President Donald Trump was convicted yesterday of tampering with business records to conceal allegations that he paid money to porn star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 presidential election. However, under New York State law, it is a crime only to alter business records to cover up violations of other laws. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that the documents were allegedly wrongly altered to conceal donations in violation of federal campaign finance laws or to deceive voters about information they had a right to know in order to win the 2016 election. Neither argument passes First Amendment muster.
federal campaign finance laws in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976). In this case, the campaign spending restrictions were ruled to be entirely unconstitutional and a violation of First Amendment protections of free speech. under Buckley v. Valeo, individuals like Donald Trump can spend unlimited amounts of their own money to promote their campaigns. However, the Supreme Court Barkley Do insist on donation limits on how much a person or group can contribute to influence an election. Alvin Bragg has argued that a $130,000 hush payment from the Trump Organization to Stormy Daniels exceeded federal campaign finance contribution limits. The federal government itself has adopted a policy not to prosecute hush payments as illegal campaign contributions after an embarrassing failure of such a federal prosecution against Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards , because Edwards paid hush money to a mistress with whom he had a relationship.
2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent spending for political campaigns by closely allied companies and groups such as the Trump Organization. under Citizens Unitedit was perfectly legal for the Trump Organization to pay Daniels $130,000 in hush money to conceal her affair with Donald Trump.
opinions in Citizens United The book is written by former justice and liberal icon Anthony M. Kennedy and is joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who are currently Still serving on the Supreme Court. Given the current composition of the Court, the outcome is likely to be Citizens United Will win again today with a vote of 6 to 3. Buckley v. Valeo Considered an obstacle to Trump’s victory, the Supreme Court will, and should today, 2024, strike down campaign finance contribution limits in federal election law as a violation of free speech. Groups that contribute to campaigns can pay for ads to promote candidates and hush payments to prevent undesirable or false stories from appearing in the news. Either way, the effect is helpful to the candidate. You can donate to generate good publicity. And, you can donate to avoid bad publicity. The First Amendment protects free speech in both cases.
Campaign finance restrictions prevent those who want to get involved from speaking out. They changed Congress so much that today members of Congress spend 70% of their time raising money instead of legislating or meeting with voters because of the ridiculously low campaign finance limits that have been in place since these laws were enacted It has not been raised sufficiently to accommodate inflation. Post-Watergate campaign finance laws overall have been blatantly unconstitutional.
Federal campaign finance law is an existing protection that makes it difficult for challengers to defeat incumbents who have higher names and postage privileges that allow them unlimited free communications with voters via email. Not to mention the ability of incumbents to channel dividend spending back to their own states and districts so that they can be re-elected indefinitely.
The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment also outmoded Alvin Bragg’s argument that Trump deceived American voters by preventing them from hearing about Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels. The theory of “voter deception” is so widespread that it will ultimately eliminate free speech in American elections. Voters have no “right” to know about Donald Trump’s sex life. He was clearly non-monogamous, taking a third wife, and voters who adhered to traditional values voted for him anyway because he later appointed a prominent conservative justice to the Supreme Court.
Therefore, when Trump allegedly tampered with the Trump Organization’s business records, he could not have concealed the predicate crime. Trump’s convictions in the Manhattan trial were unconstitutional because they violated the First Amendment as originally understood.
The U.S. Supreme Court needs to hear this case as soon as possible because of its impact on the 2024 presidential election between President Trump and President Biden. Voters need to know that the Constitution protects all of Trump’s alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. This is especially the case because the judge presiding over Trump’s Manhattan case erred in allowing Stormy Daniels to testify in detail about her alleged sexual relationship with Trump. This testimony taints the jury and the national 2024 presidential electorate, is inadmissible, and is irrelevant to the question of whether President Trump altered business records to cover up a crime. The Supreme Court needs to clarify legal rules that have a significant impact on elections for federal offices such as the presidency. A highly partisan Manhattan borough, a highly partisan New York City, a highly partisan state like New York cannot allow the conduct of a presidential candidate to be criminalized in a way that violates the federal Constitution.
The Roman Republic collapsed when politicians began criminalizing politics. I am very concerned that we will see this pattern repeated in America today. Criminalizing political disagreement is simply wrong.
