If Trump built a building as candidate and put his name on it, as he always have, your interpretation would hold that it was money spent to influence an election.
No one has ever been held to this standard because it is unlawful and downright stupid.
Strawman arguments normally are downright stupid, that’s the point of them. You can’t refute my actual position so you have to make one up to attack instead.
The test of what makes an expense personal vs a campaign contribution that I’ve been arguing is exactly the same is your own link:
“if the expense would exist even in the absence of the candidacy or even if the officeholder were not in office, then the personal use ban applies.”
Notice the key word in this sentence: “would”. Not “could”, as in, not in some absurd imaginary theoretical example, but “would”, as in, in real life what would have happened.
In the case at hand, and in accordance with the above test, the burden was on the prosecution to show that this payment was expressly for the purposes of advancing Trump’s campaign. And they did. The timing of the payment gives that away right off the bat, the testimony of Pecker demonstrating Trump’s personal involvement and motivations, the Hope Hick testimony showings the campaigns urgency on controlling this issue, etc. They made very clear what this was all about.
Nothing in your Trump hypothetical applies. There is no reason to think putting his name on a building as he has done his entire life would not have occurred if he were not running for office.
You keep twisting my words into ‘if a possible personal expense can be considered a campaign expense, then any expense can be twisted into a campaign expense’. That’s an absurd interpretation of my argument and you do this all the time. You clearly have a disdain for the concept of applying logic and reason to interpret laws.
So again, let me make this very simple. Instead of asking for legal citations and historical precedent, here is very simply what I am talking about so if you have an issue with the way I am interpreting campaign finance law take it up with the FEC:
“When candidates use their personal funds for campaign purposes, they are making contributions to their campaigns.”
What's the difference between lawyer's salary and NDA compensation?
Reimbursements are not part of someone’s salary.
Didn't stop you when you asserted repeatedly that NDA compensation is necessarily campaign expenditure
I never said NDA compensation is necessarily a campaign expenditure. I said this payment was a campaign expenditure. As in the one Trump made and was convicted for.
Question; if Trump and Daniels had just sat down at the kitchen table and agreed that he would hand her $130k cash if she promises not to speak about it… is that still a legal expense?
Still waiting.
