Financial disclosure deadline traps Trump in a dilemma of his own making

[babylonsister]

Financial disclosure deadline traps Trump in a dilemma of his own making
A dilemma for a president who does not like to admit mistakes.
Judd Legum
May 15, 2018, 2:17 pm


By the end of the day Tuesday, President Donald Trump must file his federal financial disclosure form. This document presents Trump with a dilemma: He must come clean about the nature of the payments made to Stormy Daniels, or else compound his legal problems.

The issue at hand is the $130,000 payment that was made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in October 2016 by Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen. For the bulk of his time in office, Trump has assiduously denied all knowledge of the payment and Cohen, through another attorney, has stuck to his claim that he had never been reimbursed.

On May 2, however, Trump’s newly installed attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared on Hannity and upended everything, revealing that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the money in a series of monthly payments over the course of 2017.

If Cohen’s payment to Daniels was a campaign expense, made to improve Trump’s chances of winning the election, it presents Trump and Cohen with a host of legal problems. But even it was not made for that purpose, as Giuliani sometimes claims, it was a debt that Trump was required to disclose on his June 14, 2017 financial disclosure. He did not.

more...

https://thinkprogress.org/the-clock-is-ticking-trump-must-come-clean-now-about-stormy-daniels-or-compound-his-legal-problems-049343b9cf0b/

[Scalded Nun]

1. Yeah, and if Congress was not being run by a bunch of traitorous assholes

something might get done about it.

[calimary]

2. No shit.