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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/14/we-know-that-stormy-daniels-got-paid-we-still-dont-know-if-the-payment-violated-the-law/?utm_term=.c3e2421caf65
"The first question, the one that Cohen’s statement tries to settle, is whether this counts as a campaign contribution. Obviously if money paid to Daniels had been routed through the campaign, then that would have been a campaign contribution. But that’s not the only way in which the payment would qualify as a contribution.
“It goes beyond the question of well, did it go through the campaign,” Noble said. “If it’s for the purpose of influencing the election, it’s a campaign contribution. The question here is, was it done for the purpose of the election?”
“Evidence that it was is, for one thing, the affair was about 10 years old at the time and all of a sudden about a month before the election they allegedly decide to pay her to not talk about it,” he added.
However, that’s not necessarily proof that the payment was a campaign contribution. Remarkably, if Cohen as part of his duties at the Trump Organization regularly made similar payments to other people in the same context — if, that is, he regularly paid tens of thousands of dollars to women to buy their silence — it would suggest that this particular payment might simply be business as usual and not related to Trump’s electoral efforts.
“If there was a history of these type of contributions, donations or gifts to Donald Trump from whoever gave it, then you might say, ‘Well, it’s just another gift that they were giving,'” Noble said.
This has come up before. Former U.S. Senate candidate Jeffrey Bell (R-N.J.), who died this week, was once investigated by the Federal Election Commission after receiving gifts from his mother that might have exceeded federal contribution limits, Noble said. If a candidate’s mother gives him $50,000 a month regularly, a $50,000 gift right before the election may not violate campaign finance laws. If Trump regularly asked Cohen to pay out money and Cohen did, it’s potentially the same sort of thing."
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