by George Rasley

If the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle taught MAGA team members anything it should have been that radical Leftist Democrats and their fellow travelers in the liberal establishment will do anything and stop at nothing to get Donald Trump, or anyone associated with him.

That is why the Nation and the President have been put through the Russian collusion hoax, and why Democrats stick with that narrative, even as the evidence for it has proven to be a complete fabrication.

However, as the evidence for Russian collusion has evaporated, or proven to be a fabrication bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrats, the narrative has begun to shift.

The last few days have seen a big pivot in the campaign against Donald Trump observed Byron York, chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner. For two-plus years, it was Russia, Russia, Russia. But despite various revelations in the Russia probe, the case for collusion remains as sketchy as ever.

Now, however, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have given Democrats a new weapon against the president: Attorney Michael Cohen pleading guilty to two campaign finance felonies related to paying hush money to Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. “Stormy Daniels”).

However, as our friend former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy pointed out in an August 22 article for National Review, while it was illegal for Michael Cohen to make contributions exceeding $2,700 per election to a presidential candidate (including contributions coordinated with the candidate); and illegal for the candidate to accept contributions in excess of that amount. It was also illegal for corporations to contribute to candidates (including expenditures coordinated with the candidate), and for the candidate to accept such contributions. The latter illegality is relevant because Cohen formed corporations to transfer the hush money.

The law, however, does not impose a dollar limit on the candidate himself, and Trump on Monday morning described the payments as a “private transaction” that “was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine.” He added that it was the “lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me.”

As Andy McCarthy explained, Donald Trump could lawfully have made contributions and expenditures in excess of $2,700 per election. Because of that, and because — unlike Cohen — Trump is a non-lawyer who may not have fully appreciated the campaign-finance implications, it would be tough to prove that the president had criminal intent.

Moreover, noted McCarthy, the Justice Department has a history of treating serious campaign-finance transgressions as administrative violations, not felonies. A prominent example: The 2008 Obama campaign accepted nearly $2 million in illegal campaign contributions, but was permitted to settle the matter with a $375,000 fine.

However, the incoming chairs of two powerful House committees have predicted legal peril for President Trump, with one referring to recent accusations about Michael Cohen’s hush-money payments as “impeachable offenses,” reports Alexandra Ma of the Business Insider.
“There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told the CBS show “Face the Nation” on Sunday according to Ms. Ma’s report.

Alexandra Ma also reported Rep. Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN that if Trump were found to have directed the payments, it would amount to “impeachable offenses,” though he did not commit to pursuing impeachment in that scenario.
“They would be impeachable offenses — whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“But certainly they’d be impeachable offenses because even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office — that would be an impeachable offense.”

Notice, that while the narrative has shifted from Russian collusion to real or imagined campaign finance violations, the underlying concept that Donald Trump was “fraudulently” elected President hasn’t shifted at all.

Democrats have convinced themselves that Donald Trump’s election was obtained by fraud and they will go to any length to prove that the 2016 election did not constitute a radical and long overdue revolution against the Leftwing establishment consensus in Washington. They may even invent some new campaign finance crime with which to charge the President, but that won’t change the fact that Americans still support the Trump agenda of economic growth and secure borders.
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Photo “Trump and Putin” by Kremlin.ru CC4.0.

Reprinted with permission from ConservativeHQ.com