Trump Testimony From Decades Ago Indicates Knowledge of Campaign-Finance Laws
Legal experts say that could be critical if investigators pursue a case over hush-money payments to women in the 2016 campaign
President Trump has indicated in sworn statements dating back decades that he understands federal campaign finance law, which could play a role if prosecutors ever try to charge him over payments to two women who said they had sexual relations with him.
By Rebecca Ballhaus and Joe Palazzolo / WSJ / Dec. 19, 2018
wsj.com
Sworn statements by President Trump dating back several decades indicate he has a deep understanding of campaign-finance laws, legal experts say, which could be critical if investigators ever pursue a case against him over his alleged direction of hush-money payments in the 2016 campaign.
Mr. Trump’s statements were made as part of a 2000 regulatory investigation into his casino company and in 1988 testimony for a government-integrity commission. They contrast with the portrayal by some of the president’s allies that he is a political novice with little understanding of campaign-finance laws and therefore couldn’t be charged with violating them.
In 2000, the Federal Election Commission investigated allegations that Trump Hotels & Casinos violated the law related to a fundraising event for a Senate candidate. Mr. Trump’s sworn affidavit “indicates that Trump had a very thorough understanding of federal campaign finance law, especially regarding what he could and could not legally do when raising money for a federal candidate,” said Brett Kappel, an election-law lawyer at Akerman LLP.
In the four-page affidavit that Mr. Trump signed, he stressed he had a particular familiarity with laws governing corporate contributions to candidates. Mr. Trump said he was acting in his “individual,” not corporate, capacity when he hosted the event; that he had paid for the reception costs “from my personal funds”; that he “took no action, of any nature, kind or description, to compel or pressure” any employee to donate to the campaign ahead of the event; and that he wasn’t reimbursed for any of the costs.
The FEC decided to take no action against the company.
In December, federal prosecutors in New York directly implicated the president in campaign-finance violations to which his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty, confirming earlier reporting by The Wall Street Journal. During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump directed Mr. Cohen to arrange hush-money payments for two women who alleged having sexual affairs with Mr. Trump, prosecutors said.
To obtain a conviction of violating campaign-finance law, prosecutors would have to prove Mr. Trump knew the rules and violated them willfully. Allies of Mr. Trump have contended that wasn’t the case.
Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Mr. Trump who has previously argued that the president had limited understanding of campaign-finance laws, said in an interview Wednesday that “whether or not the president had detailed knowledge of campaign-finance law” the hush-money payments for which Mr. Cohen was charged didn’t break the law. But, he added of Mr. Trump: “Honestly, I don’t think his knowledge goes that deep because mine didn’t until I researched it.”
It isn’t known whether or how prosecutors would pursue a case against Mr. Trump. Under Justice Department policy, a sitting president can’t be indicted. But prosecutors could refer their findings to Congress or seek to indict Mr. Trump after he leaves office.
Mr. Trump’s previous statements testifying to his knowledge of campaign-finance laws could help prosecutors clear the hurdle of proving Mr. Trump willfully broke the law, election-law experts said.
Any evidence showing “his sophistication in matters of campaign finance would be valuable and probative evidence” in any inquiry into whether Mr. Trump knew enough about the law to understand the hush-money payments were illegal, said Richard Hasen, a professor at University of California, Irvine, who specializes in election law.
Mr. Cohen last week was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes including campaign-finance violations involving the hush-money payments in which he implicated the president. One of those payments, for $150,000 to a former Playboy model, was paid by American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer.
Mr. Trump has denied having sex with the two women.
American Media, which signed a nonprosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, said it made the payment to the former model to help Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Prosecutors have said the American Media payment amounted to an in-kind contribution to a campaign, which is made when supporters coordinate with a campaign to spend money that benefits the candidate. Federal law bars companies from making such contributions.
Mr. Giuliani, asked in an interview last week if Mr. Trump had known that directing a hush-money payment by an outside corporation during the election would have been illegal, suggested he didn’t. He blamed Mr. Cohen, saying a “real lawyer rather than this jerk” would have told Mr. Trump that was the case.
Mr. Trump faced similar allegations of accepting corporate contributions years before he sought American Media’s help to suppress stories that could damage his campaign. In 2011, he was accused of violating federal election law in a previous exploration of a presidential run by accepting illegal in-kind contributions from his business, the Trump Organization.
Cleta Mitchell, a partner at Foley & Lardner who represented Mr. Trump in the 2011 FEC case, said the 2000 case largely dealt with different regulations than those prosecutors said were violated in the campaign-finance case against Mr. Cohen.
"I don’t know how anything in that old matter could be used to show much of anything regarding the whole Cohen payment matter,” Ms. Mitchell said of the 2000 case.
Mr. Trump has been involved with campaign finance issues for decades, donating to candidates as a real-estate developer, extending them loans and hosting fundraisers for them, according to federal and state campaign finance records and testimony he gave in 1988 to the New York State Commission on Government Integrity.
In that testimony, Mr. Trump demonstrated an awareness of the federal contribution limits at the time and spoke at length about his views on campaign finance.
“I have gone through federal campaigns, and frankly it’s the best thing that ever happened to me because you’re limited to a thousand-dollar contribution,” he said.
But Mr. Trump also said he felt restrictions on contributions damaged the political system, saying some lawmakers “spend their entire tenure trying to raise money, with a thousand dollar limit.”
He called for donations to be disclosed with greater frequency and criticized moves to limit contribution amounts further. “It may have the effect of making a certain person dishonest, because he is so intent on winning an election,” Mr. Trump said in his 1988 testimony.
—Michael Rothfeld contributed to this article |
