has a lot of public support - I just feel like you should have a 'real' crime, something meatier than this. It's just an accounting entry, literally a paper crime. If he beats the case it's a huge embarrassment, and if he is convicted it just bolsters his claims of witch hunts and persecution.
If I understand correctly, the IRS weren't defrauded, Cohen had to pay income tax on the 130k so they actually got more revenue than they would have otherwise. As far as misuse of campaign funds, what do people spend campaign funds on? Ad spots on TV and youtube, feeding stories to friendly journalists to shape narratives, and so on. This seems like a pretty prudent use of campaign funds to be honest, keeping an embarrassing story like this off the air.
Anyway, not a hill I'm willing to die on, I'll keep my misgivings to myself. He is utter scum and I hope he is convicted, a felony conviction is what I wanted all along so I shouldn't be nitpicking it now I suppose.
