You know, some day it might be fun to see Donald Trump pay for his own crimes instead of foisting them off on one of his bemused flunkies. I can’t wait for his Diet Coke gofer to be brought up on RICO charges while Trump blithely humps KFC buckets on a Mar-a-Lago gazebo in his bathrobe. Or whatever the fuck he’s doing these days. The guy is a low-rent Batman villain, and yet he walks free among us.
Case in point: Trump hasn’t been punished for (allegedly) skirting campaign finance regulations to bury a story about one of his (alleged) affairs, but the publisher of The National Enquirer, which frantically shoveled quicklime onto the story prior to the 2016 presidential election, has kinda-sorta been held to account.
CNBC:
The Federal Election Commission will let former President Donald Trump avoid punishment for directing hush money payments to his alleged ex-mistress Karen McDougal — but the publisher of The National Enquirer agreed to pay more than $187,500 for its role in the scandal, records showed Tuesday.
The FEC recently likewise failed to approve a recommendation from staff that it sanction Trump for directing a $130,000 hush money payout to former porn star Stormy Daniels, who has said she had sex with him years ago, according to the advocacy group Common Cause.
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Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted to paying off Daniels at Trump’s behest shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Come on, man. We all know who individual-1 is. Can we just stop pretending he’s not a criminal sack of moldering rat placentas? If y’all want, I can crochet a pair of tiny handcuffs for future frog-marching purposes. Just toss his ass in stir already. It’s like if we’d let Charlie Manson open for Tiffany at malls across Ohio during the late ‘80s. At some point you just have to put the kibosh on this dude’s criminal enterprise.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Paul S. Ryan, a vice president at Common Cause, the group whose 2018 complaint spurred the investigation, bemoaned the apparent lack of interest in Trump’s (alleged) wrongdoing, saying, “The mastermind of this illegal operation has not been punished, has not been held accountable.”
That said, the book hasn’t quite been closed on Trump’s presumably shady dealings.
The Wall Street Journal:
Since at least August 2019, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has been investigating whether Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, broke any laws when it reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment he made to Ms. Daniels under the guise of a legal retainer, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
The investigation by District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has expanded to include financial dealings involving multiple Trump properties before Mr. Trump became president.
Hey, I have no problem seeing The National Enquirer take a hit, even if it’s a pretty light slap on the wrist. But the white supremacist whale awaits, and our harpoons are sharpened and loaded for fake billionaire.
Let’s go, Mr. Vance. It’s about time to take this giant, clammy tub of amoral goo down.
Make it so.
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