The rule you cite refers to campaign funds used in an improper way.
No, the rule I stated is the test the FEC uses to determine whether or not funds were used in an improper way. (" to differentiate legitimate campaign and officeholder expenses from personal expenses.") The rule applies to funds used in both proper and improper ways.
That is not what happened in the Trump/Daniels and Trump/McDougal cases. Those are cases where funds from outside the campaign were used for the benefit of a campaign and not reported.
You're still hing up on "used for the benefit of the campaign." I suggest you try and expand your imagination a little, and try to imagine those payments being made even if Trump were not a candidate.
Also, funds coming from outside the campaign are not considered a campaign contribution "if the payment would have been made irrespective of the candidacy." (Source: the same FEC) In any event, Trump reimbursed Cohen those funds out of his own pocket, not out of campaign funds.
Just because something benefits the campaign, the candidate or influences an election, does not in and of itself make it a campaign contribution or expenditure. Whether or not the campaign benefits is not the litmus test. The litmus test is the "irrespective test." Does buying nice clothes, neatly pressed and dry cleaned, to make the candidate look good in public, benefit the campaign? You betcha it does. But it's not considered to be a campaign expenditure, because it doesn't pass the "irrespective test."
An example of someone violating the personal use rule you cite would be a candidate who took a weekend mini vacation with one's spouse for strictly personal reasons and paid for it with funds from the campaign's bank account.
Correct. You cannot use campaign funds for personal expenses. But that's just one example of thousands where using campaign funds for personal expenses would be improper. But that's not what Trump is accused of.
Trump is accused of receiving an illegal campaign contribution (from himself, mind you), and not reporting it, and then using the funds to benefit his campaign in a manner in which the same money would not have been spent if he were not a candidate.
After these latest court filings, Trump tweeted that he's in the clear. And he's not wrong. There is nothing in the filings that put Trump in any kind of real trouble. But, if you read the MSM version of the world, CNN, Wapo and NYT in particular, you will see article after article of nonsense lists of things that are not crimes, and they're not going to be a big problem for Trump, but if they can amass enough of them in enough articles and on-air punditry, they can create the story where it looks like there is. You see a lot of stuff, especially from anti-Trump legal "experts" that say things like...
Well, the President, or somebody, did something that wasn't a crime, but it was veeeery close to one you could imagine
could be illegal if things like that were illegal.
For example, having conversations about a project in Russia, when you're not president, and you think you probably won't win the election, and you're keeping your options open in Russia, is not a crime. But it feels like... sorta close to something... that if the situation were different... and some of the variables were sotf of opposite... such as he was president, or there was a quid pro quo, something like that,,, well that would be a crime. And then there are Manafort's crimes, which have nothing to do with Trump or collusion. And Flynn, and Papadoulis And look at the payments to Stormy and McDougal. You can argue that there's some sort of super sekrit campaign reporting problem going on, but it can also be argued that the payments were made purely for personal reasons, to keep his family out of the blowback from his affairs. But if you have a perfectly good personal reason to make those payments, and they also just so happen to benefore the campaign, it's not illegal. But dammit, <stomp><stomp><stomp> it sure feels like it should be. It feels like it sorta could be close to almost being illegal if things were just a little bit different.
Yeah, sure, I get it. That's not quite illegal. And the other stuff is not quite illegal. But if you add up everything that's not quite illegal, you see a pattern of not quite illegal, and if you add up enough of not quite illegal, you've just got to get to a point where there's a number of not quite illegal will equal illegal. Look at Paul Manafort. He committed real crimes, which have nothing to do with the president, but he was with the campaign for a few months, so while that's not exactly a crime of the president, but it's close to it, in a way that makes you reminded of a crime, so it would be illegal for Trump if just a few of those variables where different than they are. Dammit.
You can look at it all, and there's a lot of stuff. But it all has the same quality. "Well, that definitely would be a problem, it it were just a little bit different than what actually happened. And there's soooo much of it that's sooooo close to actually being illegal, that we might as well just call it illegal, impeach him, remove him from office, and throw him in prison for ever and ever Amen "
They anybody had anything real on Trump we'd know about it by now. What Mueller or anyone else comes up with, if anything at all, will be so convoluted, strained and pretzelled so as to look desperate and contrived, that the country will not get on board with it.
There is perhaps a 10 percent chance (being charitable) of the House impeaching Trump, and exactly a zero percent chance of the Senate finding him guilty and successfully removing him from office.
