Where's the Ham?

How is paying hush money a legitimate business expense. It is not. Period. Campaign expenses are defined as legitimate business expenses for that campagin.

2. Campaigns are non profit organizations, and generally do not pay tases, much like Churches and other organizations.

 

NDAs are drafted to protect the public image of C-Suite employees and business owners all the time.

So you're upset they paid taxes? You're not making any sense.

 

Instructive in this situation is: Cohen was convicted on four or so counts, one of which was from his plea on the campaign/Daniels thing. The judge likely would have sentence him to nothing on that count so the SDNY convinced the judge to impose a single grouped sentence for all crimes to avoid the publicity of the campaign plea sham.

 

Exactly. The tax evasion and bank fraud alone could have put him away for up to 55 years. He was sentenced to about 5% of that. But, he had to agree to the campaign violation to get that deal.

 

NDAs don't make the hush money a legitimate business expense. The legal fees to draft the NDA may be, but not the hush money payments. Anyway, that is not what Cohen and Trump did. Cohen would "bill" Trump for legal services, in which the payment was to repay Cohen for the payment is took out from his home equity line of credit to pay Daniels directly. In other words, it was technically a loan billed as an expense. And that is business fraud.

That's a question you should ask Cohen.

 

NDAs are legal and proper business expenses and every NDA is to some degree "hush money". Paying a lawyer legal fees to handle agreements, including NDAs, is also a legal and proper business expense.

 

I never said they were not. But NDAs are simply an agreement that applies to both sides not to discuss the situation. But Cohen was not dealing with an NDA here in his business scheme. It was a liability disguised as a legal expense.

 

It was a legal settlement properly described as a legal expense in their ledger.