Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is essentially using the same legal theory to potentially indict former President Donald Trump that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was fined for, argued former United States Attorney Brett Tolman.
Tolman asserted Saturday that Bragg’s legal theory that Trump tried to hide a campaign expenditure by using his then-lawyer to pay porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in alleged hush money before the 2016 presidential elections would have applied to Clinton when her campaign hid a payment for the phony Russian pee dossier against Trump as “legal fees.”
Former New York City police officer and conservative pundit John Cardillo tweeted, “Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones $850,000 and no one cared.” Tolman tweeted in response, “And the Hillary Campaign was actually fined for hiding the Steele Dossier payment under ‘legal fees’ — essentially the same legal theory on the Stormy Daniels payment the DA is running criminal investigation of Trump.”
Indeed, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in March 2022 fined Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee for not properly disclosing payments for the so-called pee dossier that the DOJ and FBI relied on to investigate Trump for alleged Russian collusion.
Campaigns are supposed to report expenses over $200 and disclose the purpose of the expense. However, the Clinton campaign and the DNC funneled their payments for the dossier — totaling more than $1 million — through the Democrat law firm Perkins Coie.
According to the FEC, Perkins Coie paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS more than $1 million in 2016 for the dossier. Perkins Coie was then paid $175,000 by the Clinton campaign and about $850,000 by the DNC in July and August 2016 — around the same time the FBI claimed they opened their investigation on the Trump campaign.
The payments were not disclosed until Kash Patel, lead investigator for then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) uncovered them.
The FEC fined the Clinton campaign $8,000 and the DNC $105,000 for reporting the payments as “legal services” and “legal and compliance consulting” instead of as opposition research, the FEC said.
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