BREAKING NEWS: REPUBLICANS "PLEADED WITH DEMOCRATS NOT TO INVESTIGATE TRUMP" [View all]

[Jeffersons Ghost]

MSNBC

Comey presses Republicans to 'stand up and speak the truth'
By Steve Benen
12/18/18 10:07AM

Since Democratic gains in the midterm elections last month, Republicans have generally struggled to come up with a clear and consistent message about the results and the road ahead. Most GOP leaders -- in Congress and in the White House -- have, however, pushed one line with great vigor: they've pleaded with Democrats not to investigate Donald Trump.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) joined the partisan chorus on "Meet the Press" the other day, telling NBC News' Chuck Todd, "My advice [to the incoming Democratic House majority] would be: legislate, don't investigate."

Part of the problem with the pitch is that there's no reason to see this as an either/or proposition, since the House majority can legislate and conduct oversight at the same time. The other angle of note is the degree to which the GOP appeal is breathtakingly hypocritical.

Almost exactly 24 hours after Roy Blunt pressed House Dems not to investigate the Republican White House, the outgoing GOP majority held another hearing with former FBI Director James Comey, peppering him with questions about Hillary Clinton's emails. "How does that make any sense at all?" Comey asked. http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

HERE ARE SOME OTHER "INCONVENIENT TRUTHS:"

The prosecution of John Edwards, in 2008, verses payments from Trump to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. The question is whether prosecutors have more convincing evidence to present to a jury about Trump than they did in the case of Edwards. Legal experts pointed to several major differences.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
‘A Simple Private Transaction’: Trump Lays Out a Defense in a Campaign-Finance Case
By Charlie Savage
Dec. 10, 2018

WASHINGTON — President Trump defended himself on Monday against prosecutors’ accusation that he directed illegal payments ahead of the 2016 election to two women to stay silent about alleged extramarital affairs with him, insisting that the payments were “a simple private transaction” — not election-related spending subject to campaign-finance laws.

Mr. Trump’s plea of ignorance has flaws, said Richard L. Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California, Irvine. While the Obama and McCain campaigns were fined for failing to swiftly report certain expenditures, he said, they had filed corrected reports about the mistakes to federal elections officials and then paid the fines, rather than trying to hide the payments for more than a year. Mr. Trump “looks pretty guilty from what we see so far, but whether he would actually face any liability is a huge question,” Mr. Hasen said.

Mr. Trump directed Mr. Cohen to arrange payments for Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, and Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress, to buy their silence about alleged affairs with him “with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election,” prosecutors wrote.

For one thing, one of the payments to Mr. Edwards’s mistress took place as he was ending his candidacy, which further muddied how to interpret his motivation. By contrast, the payments to Ms. McDougal and Ms. Daniels came just ahead of the election. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/us/politics/trump-campaign-finance-crimes-defense.html?module=inline

While the Obama and McCain campaigns were fined for failing to swiftly report certain expenditures, they both filed corrected reports about the mistakes and then paid the fines, rather than trying to hide the payments for more than a year.