For those of us who would like to see Trump reap a conclusion straight out of Euripedes, Stormy Daniels may actually go down in history, regardless of what Mueller does.
She has filed a suit to ask a California court to make a Declaratory Judgement on whether the NDA she has with Trump is legal or not. This is potentially very serious for Trump. She has very cleverly pinned him down.
The suit asks for a court determination on whether the NDA is binding, or not. A very simple question. And it asks only the one question because that really narrows Trump’s ability to get it tossed. Trump has to respond to her claim in court (although a judge gave a 90-day stay on the suit at Cohen’s request as he is dealing with criminal investigations of his own, and would merely plead the 5th in response to every single question, and the judge is granting him time to be able to respond with actual answers).
Now…here’s the deal. Trump did not sign the NDA, as you all probably know. He has the choice of admitting he is the “DD” in that document, or denying he is the “DD” in that document. The thing is that the NDA specifically refers to “tangible confidential information,” i.e. she possesses text messages and/or photos…which we are inevitably going to end up seeing at some point in the next year or two. So brace yourself for that.
If he denies it…then it is obviously not a legally binding document, and she is free to sell her tangible evidence to the highest bidder. At which point it becomes publicly obvious that he lied, and he did have the affair, and everything she said is true. So there is no point in denying it. He can’t deny it for long.
The other choice is to admit he is the “DD” in the NDA. The consequences of that are criminal. First of all, he denied having the affair. That – as weird as it sounds – is actually obstruction of justice because he is under investigation for being susceptible to blackmail because of the Steele dossier, and other sexual conduct. So falsely denying sexual conduct, even when the denial was not under oath, is obstruction of justice. Weird, I know, but that’s true. Now that in itself wouldn’t be sufficient to cause him any serious trouble (imo, though I’m no lawyer), but that’s just the beginning. It gets worse.
The NDA itself is a federal violation of law.
Daniels was paid through an LLC set up in the state of Delaware (which has the most lax rules regarding LLCs in the country). The LLC, though, was formed illegally because it was formed to pay Daniels to shut up about…wait for it…a CRIME. As improbable as this seems, adultery is still a misdemeanor crime in the state of New York. So we have the formation of an LLC (about 3 weeks before the election, iirc), an NDA (11 days before the election?), and the payment of $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels aka “PP” all to shut her up going into the election. So as trivial and outdated as the crime of adultery is, it is still a crime, and the formation of the LLC to cover a crime is a crime itself. A far more serious crime than the sex, obviously.
But there’s more. The payment itself – regardless of where the money came from – is a violation of campaign finance laws. If Cohen paid it, he violated the $2,700 cap on campaign donations. Regardless of where the money came from, it was not reported. Furthermore, the money may be dirty as well. There were 5 deposits made to the Trump Organization from Trump’s campaign. Four of them were on October 17 – the date the LLC was formed, and one more on October 25. Those 5 payments totaled $129,999.72. The payment to Daniels had to be made by October 27. Well, that’s quite a striking coincidence. Now…he’s already in trouble for not reporting this payment. Both Cohen and Trump are in trouble if it was Cohen’s money. Trump is in a whole world of trouble if those 5 payments turn out to be money laundering (i.e. no actual services can be proven to have been rendered for those invoices). He has illegally formed an LLC to pay hush money to a witness with knowledge of multiple crimes right before the election.
So Stormy Daniels has just presented Donald Trump with Hobson’s Choice.
Now he can file a move to dismiss the suit on the last possible date. That’s what he is going to do. It is the ONLY strategy he has available to him. But that will be denied because there are no grounds to dismiss it due to the simplicity of the suit. The suit merely asks the court to rule on whether the NDA is valid or not. That’s it. And there is no reason to dismiss that question. So…he will delay as long as he can…but ultimately he is going to have to fess up that he is DD, or let Daniels off the hook in which case it will become obvious he is DD.
And if he is DD…he has committed multiple crimes.
All of that is completely independent of whatever Mueller is up to.
So the bottom line is this: Stormy Daniels has just fucked Donald Trump again.
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