Trump Administration/Executive Ethics

“We have an entire industry of individuals with close relationships to government officials that sell and capitalize on that relationship,” says Paul Seamus Ryan, a vice president at Common Cause, a government watchdog. Not normal: the fact that Cohen did not make his activity public by “hanging a shingle” as a lobbyist. “Doing it all in secret, never having done it before, while simultaneously working for a public official, and the public official being the president—these are new glosses on an old profession,” he observed. Not normal: trading off being not just a well-connected person but the sitting president’s lawyer. “Another thing that’s not normal is for a president’s lawyer to set up an LLC and make a hush money payment to a porn star.” Common Cause has filed complaints with the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission arguing that the Stormy Daniels payment, which was made in October 2016 from Cohen’s newly formed Essential Consultants LLC, was a campaign finance violation.

Million-dollar payments to his lawyer demonstrate that 16 months into the Trump presidency, the ethical bog candidate Trump promised to drain is larger and deeper than ever.

Campaign finance scandals rarely involve details as tawdry as the Stormy Daniels fiasco and the $130,00 hush-money payment. That shouldn’t distract citizens from doing our part to hold power accountable. As the leader of the nonpartisan watchdog organization that filed the first campaign finance complaints related to President Trump and Daniels, my request is simple: Follow the money and hold any violators — including the president of the United States — accountable to laws that protect the integrity of our democracy.

Americans have a right to know who is spending money to influence our elections — whether it’s the hundreds of millions of dollars from unknown sources that has flooded into federal elections since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision or the $130,000 in hush money paid to a porn star days before the 2016 presidential election. Rudy Giuliani has gone on a media spree recently to defend his new client, President Donald Trump, against the numerous investigations engulfing his chaotic presidency. But rather than make everything go away, Giuliani’s recent admissions have added quite a bit more fuel to one of the president’s more salacious scandals — the payment that Michael Cohen, Trump's self-described "fix-it guy," made to Stormy Daniels to prevent her from speaking about her relationship with Trump.

Paul S. Ryan, Common Cause vice president of policy and litigation, discusses the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in the days leading up to the 2016 election.