Yeah, About That...

So I've been trying hard to figure out why, other than derangement, the anti-Trumps think this recording of him apparently talking about buying the silence of some woman he had an affair with is such a big deal. Some do claim the moral element matters, but they didn't care about Clinton or dozens others. So that's not it. Well, I think I figured it out. And what a joke it is.

For those not paying attention -- for which I can hardly blame you -- Trump's former lawyer is in trouble for some sort of crimes he committed which apparently were enough to break the attorney client privilege, though I actually doubt that to be true. His lawyer has since decided to play mafia don and is threatening to release all kinds of evil secrets if people don't help him. Aiding him in this, is his own attorney -- Lanny Davis -- who was a Clinton attorney. Funny how that works.

Anyways, this week, "someone" release the smoking gun tape that was supposed to destroy Trump and lead to his impeachment and incarceration. On the tape, Trump is apparently (the tape is unclear at key points) talking to this attorney about paying off this woman to buy her silence. Shocker! End of the world! The horror!

The only problem is that there's nothing illegal or shocking about this. Pubic figures do this all the time. It sounds like they were trying to be a little more clever about it than most by not letting her know the money came from Trump (it would come from a dummy production company supposedly to buy her story) but that's not illegal either.

So what is this smoking gun that has the anti-Trumps so excited?

No one can really say. They all just seem to know that THIS IS IT!!!

So I started digging. What I've found is everyone repeating the litany that this "could involve" tax fraud (failure to declare income), campaign finance violations, wire/telephone fraud, and conspiracy to commit the other crimes. Sounds horrible, but here's the thing... the key word is "could." The people who claim this is a smoking gun are adding a step to their logic that they aren't admitting. This payment is only tax fraud, wired/phone fraud or a campaign finance violation IF those things ALSO occurred. That's like saying, "Andrew could be guilty of bank robbery, as shown his admission of speeding, IF he was speeding as part of a bank robbery." Talk about overstating the significance of the speeding ticket.

In this case, all we know is that Trump did nothing wrong or illegal or unethical. His attorney did by releasing this information and should be disbarred and maybe imprisoned, but Trump didn't. The rest is all wishful thinking.

What's more. The tax fraud would arise if the woman didn't declare it as income. That's not on Trump. The wire fraud and phone fraud would be her use of the phones or the mails as well, unless Trump's used them to commit campaign finance fraud. Campaign finance fraud only arises if Trump used campaign money to pay for this and didn't declare it, and I've seen no evidence of that -- and I suspect that tape would have been released if it existed. So these crimes aren't even Trump's. Their best bet would be some sort of conspiracy charge, where they claim Trump conspired with the woman to help her commit tax fraud, but that's a super stretch.

So all told, there's simply no smoke here. Imagine that.