Trump-Stormy Daniels settlement at heart of potential NY DA indictment didn’t violate campaign law: FEC expert

Prosecutors at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office won’t have much legal backing if they indict former President Donald Trump for breaking the law, a legal expert and former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) says. on campaign finance.

“If the state charges are based on an alleged violation of federal campaign finance law, then the Manhattan DA is far from the base,” Hans von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital.

Von Spakovsky’s comments came shortly after Trump said on Saturday he expected to be arrested on Tuesday amid reports that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is preparing to issue an indictment. for the alleged silent money payments Trump made as a presidential candidate in 2016.

TRUMP SAYS ‘ILLEGAL LEAKS’ INDICATE HE WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY

“NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPTED AND HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT LAW OFFICE, WHICH HAS HELPED SET NEW VIOLENT CRIME RECORDS AND WHOSE HEAD IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, NO CRIME CAN BE PROVEN, AND BASED ON AN ANCIENT, FULLY DEBUNKED FAIRY TALE (BY MANY OTHER PROSECUTORS!), THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE AND FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY NEXT WEEK. OUR NATION!, [sic]Trump posed on his Truth Social account.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is reportedly meeting with law enforcement officials to discuss logistics for some time next week regarding a possible indictment, which stems from a years-long investigation into the alleged Trump secret money scandal involving porn star Stormy Daniels.

During the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, Michael Cohen, then Trump’s lawyer, sent Daniels $130,000 to stop him from disclosing his alleged 2006 affair with Trump, who has denied the affair. Trump then reimbursed Cohen.

Former President Donald Trump acknowledged the news of his potential arrest on Saturday in a lengthy, all-caps post on Truth Social. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

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It has been widely speculated that Trump could be accused of overseeing the false recording of refunds in his company’s internal records as “legal fees”.

Prosecutors are also expected to charge Trump with violating campaign finance laws by arranging payments to buy Daniels’ silence weeks before the 2016 election. However, experts have questioned the legal reasoning behind such a move. charge.

“A payment to settle a nuisance claim is not a federal campaign expense,” said von Spakovsky, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “The state’s attorney has no authority to prosecute a federal campaign finance violation.”

Such cases, he argues, fall under the jurisdiction of the FEC, where he served as commissioner, or the US Department of Justice, explaining that both agencies have known the facts for years but chose not to prosecute Trump.

Adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, speaks to the media with attorney Michael Avenatti (R) outside federal court in the Manhattan borough of New York, April 16, 2018 . (Reuters/Lucas Jackson)

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“So the relevant federal agencies did not consider it a violation,” said von Spakovsky, who has been following the case for years.

In 2018, von Spakovsky wrote that paying Daniels seemed like a “nuisance settlement,” which celebrities often make, especially when faced with the threat of a false or salacious claim.

“The president’s critics say it was not just a campaign expense that should have been reported, but a potentially illegal loan from Cohen. But the settlement was ultimately paid from Trump’s personal funds and had nothing to do with the campaign since their alleged one-night stand took place 10 years before the campaign,” von Spakovsky wrote. “No reasonable member of a jury would consider it to be a campaign-related expense that must be reported, or to which other campaign finance rules of the Federal Elections Campaign Act apply.”

Von Spakovsky noted in his 2018 analysis that the Justice Department had previously tested this theory with former Democratic presidential nominee John Edwards, whose campaign donors gave the mistress of as much as $1 million. ‘Edwards, Rielle Hunter, while working as a videographer for Edwards. and his presidential campaign.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg at a press conference in New York on Thursday, September 8, 2022. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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The Justice Department tried to argue that these were campaign-related payments, even though they did not go through Edwards’ campaign accounts, as they were intended to protect reputation of Edwards when he ran for president. A jury acquitted Edwards of one charge of accepting an illegal campaign donation and returned no verdict on the other charges, resulting in a mistrial.

The Justice Department dropped its charges and never retried Edwards.

“The alleged one-night stand between Daniels and Trump is far more exaggerated,” von Spakovsky wrote. “Daniels had no connection to the presidential campaign of any kind and the meeting – if it happened – did not happen during the campaign itself. In any event, even if the payment of Daniels was to be considered a campaign-related expense, unlike Edwards, the $130,000 nominal payment was not made by Trump campaign donors but by Trump’s personal attorney (not Trump’s attorney). the campaign) with whom he has a long-standing business relationship…Even if one could reasonably interpret the payment as Daniels as being related in some way to the presidential campaign, there would be no still no violation since candidates are allowed to spend as much of their own money as they wish on their own campaigns.”

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Von Spakovsky told Fox News Digital that his “opinion hasn’t changed” since this article was written.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung called the ongoing investigation a “witch hunt”, calling the former president “completely innocent” and accusing Bragg of being in the pocket of President Biden and the “Democrats radicals”.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.