Article snippet: President Donald Trump’s long-time attorney, Michael D. Cohen, admitted on Wednesday that in a “private transaction” in 2016, he used his “own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000” to Stephanie Clifford, a porn star known as Stormy Daniels. Clifford has claimed that she had an affair with Trump at a 2006 Lake Tahoe golf tournament. Cohen insisted that the payment was legal, and that neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed him or was a party to the transaction. He claimed that the presumed hush money was neither a campaign contribution nor a campaign expenditure. Under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), a campaign contribution includes “any gift, subscription, loan, advance, or deposit of money or anything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.” A payment is not a campaign contribution if it “would have been made irrespective of the candidacy.” When former vice presidential nominee John Edwards was indicted under those FECA laws in 2011, he argued that the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid by two supporters to his pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, were made to hide the affair from his wife and not to influence the campaign. It was a factual question and the jury deadlocked. Legal experts said that the legality of Cohen’s payment to a porn star could turn on similar factual questions. “The main issue is motivation and who paid,” Rick Hase... Link to the full article to read more