It doesn't do Trump any favors to take out a personal loan and then force Trump to pay back everything plus taxes when Trump could have just paid Cohen directly without taxes, interest, or Cohen's collateral. There is no loyalty there, there is deceiving Trump and the only possible reason to deceive Trump is Cohen is a goofball with delusions of grandeur who thought he would do all this stuff and pretend to be a wizard or as he puts it "a fixer"
The facts are that Trump slept with a porn star, then in the middle of running for president his personal attorney barrows $130k against his own house to pay off that porn star to not tell anyone about the affair she had with Trump, Trump then pays that attorney back for the deal with notes written by his accountant showing the added taxes to cover hiding the payments as legal services.
And the explanation you think best explains this is that Trump’s personal attorney - a known sleaze bag who also stole from Trump - did this all on his own to help Trump and didn’t even tell him because he wanted to play pretend fixer?
Hey did you know the Brooklyn bridge is for sale?
This is what happens when people go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. There is no circumstance where if we remove Trump and Cohen and substitute them for generic presidential candidate and generic personal attorney that any reasonable person would not instantly recognize how ridiculous this story is.
What reasonable people who are not in a cult would do is apply Occam’s razor. People do what they perceive to be in their best interest. So if you are going to claim Cohen went rogue you would either need to show that Cohen was either the kind of person who would risk his well being for Trump (which is kind of hard being that Cohen stole from him) or that Cohen had a grand scheme here to benefit himself. You haven’t provided anything that explains this.
Nor do you address the fact that Trump is on tape discussing the McDougal deal with Cohen, showing that he absolutely was involved in these kinds of things.
Nor do you address David Pecker’s testimony showing Trump’s heavy involvement in stopping negative stories from coming out against him.
Nor do you address the timing of all of this which fits perfectly with the prosecutions narrative explaining exactly why Trump would be motivated to engage in this while keeping it secret.
Facts be dammed. This is what being in a cult actually looks like.
It is insane to claim someone would do by illegal means what one can do by legal means just as easily.
To do so legally would have meant disclosing the payments, which would have defeated the entire purpose of this.
Do you even understand what the allegations here were?
so the insane gaslighting obvious falsehood that paying a lawyer is in no way a legal expense
The payment wasn’t to the lawyer, it was to Stormy Daniels.
Or to explain it like Hannity and Rudy Giuliani… it was “funneled through the law firm”.
Lawyers get paid big money. They send the invoices. Accountants don't follow them around with drones to see how many hours they worked. A lot of business relationships work based on trust
Right, the “Trump has no idea what everyone who working for him was doing” defense. Cause you know, he’s a strong competent leader.
Lawyers provide an itemized breakdown for their services showing what they did to charge the fees they did. You’re trying to argue that Trump just paid Cohen blindly, which is absurd on its face given how cheap we all know Donald Trump is - the guy doesn’t even pay people who did work for him.
But it’s even worse when again… Trump’s own accountant had the breakdown of what Cohen was getting paid and why. They all knew what was going on despite your gaslighting to the contrary.
Legal expenses aren't limited to payment for services. They include court fees, settlement sums, research, copying, notaries, verified delivery, paying fines, paying liabilities, and more.
Yes, legal fees include compensation to the attorney for any expenses they have incurred that were necessary for them to provide their services. That can include the pen and paper they used, their gas mileage when traveling etc. That’s because a law firm is a business and like any business it has expenses. You know what is not a business expense? Paying off a porn star for their silence. That’s the client’s expense.
Let’s look at your definition and point to one of those terms; “settlement”. Here’s a great example. Question for you… if the client agrees to a settlement payment, is that settlement taxable income for the recipient?
Answer: yes, it is taxable as income (with exceptions like a work place injury, etc.). So why does this matter? Because if this is income… where did this income come from?
Hint: Not the law firm.
It is income paid by the client, the law firm was just the entity handing it over. The law firm charges for the services they provided to execute the agreement. The money they handed right over to her is not part of that.
The only way for "legal expense" to be substantially false is for the expense to have nothing to do with lawyers, courts, judges, negotiated contracts, criminal liability, or civil liability (all at once).
So to be clear, if I have my attorney go out and find me a prostitute to sleep with, pay her and then bring her to my house so I could have sex with her… is the money he paid her that I reimbursed a “legal expense”. He is my lawyer after all, right?
Who could have guessed campaign finance law made compensated NDAs illegal?
It didn’t. What’s illegal is making the contribution but reporting it as “legal expenses” so that no one would know it was a campaign contribution.
