"They say it’s unprecedented to charge a former president. You’re damn right it’s unprecedented. We never had a president who was making hush money payments to a porn star and falsifying business records to cover it up." — Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California
Feds found Trump guilty of housing discrimination in 1973(?). NYC should have pulled his landlord license then and there. Could’ve saved us all a lot of grief!
So did Hamilton actually use Treasury funds in the payoff, or was he just accused of that? Private corruption is bad, but not always illegal. Trump's problem was not the payoff per se, but using corporate funds to pay for it. Had he paid Daniels out of his own pocket to be silent, nothing illegal about that. Otherwise it's corporate fraud, and it matters because corporations derive so much legal benefit through limited liability. If you don't want state regulation, then don't create the legal fiction of a corporation. It's not supposed to be a money-laundering operation.
I don't think there's any evidence that Hamilton used public money in paying off Reynolds. As I understand it, Reynolds was illegally using confidential Treasury Department lists to buy deceased army veterans' outstanding back-pay claims at a low price. Busted, he claimed Hamilton was involved in the scheme and insinuated that Hamilton was also improperly involved in speculation in US bonds, and to that end had advanced money to Reynolds to buy. Hamilton, confronted by his political enemies with the idea that he was involved in wrongful conduct at Treasury, claimed that he'd privately paid Reynolds hush money regarding an affair with Reynolds's wife, and that that's all Reynolds had. Nobody knows what really happened, but I think if his enemies could have proven Hamilton guilty of mis-using funds, they would have. The issue with Schiff's framing isn't that there's a one-to-one analogy between Trump's and Hamilton's behavior but that Schiff is trying to suggest Trump is unique among presidents and other high officials in a) making hush-money payoffs regarding sex and b) cooking books in business. The Hamilton irony is funny to me, given Schiff's Hamilton adulation, but it's also a hook into a larger issue.
Many were (I love the Abigail story because John was so dead set against it), but while I can't prove it, I don't think Hamilton was -- bigger fish to fry.
Feds found Trump guilty of housing discrimination in 1973(?). NYC should have pulled his landlord license then and there. Could’ve saved us all a lot of grief!
So did Hamilton actually use Treasury funds in the payoff, or was he just accused of that? Private corruption is bad, but not always illegal. Trump's problem was not the payoff per se, but using corporate funds to pay for it. Had he paid Daniels out of his own pocket to be silent, nothing illegal about that. Otherwise it's corporate fraud, and it matters because corporations derive so much legal benefit through limited liability. If you don't want state regulation, then don't create the legal fiction of a corporation. It's not supposed to be a money-laundering operation.
I don't think there's any evidence that Hamilton used public money in paying off Reynolds. As I understand it, Reynolds was illegally using confidential Treasury Department lists to buy deceased army veterans' outstanding back-pay claims at a low price. Busted, he claimed Hamilton was involved in the scheme and insinuated that Hamilton was also improperly involved in speculation in US bonds, and to that end had advanced money to Reynolds to buy. Hamilton, confronted by his political enemies with the idea that he was involved in wrongful conduct at Treasury, claimed that he'd privately paid Reynolds hush money regarding an affair with Reynolds's wife, and that that's all Reynolds had. Nobody knows what really happened, but I think if his enemies could have proven Hamilton guilty of mis-using funds, they would have. The issue with Schiff's framing isn't that there's a one-to-one analogy between Trump's and Hamilton's behavior but that Schiff is trying to suggest Trump is unique among presidents and other high officials in a) making hush-money payoffs regarding sex and b) cooking books in business. The Hamilton irony is funny to me, given Schiff's Hamilton adulation, but it's also a hook into a larger issue.
And thanks to Woody Holton, we know Abigail Adams was also speculating in veterans' script because they couldn't wait for Congress to pay its bills.
Many were (I love the Abigail story because John was so dead set against it), but while I can't prove it, I don't think Hamilton was -- bigger fish to fry.