Washington Post: Manafort, Cohen cases reveal weaknesses in enforcement of tax and election laws

Paul Manafort’s multiyear tax fraud and Michael Cohen’s ability to easily arrange campaign contributions as hush money could have been intercepted sooner based on existing tax and campaign rules.

But decisions by policymakers and lawmakers to defang regulation and defund investigations, particularly through political pressure aimed at the Internal Revenue Service, helped the behavior to go unnoticed. …

“I have a hard time imagining how those violations [by Cohen] would have come to attention of the FEC absent the investigative journalism that brought these violations to the public light, that led Common Cause to file our complaints,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause.