Donald Trump apparently knows more about campaign finance than anyone in the whole wide world. The president’s high praise of himself may have just got him in a load of trouble. Words matter, and his may have given special counsel Robert Mueller some evidence.
CNN host Don Lemon discovered some 1999 videos saying “nobody knows more about campaign finance’ than he does. According to The Wall Street Journal, the president’s decades-old sworn statement indicated that Trump understood campaign finance laws well enough to prove he knowingly broke the law prior to the 2016 presidential election.
Trump instructed his then personal attorney and self-described fixer Michael Cohen to pay hush money payments to two women who said he had sexual encounters with him. They were adult entertainer and director Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, and the affairs occurred right after Melania Trump had given birth to Trump’s son.
CNN host Don Lemon late Wednesday shared a video of POTUS bragging about his knowledge of campaign finance:
Lemon said:
‘Well, investigators could be pretty interested in this, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that sworn statements by Donald Trump dating back several decades indicate he has a deep understanding of campaign finance laws. They could also just listen to Trump in his own words.’
Then, he played the Trump interview with then-CNN host Larry King. In it, Trump responded to a question about campaign finance reform:
‘I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do because I’m the biggest contributor.’
That was when Lemon said:
‘Ruh roh. Sounds like Donald Trump knows plenty about campaign finance, a fact that could certainly backfire on him. There’s always a tape or tweet for everything.’
Apparently, the president has given testimony about campaign donations a number of times. He testified to a government integrity commission in 1988, according to the Journal.
What this did to the man sitting in the Oval Office was lock him out of any plea of ignorance about the campaign laws in any criminal proceedings against him. The way it would work is that prosecutors could use the tapes to prove that Trump knew exactly what he was doing, and the could gain a conviction that way.
Trump’s television attorney Rudy Giuliani said to the Journal that the payments did not violate the law:
‘Whether or not the president had detailed knowledge of campaign-finance law.’
Unfortunately for the president, Cohen pled guilty to carrying out Trump’s orders to pay off the women. The money and contractual agreements silenced them, right after the video of the then-candidate telling Entertainment Tonight host Billy Bush of how he molested women went public.
The federal prosecutors filed documents that indicated they believed Cohen paid the women at Trump’s behest. It did not help the president’s case that Cohen received a three-year prison sentence for this campaign finance law violation and other crimes.
Naturally, 45 has denied that he knowingly told his personal attorney to break the law. Then, the president said nondisclosure payments do not violate the law. However, the early videos show otherwise.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
