Jake Tapper Shuts Down Susan Collins' Attempt To Spin Trump Hush Money Payments
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Jake Tapper Shuts Down Susan Collins' Attempt To Spin Trump Hush Money Payments
Andy McDonald, HuffPost Sun, Dec 16 4:15 PM ESTSen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) thinks more information is needed before she can speak definitively on President Donald Trump ’s mounting legal troubles .
On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, host Jake Tapper asked Collins what she thought of allegations that Trump personally directed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to distribute hush money payments to two women to help protect his bid for the presidency.
“We need to wait until we have the entire picture,” Collins responded.
But Tapper didn’t let her off so easy.
“I get that when it comes to the Russia investigation,” the host said. “But when it comes to Michael Cohen, we kind of do have the whole picture.”
Tapper noted that prosecutors with the Southern District of New York ― and not just Cohen ― say the payments were not only campaign finance violations, but that they were made at the direction of Trump.
“And now Michael Cohen is going to jail as a result of that and other crimes,” Tapper said. “Don’t we have the whole picture there?”
The CNN host pushed the senator further, asking about the infamous audio tapes in which Cohen can apparently be heard discussing the aforementioned hush payments with Trump.
Collins again refused to address the question and instead repeated her earlier line: “I don’t feel that I have the entire picture yet.”
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost .
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I saw Collin's interview. I never heard such mealy mouthed nonsense before.
So, Maine Senator Susan Collins really should be ashamed of her lousy self...
I'm so sick of her shtick. Pretending to be thoughtful and reasonable when she's simple a token woman of the republican party. A puppet.
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You must admire Susan Collins.
She has made a career of being "moderate"... when in fact, her voting record is strictly orthodox service-to-the-ultra-rich Republicanism.
No, we don't. Michael Cohen is going to jail primarily for those "other crimes," not for a campaign finance violation. Those other crimes include tax fraud to the tune of $4 million dollars. On that charge alone, the campaign finance charge cannot compare. He also pled to defrauding banks for multiple bank loans and lying to Congress. Any one of those charges on its own carries stiffer penalties than a campaign finance violation of a couple hundred grand.
Every day in courts all over the country, people plead guilty to crimes as part of a deal. Had they gone to trial on that specific charge, they often would not be convicted. After all, if the prosecutor felt he would just win at trial, he wouldn't be motivated to make a deal.
Whether or not Michael Cohen committed a campaign finance violation has not been adjudicated before a neutral fact-finder (i.e. a judge or jury). Furthermore, even if he did violate campaign finance law, that does not mean that Trump violated that law. Directing Cohen to make payments is not the same as directing him to break the law. By itself, paying someone to keep quiet is not a crime.
***That's campaign finance violations
And I apologize. I got this from NBC, but I clicked out of it before I could copy the link
I'm not seeing the point. My point was that if the only thing he had been charged with was a campaign finance violation, he would not have gone to prison. If found guilty, he would most likely have paid a fine and been done with it.
Then what is the definition of a violation?
I didn't say it wasn't a violation. I'm just saying that if the violation were the only think he had been charged with, it is unlikely he would have gone to jail. Campaign finance violations for a lot more money have been punished with fines instead of jail time.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here