3 ms·

Why would you have a lawyer pay hush money? The concealment of the payment (having Cohen pay from his company, then reimbursing him as part of a larger payment)

by ethbr0 4y ago

Why would you have a lawyer pay hush money? The concealment of the payment (having Cohen pay from his company, then reimbursing him as part of a larger payment) is the crime, not the payment. And yes, I think all politicians should be gone after for breaking any campaign-finance-related law. The legal ways to use money have so many loopholes (wink-nudge a PAC to pay off Stormy Daniels) that we shouldn't compromise an inch on what few restrictions we do have on the books. This is a campaign finance violation. If we're not going to hold politicians beholden to those laws, then where is the line?

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Lawyers often pay ancillary expenses for their jobs (including hush money), and bill their clients afterwards. In my own life, my lawyer pays my fees to the PTAB and then puts them on my monthly bill. That goes in my accounting books as "patent-related legal expenses," and this is fine according to my accountant - it's a bill from a lawyer, so it's a legal expense. I don't even know how much the PTAB bills me - the line on my itemized bills is a lump sum that includes administrative work in that line item (and as I understand it, the administrative work is actually quite expensive for a patent). I think classifying this as "breaking any campaign-finance-related law" is a little bit of a strawman based on the fact pattern. It's one thing to go after someone for giving/accepting donations that are clearly illegal, but it's another thing to go after them for classifying hush money paid through a lawyer as a "legal expense" rather than a "PR expense." However, if New York were serious about justice, they would have had a clearly-politically-motivated prosecutor assign a special counsel to look for malfeasance here instead of running the prosecution himself. Also, you should read the book "3 felonies a day," and it will give you more context on how much gray area there actually is in most crimes. The thesis of the book is that there is enough of a gray area that the average American commits 3 felonies a day.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  This isn't an accounting crime. He's entitled to account for it in a variety of legal ways. It's a campaign finance disclosure crime. Either he properly classified and disclosed a campaign related expense, or he didn't. The difference with your example is that you presumably aren't running for office, and hence aren't required to formally disclose campaign expenses. The ad hominem attacks on the prosecutor also seem... desperate and distasteful. Trump has enough money to afford a good legal defense team -- why should the country be in the business of deciding who is too big to prosecute? And I've read it.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    > why should the country be in the business of deciding who is too big to prosecute? They are in this business because they have put themselves there - "3 felonies a day" should have told you about how that happened. Now that they are there, they have to avoid even creating the appearance that they are misusing the power in circumstances like this, where they are trying to prosecute political opponents. This is how civil wars start. > The ad hominem attacks on the prosecutor also seem... desperate and distasteful. Alvin Bragg campaigned on the fact that he was going to get Trump. It is a pertinent fact that the prosecutor going after Trump is literally trying to fulfill a campaign promise that he made publicly. If that isn't evidence that he was politically motivated, I don't know what is.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Civil wars start because an absence of the rule of law. I.e. politicians being able to avoid charges simply by virtual of their office. And why does it matter if the prosecutor has a political ax to grind with Trump? The distastefulness of the ad hominem attacks is the seeming thought process behind them: {prosecutor is political} == {no crimes he charges can be true} Do crimes cease being crimes unless the prosecutor is inhumanly unbiased? That's what a robust defense team is for.
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        About 80 million people have an ax to grind with Trump. Only a few of them are prosecutors who were literally elected on a promise of prosecuting him. That changes things, in my book. The correct way for him to have handled this would have been to follow through on his promise and also avoid his bias by appointing a special prosecutor with a very high budget to do the investigation - like the federal investigations before. Also, believe it or not, prosecutors have strict ethical rules around being "advocates for justice" rather than trying to get their guy, and the hint of bias actually does mean that Trump's lawyers can get this charge thrown out on those grounds. It is actually true that on some level {prosecutor is political} == {no crimes he charged can be true}. The courts in the USA understand that to a degree, the process is the punishment, and so prosecutors can also get in trouble for nakedly biased prosecutions like this. This is different than civil litigators, who are free to be as biased and litigious as they want. Personally, I would have had no issue if he had found some actual, serious malfeasance. In fact, I was hoping he would find some serious malfeasance in the Trump organization given all the other shit we know they did (but couldn't link back to the big guy). But no, the best he could find was Trump's accountant possibly misclassifying an expense on a disclosure form.

by ethbr0 4y ago

pclmulqdq 4y ago

Lawyers often pay ancillary expenses for their jobs (including hush money), and bill their clients afterwards. In my own life, my lawyer pays my fees to the PTAB and then puts them on my monthly bill. That goes in my accounting books as "patent-related legal expenses," and this is fine according to my accountant - it's a bill from a lawyer, so it's a legal expense. I don't even know how much the PTAB bills me - the line on my itemized bills is a lump sum that includes administrative work in that line item (and as I understand it, the administrative work is actually quite expensive for a patent). I think classifying this as "breaking any campaign-finance-related law" is a little bit of a strawman based on the fact pattern. It's one thing to go after someone for giving/accepting donations that are clearly illegal, but it's another thing to go after them for classifying hush money paid through a lawyer as a "legal expense" rather than a "PR expense." However, if New York were serious about justice, they would have had a clearly-politically-motivated prosecutor assign a special counsel to look for malfeasance here instead of running the prosecution himself. Also, you should read the book "3 felonies a day," and it will give you more context on how much gray area there actually is in most crimes. The thesis of the book is that there is enough of a gray area that the average American commits 3 felonies a day.

ethbr0 4y ago
This isn't an accounting crime. He's entitled to account for it in a variety of legal ways. It's a campaign finance disclosure crime. Either he properly classified and disclosed a campaign related expense, or he didn't. The difference with your example is that you presumably aren't running for office, and hence aren't required to formally disclose campaign expenses. The ad hominem attacks on the prosecutor also seem... desperate and distasteful. Trump has enough money to afford a good legal defense team -- why should the country be in the business of deciding who is too big to prosecute? And I've read it.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  > why should the country be in the business of deciding who is too big to prosecute? They are in this business because they have put themselves there - "3 felonies a day" should have told you about how that happened. Now that they are there, they have to avoid even creating the appearance that they are misusing the power in circumstances like this, where they are trying to prosecute political opponents. This is how civil wars start. > The ad hominem attacks on the prosecutor also seem... desperate and distasteful. Alvin Bragg campaigned on the fact that he was going to get Trump. It is a pertinent fact that the prosecutor going after Trump is literally trying to fulfill a campaign promise that he made publicly. If that isn't evidence that he was politically motivated, I don't know what is.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Civil wars start because an absence of the rule of law. I.e. politicians being able to avoid charges simply by virtual of their office. And why does it matter if the prosecutor has a political ax to grind with Trump? The distastefulness of the ad hominem attacks is the seeming thought process behind them: {prosecutor is political} == {no crimes he charges can be true} Do crimes cease being crimes unless the prosecutor is inhumanly unbiased? That's what a robust defense team is for.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      About 80 million people have an ax to grind with Trump. Only a few of them are prosecutors who were literally elected on a promise of prosecuting him. That changes things, in my book. The correct way for him to have handled this would have been to follow through on his promise and also avoid his bias by appointing a special prosecutor with a very high budget to do the investigation - like the federal investigations before. Also, believe it or not, prosecutors have strict ethical rules around being "advocates for justice" rather than trying to get their guy, and the hint of bias actually does mean that Trump's lawyers can get this charge thrown out on those grounds. It is actually true that on some level {prosecutor is political} == {no crimes he charged can be true}. The courts in the USA understand that to a degree, the process is the punishment, and so prosecutors can also get in trouble for nakedly biased prosecutions like this. This is different than civil litigators, who are free to be as biased and litigious as they want. Personally, I would have had no issue if he had found some actual, serious malfeasance. In fact, I was hoping he would find some serious malfeasance in the Trump organization given all the other shit we know they did (but couldn't link back to the big guy). But no, the best he could find was Trump's accountant possibly misclassifying an expense on a disclosure form.