You can read the column here or at AnnCoulter.com.
This week, I will provide readers with a FREE excerpt from Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind
in order to prove that if you’d bought the book two months ago, you’d
already understand the rules of the game. Now that Democrats are about
to take control of the House, this is the only book you’ll need until
President Trump is out of office.
** ** **
Boring facts can be used to prove big crimes, but in the case
of Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s payment to a porn star, what we have
is a boring fact being used to prove a boring crime: an alleged
violation of the campaign finance laws zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz … Worse:
They’re trying to prove a reporting violation.
If Trump paid the $130,000 himself solely to help his campaign
— and he wouldn’t have minded at all having a porn star telling the
tabloids she’d had sex with him except for the fact that he was running
for president — it would be a reporting violation and OH MY GOSH —
HE’D HAVE TO PAY A FINE!
Their argument is what if he didn’t pay it himself?! That’s why
the media are obsessed with when Cohen emailed Stormy Daniels’ lawyer
and from which email address — trying to find bread crumbs that someone
else paid Stormy in order to claim it was an illegal campaign
contribution — again requiring that the payment be motivated solely by
the fact that Trump was running for office.
This is how they lure you into arguing about something that doesn’t matter.
In the 1990s, Chinese nationals were literally dragging duffel bags of money
into the Democratic National Committee as President Clinton allowed
sensitive ballistic-missile guidance technology to be transferred to the
Chinese government.
No charges. No independent counsel.
Clinton held illegal campaign fundraisers at the White House,
where Chinese citizens handed checks directly to White House staff.
Still no charges and no independent counsel.
Videotapes of the White House fundraisers surfaced, featuring
the president and vice president glad-handing campaign donors on federal
property.
And again, no charges, no independent counsel.
The New York Times’ response to Attorney General Janet Reno’s
refusal to assign an independent counsel to these textbook campaign
finance violations was a forceful editorial lightly ribbing Reno for her
“blunders.”
“Saturday Night Live” was tougher on Reno.
“Weekend Update With Norm Macdonald,” Nov. 8, 1997:
With the release of over 100 hours of videotape of President
Clinton at campaign fundraisers, the pressure continues to mount on
Attorney General Janet Reno to name an independent counsel to
investigate the president. In addition, some senators are said to be
furious that, instead of watching the videotapes, Reno has been taping
over them with episodes of “Xena: Warrior Princess.”
But now we’re supposed to care that Trump’s personal lawyer
lied about a legal payment to, depending on your point of view, a
mistress or an opportunistic grifter — AND HE USED A TRUMP ORGANIZATION
EMAIL ADDRESS.
Lying to the press isn’t a crime, and paying money to cover up
an affair isn’t a crime, either, even if you’re running for president.
If these were crimes, John Edwards would be on death row.
As a presidential candidate in 2008, Edwards lied up a storm
about getting his mistress pregnant as his wife was dying of cancer.
Only through the generous support of his well-heeled donors was he able
to hide his mistress from the public. This donor-funded scam went on for
months, until the National Enquirer finally caught Edwards visiting his
mistress and newborn baby at the Beverly Hilton.
Edwards was later charged with campaign finance violations for
using campaign funds to hide the affair. The prosecution was widely
ridiculed, and the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
If that’s not a violation of the campaign finance laws, then Trump’s $130,000 payment to Daniels sure isn’t.
** ** **
In a sane world, that ought to be all you need to know about
Trump’s alleged campaign finance violations. As the money-grubbing
Clinton years demonstrated, federal election laws are like “No Smoking”
signs in France: rules that exist only for our amusement.
But with Robert “Ahab” Mueller no closer to finding anything
resembling Russian collusion, the Resistance has pinned its impeachment
hopes on the most meaningless of “crimes.”
Proving that the Cohen plea agreement is all about getting
Trump on something — anything! — and not about enforcing the law, one
of the crimes the government forced him to plead guilty to isn’t a
crime. It’s not a crime by statutory definition and it’s not a crime by
the fact that we still have a First Amendment.
Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation for
entering into a “catch and kill” agreement with the National Enquirer’s
David Pecker, whereby the Enquirer would purchase, and then bury, the
stories of women who claimed to have had sex with Trump, in this case,
Karen McDougal.
As a definitional matter, that agreement cannot be the basis of
a campaign finance violation. The government’s own Sentencing
Memorandum for Michael Cohen states:
“In August 2014, (Pecker) had met with Cohen and (Trump), and
had offered to help deal with negative stories about (Trump’s)
relationships with women by identifying such stories so that they could
be purchased and ‘killed.'”
August 2014 is a full year before there even was a Trump
campaign. It’s disturbing enough to have every payment made during a
campaign subject to investigation as a potential campaign finance
violation. But to be finding campaign law violations before there’s even
a campaign is ludicrous.
And is The New York Times OK with the government hauling
newspaper publishers into court and demanding that they explain why they
chose to run, or not to run, a story? Liberals may dispute whether
bloggers are “journalists,” but the National Enquirer is the largest
newspaper in the country.
If Pecker’s editorial judgment can be the subject of
litigation, how about prosecuting Newsweek for catching and killing
Michael Isikoff’s story on Monica Lewinsky?
Yes, Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation for
agreeing to pay Pecker to kill the affair stories. The government had
nailed Michael Cohen on so many financial crimes (having nothing to do
with Trump) that prosecutors could have gotten him to plead guilty to
bearing Trump’s love child. (If Cohen wants a lucrative gig after
prison, how about renting out his face by the hour to smart guys who like being underestimated?)
The main thing we’ve learned from Cohen’s guilty plea on the
Enquirer deal is that these prosecutors don’t mind looking silly, as
long as they can get Trump.
COPYRIGHT 2018 ANN COULTER
Defending Ann Coulter's Honor 