The Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign and an affiliated super PAC violated federal election law in spending that totaled close to $6 million.
The amount in question is more than 45 times the $130,000 a Manhattan court convicted former President Donald Trump of misreporting in business records during the same 2016 campaign.
It should be noted that the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department looked at the payments Trump made through his personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen, to adult film star Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement and declined to prosecute him.
But Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg chose to bring the case under New York law, bootstrapping the alleged FEC violation as an underlying crime to the state business record violations.
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The reimbursement payments made to Cohen were listed by the Trump organization as legal expenses. Bragg argued these payments made to Daniels initially by Cohen amounted to an illegal contribution to the Trump campaign.
Regarding the Clinton campaign case, the D.C. Circuit found the super PAC Correct the Record “set out to engage in a wide range of coordinated activities to support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.”