FEC – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

Karen McDougal, Playboy Playmate of the Year 1998.

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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.

That group had filed FEC complaints related to payments to both women.

Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted to paying off Daniels at Trump’s behest shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

In McDougal’s case, American Media — the then-publisher of the tabloid Enquirer, and its boss David Pecker — paid the former Playboy model McDougal $150,000 to keep her quiet about her claims of an affair with Trump before the same election.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance violations related to facilitating payoffs to both women, as well as to other crimes, and served more than a year in prison.

AMI signed a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice in which it admitted it made the payment to McDougal to avoid her going public about her alleged affair and influencing the 2016 election.

The company’s payment to the FEC came in response to a finding by the commission that AMI and Pecker had knowingly and willfully violated campaign finance law by making “prohibited corporate in-kind contributions” to Trump’s campaign with the payoff to McDougal.

Federal prosecutors have said, without actually naming Trump, that he directed Cohen to facilitate the payments to both women. Trump was never criminally prosecuted in the case.

“Trump masterminded this whole thing, and so far he’s walked,” Common Cause vice president of policy and litigation Paul Ryan said.

“Everyone who carried out his dirty work here, Cohen and AMI, paid penalties and did prison time.”

“It’s good news that the Federal Election Commission is holding the tabloid company AMI accountable for its illegal actions in the 2016 election,” Ryan added. “But it’s head-scratching that the mastermind of this criminal enterprise, Donald Trump, has still not been held accountable.”

Trump has denied having sex with either McDougal or Daniels. But he and his company reimbursed Cohen for his payment to Daniels.

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Common Cause provided CNBC copies of FEC records it received in connection with the case on Tuesday.

In a letter to Ryan, acting FEC general counsel Lisa Stevenson wrote: “The Commission found reason to believe that respondents David J. Pecker and American Media, Inc. knowingly and willfully violated 52 U.S.C. § 30118(a).”

“On May 17, 2021, a conciliation agreement signed by A360 Media, LLC, as successor in interest to American Media, Inc. was accepted by the Commission and the Commission closed the file as to Pecker and American Media, Inc.,” the letter said.

The letter went on to say: “There were an insufficient number of votes to find reason to believe that the remaining respondents violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.”

Ryan said the other respondents were Trump and his election committee.

AMI merged last year with the wholesale distribution and logistics company Accelerate360, with the merged entity known as A360Media. Pecker stepped aside as CEO and became an executive advisor, according to press reports at the time.

Ryan said he suspects that two Republican FEC commissioners who voted against sanctioning Trump for the Daniels hush money payments also voted against punishing him for the McDougal payments. Two Democratic commissioners voted to continue the probe.

The Washington Post reported last month that those two GOP commissioners, Sean Cooksey and Trey Trainor, “said they voted to dismiss the case because it was ‘statute-of-limitations imperiled’ and that pursuing it further would be a poor use of agency resources.”

The Post also noted that, “They argued that because there had been other federal inquiries into the incident — namely the Justice Department probe that led to Cohen’s prosecution — an FEC case would be redundant.”

Ryan said the votes will eventually be publicly disclosed by the FEC.

An FEC spokeswoman declined to comment, saying records in the case were not yet cleared by public release by the agency.

CNBC has sought comment from A360 and a representative for Trump.

The Federal Election Commission said Thursday that it passed a case investigating whether former President Donald J. Trump had violated the electoral law with a payment of $ 130,000 just before the 2016 election to become a porn actress had officially dropped his attorney at the time. Michael D. Cohen.

The payment was never reported in Mr Trump’s campaign submissions. Mr Cohen would go on to say that Mr Trump directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 race and apologized for his involvement in a hush money scandal. Mr. Cohen was sentenced to prison for violating campaign finance laws, tax evasion and lying by Congress.

“It was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light,” said Mr. Cohen in 2018 in court about Mr. Trump.

While Mr. Cohen was in jail, Mr. Trump had no legal ramifications for the payment.

“The hush money was paid on instructions and in favor of Donald J. Trump,” Cohen said in a statement to the New York Times. “Like me, Trump should have been found guilty. How the FEC committee could decide otherwise is confusing. “

In December 2020, the FEC published an internal report from its Office of General Counsel on how to proceed with its review. The office said it had “reason to believe” that campaign finance violations were “knowingly and willfully” committed by the Trump campaign.

However, the electoral commission, which was split evenly between three Republicans and three Democrat-minded commissioners, declined to attend a closed session in February. Two Republican commissioners voted to reject the case, while two Democratic commissioners voted to move forward. There was an absence and a republican rejection.

This decision was announced on Thursday.

Two of the FEC’s Democratic commissioners, Shana Broussard, the current chair, and Ellen Weintraub, declined not to pursue the case after agency staff recommended further investigation.

“To conclude that a payment made 13 days prior to election day to cover up a suddenly newsworthy 10-year story was not campaign related without even conducting an investigation is contrary to reality,” they wrote in a letter.

Republican Commissioners Trey Trainor and Sean Cooksey, who voted not to investigate, said the prosecution of the case was “not the best use of the agency’s resources”, that “the public record is already complete” and that Mr Cohen Have already done so was punished.

“We voted to reject these matters as an exercise of our prosecutor’s discretion,” wrote Cooksey and Trainor.

A spokesman for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Cohen case caught public attention in 2018 after the FBI searched his office, apartment and hotel room and picked up boxes of documents, cell phones and computers. Months later, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign funding violations, among other things.

He said in court that he arranged payments – including $ 130,000 to film actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – “primarily for the purpose of influencing the election.”

The payment was well above the legal limit for individual presidential contributions, which was then $ 2,700.

Mr. Cohen went on to say he arranged a payment of $ 150,000 through American Media Inc. to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate, in early 2016.

Mr Cohen later turned on Mr Trump and wrote his own book about how he acted as a businessman as the ex-president’s enforcer. The book was called “Disloyal: A Memoir”.