Walter Shaub, senior director, ethics at Campaign Legal Center (CLC) released the following statement:

“The release of President Trump’s financial disclosure report today confirms that his debt to Michael Cohen should have been disclosed in last year’s report. It bears an annotation on the cover page by OGE stating as much. President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, claims the president didn’t know about the payment when he filed that report last year, but this explanation seems implausible. For one thing, Giuliani admits that the president started repaying his debt to Cohen months before he filed his financial disclosure report. 

In this context, we at Campaign Legal Center were heartened to see that the acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics, David Apol, referred the matter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. It remains to be seen whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) will step up and do its job. If DOJ investigates and determines that President Trump knew of his debt to Cohen when he filed last year’s report, there will be reason to suspect that his omission of the debt from last year’s report was ‘knowing and willful,’ which would be a crime. I note that no one from the Trump camp asked OGE last year whether the debt was reportable and that, instead, President Trump’s attorney asked OGE to allow him to be the first filer in history to be excused from the obligation to certify that his report was true.” 

Read the letter sent by OGE to Rod Rosenstein.

FEC must investigate this matter so future campaigns don’t feel empowered to ignore reporting requirements necessary for transparency

In televised interviews on Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for President Trump, asserted that Trump reimbursed Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen for the $130,000 payment to silence Stormy Daniels about their alleged affair, just days before the 2016 presidential election. President Trump thereafter tweeted confirming that he made the reimbursement.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) President Trevor Potter released the following statement:

“Trump’s admission that he later repaid Cohen for the hush money destroys any argument Cohen could have made that the payment was out of his own money as an independent expenditure. Instead, Cohen and the Trump campaign now have to argue that the payment reimbursed by the candidate was not 'in connection with the election,' and therefore was not an excessive in-kind contribution by Cohen (when made and for the months prior to his being reimbursed). They have to make the same claim to defend against the charge that the campaign violated the law by failing to report these transactions on its Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports. Those arguments are much harder to make after Giuliani’s statement that the payment prevented news of the affair emerging before the Clinton-Trump debates, since that is an admission that the confidentiality agreement and the timing of the payment influenced the 2016 elections.

Given the new accounts by Trump and Giuliani, it now appears Cohen violated campaign finance law when he fronted the $130,000 payment with funds financed by his home mortgage because that constitutes a campaign contribution by him well in excess of the $2,700 limit, and the Trump campaign (through its agent, the candidate) violated the law by accepting an excessive contribution and failing to report it. If this is the case, then the campaign further violated the law by failing to report Trump’s subsequent repayments to Cohen.

This is a reminder of why disclosure and reporting laws are on the books in the first place: if these transactions were properly reported by the Trump campaign in October 2016, it would have triggered public attention to the issue, and would have given voters relevant information that could be factored into their decision-making.

It is important for the FEC to take this matter seriously and open an investigation, so future campaigns don’t feel empowered to ignore requirements put in place to keep campaigns transparent about who is funding campaigns and how campaigns are spending money.

With this latest explanation, President Trump finds himself between something of a rock and a hard place. If this payment was a $460,000 loan from Michael Cohen, as Rudy Giuliani claimed, Trump was required to disclose it in the financial disclosure report that he filed in June 2017 with the Office of Government Ethics. The law required him to disclose any loan that was greater than $10,000 at any time during 2016 or the first half of 2017. He didn’t disclose it and, if the omission was intentional, he could be subject to civil or criminal penalties.”

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit released a decision on Veasey v. Abbott, a legal challenge to Texas’ voter ID law. Campaign Legal Center (CLC) represents a group of plaintiffs who have challenged the law as burdening the fundamental right to vote.

Danielle Lang, senior legal counsel, voting rights and redistricting, at CLC, released the following statement in reaction:

“While we are disappointed by the outcome today, we must not lose sight of how far we have come in the fight for Texas voters. Because of our brave clients and this litigation, voters statewide can never be turned away from the polls simply for lacking a certain type of photo ID. After years of fighting this discriminatory voter ID law in the courts, the Fifth Circuit en banc court found that the original voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act, and so Texas could not enforce it. With respect to the revised law, we are exploring all legal options. We will also work with our partners to ensure that voters are well-educated about their options and not deterred from exercising their right to vote by any confusion around the photo ID rules. ”