Manafort & Cohen: Finally, Grounds to Impeach?

It is fascinating to watch the straw-grasping going on. Nothing Manafort was being tried for, and certainly nothing the jury convicted him of, had anything remotely to do with the Trump campaign. The guy is obviously being punished for being on the wrong side of the establishment. How about Cohen?
Contributing one's own money to one's own campaign is not a campaign finance violation. Many wealthy candidates run largely self-funded campaigns; there is no limit on the amount of your own money you spend to try to get elected. Such spending often takes the form of paying people to disclose information you want circulated: better known as political advertising. Another way of spending your own money may be to pay someone to not disclose information: we might call that "political non-advertising." Neither political advertising nor political non-advertising is a campaign finance violation, when you spend your own money. If Cohen paid two women for Trump non-advertising with Cohen's own money, that may be a problem for Cohen since he would be making undisclosed contributions to Trump's campaign; but if he did it with Trump's money, acting on behalf of Trump, that would simply be Trump paying for non-advertising, 100% legal expenditure of his own money. 
Cohen, an obvious liar who just plead guilty to various crimes unrelated to Trump, issues a public statement that his payments to the women was directed by Trump. Here is the expert's legal opinion (not mine) on that:

"If [the Court] believes Cohen, that the president directed him to do it, then it’s not a crime at all. If he doesn’t believe Cohen, then Cohen [alone] has committed the crime." 

Long-time liberal legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, who disagrees profoundly with Trump on many policy issues, is nevertheless one of the more rational analysts when it comes to the various legal accusations being thrown against the wall. Mark Alexander, quoting Dershowitz at length, provides a good overview.
The following is from the Patriot Post. 
Curt

Trump’s Troubles Put in Perspective

Mark Alexander

Donald Trump’s troubles are the trouble with Donald Trump. He is a package deal, and part of the deal is ugly. This is not a revelation, but it certainly does provide plenty of obstructionist fodder for Democrat Party hacks and their Leftmedia conglomerate.
More on that in a minute, but first…
Those of us who supported his election over Hillary Clinton had no illusion that Trump had the character of George Washngton or Ronald Reagan. But as Nate Jackson noted yesterday, Trump’s considerable character issues were “baked into the 2016 election cake.” We knew what we were getting. It is unfortunate that Republicans have to defend a current president by comparing his failings to past Democrat presidents, but that is the degraded reality of contemporary politics.
Frankly, I have been surprised at how effective Trump has been as, to put it mildly, an “unconventional president.” A review of his first year MAGA accomplishments, and adding numerous legislative, judicial, regulatory, and economic accomplishments thus far in his second year, is remarkable. No conventional president has done more to turn the country back toward Liberty in his first 18 months in office than Donald Trump.
Writing recently about the epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome afflicting the Left, I noted the reason why: “The day Trump arrived in DC, he dropped a bomb on the status quo in Congress and its special interests. He dropped a bomb on the regulatory behemoths and their bureaucratic bottlenecks. He dropped a bomb on the trade and national security institutions and alliances that failed miserably over the previous eight years. And he dropped a bomb on all the pundits and mainstream media outlets.”
Trump’s “style” has caused more political consternation resulting in more uncivil discourse than any president in the last century. But as seasoned political observer Walter Williams notes, sometimes men of high character make bad presidents, while sometimes men of low character make good presidents.
Enter the Russia collusion setup — orchestrated by former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey and, of course, Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Comey, by his own admission, released details of the fake Russian dossier (which became a Trump investigation centerpiece based on a questionable FISA memo) in order to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor. That was a masterful play to keep Trump on the ropes through the 2018 midterms.
It was clear that the appointment of Robert Mueller and his team of Clintonistas would open up the proverbial “can of worms” in regard to all things Trump, and those connected to him, despite the fact there has been and likely will be no evidence of Russian collusion. To date, Mueller has not indicated any investigation into the genuine 2016 election collusion between Team Clinton and the Russians to set Trump up for a takedown.
And that brings us to this week, which featured the convictions of Trump associates Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Nothing in those convictions and plea deals have anything to do with “Russian collusion,” but again, the worms are out, and in the case of Cohen, so much for “lawyer-client privilege.”
For starters, all the analysis from Right and Left notwithstanding, the biggest concern for Trump right now is not what Manafort and Cohen have been convicted of thus far. Manafort has an upcoming trial that pertains to his past dealings with Russian companies. But a much greater threat to Trump is what Cohen has yet to tell prosecutors about Trump. As his former attorney, Cohen knows where, on Trump’s behalf, he hid corporate and personal legal skeletons.
As for the current charges against Cohen related to “hush money” paid to a couple of women with whom Trump had some salacious involvement long ago, the Left is trying to spin that into “high crimes and misdemeanors” for a faux impeachment proceeding.
Trump insists, of course, that he has broken no laws. “Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. … The only thing that I have done wrong is to win an election that was expected to be won by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.”
In regard to these latest Trump troubles uncovered by Mueller, my money is on the most cogent analysis from Democrat Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.
On the hush money, Dershowitz concluded:

If Mr. Trump the candidate contributed several hundred thousand dollars to his own campaign to pay hush money to women who were either truthfully or falsely alleging against him, that is not a crime. The candidate can contribute as much as he wants. … The election laws are a morass of misdemeanors, felonies, crimes, non-crimes, with exceptions, so you have to get over the legal barrier first. Then you have to get over the credibility barrier. The only evidence that the president did anything that might be unlawful even arguably comes from a man who has admitted to be a liar, had a lawyer-client privilege with the president. There are a lot of barriers to what Cohen said … in court. Remember, there has been no indictment, grand jury, only a statement, an elocution, by a man who has admitted to criminal conduct. So we are far away from impeachable offense or a criminal offense against the president.

On Trump’s asking Cohen to make the payments:

Cohen would be acting for Trump as Trump’s representative, and the campaign contribution would be lawful as long as [the candidate] paid for it. … So the prosecutor is in a “catch-22.” If he believes Cohen, that the president directed him to do it, then it’s not a crime at all. If he doesn’t believe Cohen, then Cohen has committed the crime. The legal pundits who are saying that if Cohen admits a crime, that makes Trump and “un-indicted co-conspirator,” they are just wrong as a matter of basic criminal law.

Asked by Bret Baier why Cohen would plead guilty to this campaign finance violation:

This was an add-on. They had him dead to rights on the medallions, on the taxes — they threw this in … in order to give him an opportunity to say something negative about Donald Trump. Look, they’re not interested in Cohen, they’re interested in Trump. Judge Ellis said that in the Manafort case. So they threw in the campaign contribution law in order to find a connection to Trump. Medallions have no connection to Trump. Taxes have no connection to Trump. This is the only alleged crime that has a connection to Trump.

Regarding absurd comparisons to Watergate, Dershowitz declared:

It’s not even a close question. That is so over the top. It’s just not a crime to contribute to your own campaign. … I challenge any of those saying it’s a crime to find anything in criminal law that would make it a crime for a [candidate] to pay someone [to benefit] his own election. It’s not against the law. … The Rule of Lawrequires that when you say something is a crime, show me the statute. There is no statute that would make that a crime. It might be a misdemeanor for the campaign to fail to report that payment, but that would be the campaign, not the candidate."

And on the Left’s political impeachment rhetoric:

If you are talking about high crimes and misdemeanors, that’s absurd. That’s not the kind of thing the Framers had in mind. … You need a high crime and misdemeanor. Every campaign has violated some technical election law. The Democrats are going to run on "Give us the House and we’ll impeach the president.” … They’re not going to get close on an impeachment track. They are not going to find the crime. … The candidate is entitled to contribute a million dollars to his own campaign.

Predictably the Democrats are using the latest Trump troubles to insist a delay in the confirmation hearings for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh, an outstanding choice to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Moving on, we will see what else Cohen has to say.

So-called "Liberals" Oppose Freedom: We've Come a Long Way!

The following article by Michael Barone quite nicely summarizes the strange place we have come to in America. Liberal used to mean free, and liberals used to advocate greater freedom, especially from government control and restriction. In our modern world, "liberals" have confiscated the word and given it an entirely different meaning, advancing the totalitarianism of a Brave New World and promoting the "Newspeak" of 1984. 
By clear contrast, those who promote limited government and maximum personal autonomy - the "conservation" of government action for necessary and constitutionally-mandated purposes - are the advocates of freedom.
Curt

Liberals Against Freedom of Conscience

Written by Michael Barone

Why is it considered “liberal” to compel others to say or fund things they don’t believe? That’s a question raised by three Supreme Court decisions this year. And it’s a puzzling development for those of us old enough to remember when liberals championed free speech — even advocacy of sedition or sodomy — and conservatives wanted government to restrain or limit it.

The three cases dealt with quite different issues.
In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, a 5-4 majority of the court overturned a California statute that required anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to inform clients where they could obtain free or inexpensive abortions — something the centers regard as homicide.
The same 5-4 majority in a second case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, reversed a 41-year-old precedent and ruled that public employees don’t have to pay unions fees that cover the cost of collective bargaining. Echoing a position taken by then-President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the court reasoned that collective bargaining with a public employer is inevitably a political matter, and that forcing employees to finance it is compelling them to subsidize political speech with which they disagree.
In the third case, Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court avoided a direct decision on whether a baker, whose Christian belief opposed same-sex marriage, could refuse to design a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple, contrary to a state law that bars discrimination against gays. Seven justices ruled that the commission showed an impermissible animus against religion, but the four liberal justices endorsed a separate opinion indicating they’d rule against the baker otherwise.
Rational arguments can now be made for the dissenters’ positions. In Becerra, they argued that the law simply prevented misleading advertising; in Janus, they argued that union members should pay for services rendered; in Masterpiece Cakeshop, they argued that selling a cake is a routine service, not a form of expression. You may not agree, but you can see why others might make these arguments.
But are they “liberal”? That word comes from a Latin root that means “free.”
And “free” is the keyword in the First Amendment to the Constitution, which bars Congress from passing laws “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion or “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”
The Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence got its start almost exactly 100 years ago, in cases challenging laws passed by a Democratic Congress and endorsed by a Democratic administration, prohibiting opposition to the government and, specifically, American participation in World War I.
The justices hesitated to block such prosecutions, but those considered “liberal” — Republican appointee Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Democratic appointee Justice Louis Brandeis — were most likely to look askance. The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 to defend the free speech rights of everyone, even vile extremists.
Unhappily, the ACLU today subordinates free speech to other values, like defending the sensibilities of certain students on campuses. And other liberals have been moving in the same direction. It’s less important for them that people say what they think and more important that they say what the government requires.
In his Bagehot blog, the Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge describes the process. Historically, he says, liberals understood that conflict was inevitable and tried to foster freedom based on their distrust of power, faith in progress and belief in civic respect. But today, Wooldridge writes, “liberalism as a philosophy has been captured by a technocratic-managerial-cosmopolitan elite.” They have moved from making “a critique of the existing power structure” to becoming “one of the most powerful elites in history.” In response, we see “a revolt of the provinces against the city”: Brexit, Donald Trump. In counter-response, as Niall Ferguson puts it in a column for The Times of London, “‘liberals’ are increasingly authoritarian.”
Like the “liberal” Supreme Court justices, who don’t see a constitutional problem with compelling crisis pregnancy centers to send messages they find repugnant, or requiring union members to subsidize political speech they disagree with, or forcing people to participate in ceremonies prohibited by their religion.
In the process, they are providing support for Friedrich Hayek‘s argument in “The Road to Serfdom” that moving toward socialism means moving toward authoritarianism. And they seem to not have noticed Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter‘s observation, as quoted in The Atlantic, that “every law is violent” because “Behind every exercise of law stands the sheriff.”
Carter calls for “a degree of humility” in passing and enforcing laws that compel speech against conscience — something today’s “liberals” seem to have forgotten.
Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.