New reporting on Thursday confirms that Donald Trump was in the room when his personal lawyer Michael Cohen and AMI chairman David Pecker were crafting an illegal payment scheme during the campaign in order to defraud American voters.
According to CNN, “Donald Trump attended an August 2015 meeting that federal prosecutors believe was central to a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws to help Trump win the presidency, according to a source familiar with the matter.”
The scheme, of course, involved multiple illegal payments made to keep unsavory stories about the president from being made public.
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According to court filings, Trump was joined by Michael Cohen, who was his attorney at the time, and David Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc., parent company of the National Enquirer.
During the meeting, the group discussed a plan to shield Trump from potentially damaging stories. Prosecutors say this amounted to illegal donations to Trump’s campaign.
Trump’s attendance was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in a November article. The meeting returned to the spotlight Wednesday when federal prosecutors announced that they agreed not to prosecute AMI for campaign finance violations in exchange for its cooperation.
Trump knowingly defrauded the American people
First, Trump said he did not know of or approve this illegal payment scheme. Then he said he didn’t know about the specifics of the payoffs. Now, as multiple reports confirm, we know the president was in the room when the crime was being hatched.
Not to mention: Both of the other men in the room – Cohen and Pecker – admit that these were illegal campaign payments, not private transactions as Trump has said in recent days.
In other words, Trump is completely alone on this. Most of his closest allies have either been indicted, sentenced to jail time or have flipped on him. Those that remain – mostly his family members – could be next.
The walls are quickly closing in on the president. His desperate and constantly shifting stories show that he knows he’s in trouble.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
