Americans have a right to know who is paying for campaigns and how their money is being spent to influence our votes.
The bedrock principle of our campaign finance laws is that Americans have a right to know who is paying for campaigns and how their money is being spent to influence our votes. Surely that includes the $130,000 that was funneled to adult film star Stormy Daniels by President Trump’s attorney and used to buy her silence days before the 2016 election.
It’s now almost beyond dispute that Donald Trump was involved in negotiating a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels just before he was elected President. Between Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s admission that he “facilitated the payment” of hush money to Daniels and Daniels’ new lawsuit alleging Trump’s direct involvement, the facts point to the necessity for Federal Election Commission and Department of Justice investigations of this matter.
That’s why in January Common Cause filed complaints with the FEC and DOJ accusing President Trump and his campaign of violating federal campaign finance law by hiding the payment to Daniels and potentially receiving an illegal in-kind contribution.
The complaints make a compelling case that the $130,000 payment to Daniels was made to influence the presidential election; that makes it a campaign expenditure. Daniels herself admits this in her new lawsuit, claiming Trump agreed to pay her “to avoid her telling the truth, thus helping to ensure that he won the Presidential Election.”
By failing to report the payment as a campaign expense, the Trump campaign violated multiple federal disclosure laws. And depending on the source of the $130,000 paid to Daniels, the payment may also have been an illegal contribution. If the funds came from a corporation like the Trump Organization, the payment would be an illegal corporate contribution because corporations are prohibited from make contributions to federal candidates. And if the money came from Cohen or anyone other than Trump himself, it would violate the $2,700 limit on individual contributions to a federal candidate.
It is important to remember that the hush money agreement was reached just a week after the leak of the now-famous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged on camera about sexually assaulting women. At that point in the campaign, Trump and his aides were fixated on protecting the candidate from further negative press.
Daniels’ new lawsuit claims the nondisclosure agreement was never signed by Trump, and therefore is invalid. By not signing the agreement, Trump could have been trying to avoid prosecution for a knowing and willful violation of federal campaign finance law.
This is yet another episode of the Trump campaign and administration playing by their own set of rules.
Common Cause has filed multiple complaints against Trump for appearing to break federal campaign finance laws. Meanwhile, many of Trump’s closest associates, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Kelly, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and presidential aides Rob Porter and Kellyanne Conway, are either under indictment or investigation, have been convicted, or have been forced out of their jobs for various legal and/or ethical violations.
A simple principle connects all those Trump embarrassments with the Stormy Daniels lawsuit and Common Cause’s complaints; it is that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States.
Paul S. Ryan is Vice President for Policy & Litigation for Common Cause
