Washington Post: The hush-money payoffs: How many more are out there?

Washington Post: The hush-money payoffs: How many more are out there?

Put differently, as Common Cause’s Paul S. Ryan told me via email, “If the earlier reporting that AMI consulted with Cohen (an ‘agent’ of candidate Trump) before making the payment to McDougal is correct, then AMI’s payment to McDougal was a political expenditure ‘coordinated’ with Trump.” He continued, “Coordinated expenditures are treated as in-kind contributions under campaign finance law and corporations are prohibited from contributing to federal candidates, so AMI’s payment to McDougal [would be] an illegal corporate contribution to Trump.” Indeed, this was the basis for complaints that Common Cause filed earlier this year with the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

Two months before the 2016 election, longtime Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen secretly taped a conversation with the then-GOP presidential nominee about whether to purchase the rights to Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal’s account of her alleged extramarital affair with Trump, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

The recording, which Cohen made surreptitiously in Trump Tower in early September 2016, was seized by federal agents who are investigating Cohen for potential bank and election-law crimes, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.

Trump and Cohen’s discussion came a month after AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, bought the rights to McDougal’s story for $150,000, then shelved it. …

Put differently, as Common Cause’s Paul S. Ryan told me via email, “If the earlier reporting that AMI consulted with Cohen (an ‘agent’ of candidate Trump) before making the payment to McDougal is correct, then AMI’s payment to McDougal was a political expenditure ‘coordinated’ with Trump.” He continued, “Coordinated expenditures are treated as in-kind contributions under campaign finance law and corporations are prohibited from contributing to federal candidates, so AMI’s payment to McDougal [would be] an illegal corporate contribution to Trump.” Indeed, this was the basis for complaints that Common Cause filed earlier this year with the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.