Federal prosecutors are now obtaining guilty pleas for things that are not crimes. Robert Khuzami, the Attorney for the Southern District of New York, contends that hush money for a mistress can constitute a campaign contribution; his theory is flawed, writes Hans von Spakovsky:
FECA (52 U.S.C. 30114 (b)(2)) specifically says that campaign-related expenses do not include any expenditures "used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate's election campaign."
These payments were relatively small given Trump's net worth—the kind of nuisance settlement that celebrities often make to protect their reputations, especially when faced with claims that will cost far more to defend than making a quick payoff without all of the bad publicity that usually accompanies such cases. Given Trump's celebrity status, the potential liability to these women existed "irrespective of the candidate's election campaign."
As Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has said, the payment to Daniels was made "to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president's family" and "it would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not."
On the one previous occasion that the Justice Department tried to argue that hush money payments to a mistress were a "campaign-related" expense, a jury also did not appear to buy the government's theory. In the unsuccessful prosecution of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, campaign donors made payments to Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter, a videographer who was actually working on his presidential campaign. [...]
Last year, it was reported that Congress has secretly paid out over $17 million to settle close to 300 cases by staffers claiming sexual and other forms of harassment and discrimination.
Such payments are obviously being made—in secret—to protect the reputations of senators and congressmen, many of whom will and have run for re-election. Does this mean that they are using taxpayer funds to pay campaign expenses? Is Khuzami going to open up investigations of all these settlements and all these members of Congress?
[Hans von Spakovsky, "Trump's Ex-Lawyer Didn't Violate Campaign Finance Laws, and Neither Did the President," The Daily Signal, December 11]
The technology of totalitarianism. There are reasons to keep an eye on Huawei, beyond allegations of violating sanctions against Iran, writes Dan Blumenthal:
The stakes are high, as the company is positioned to be the dominant player in 5G mobile networks. If Huawei wins this competition against US companies, much of the world's data will pass through the mobile networks of a CCP-backed company that does business with the world's most troubling regimes. Huawei is also the critical player in CCP General-Secretary Xi Jinping's bid to establish a high-tech police state and to leapfrog the United States in critical technologies that will enable a host of military capabilities.
The CCP is already collecting enough data from Chinese citizens who use mobile networks, search engines, and online purchasing systems to establish a "Social Credit System." To say that this system is Orwellian is an understatement. Even George Orwell could not have imagined the new technology of totalitarianism.
The Chinese government plan is to have a database on Chinese citizens' consumer preferences, personal activities, and habits to give each one a "score" based on loyalty to the party and other behaviors deemed by party leaders to make for good citizens. This score will determine if Chinese citizens are accepted to colleges, can get good jobs, buy a house, and so much more. It is nothing less than an attempt to perfect the world's first ever high-tech police state. [...]
If [Huawei] wins the global race to become the dominant player in mobile technology, then the rest of the world could lose control over the use and integrity of data to the CCP colossus. Regardless of Huawei's protestations that it is a private company, Chinese laws require companies doing business in China to share data that the party deems necessary for national security. And, notwithstanding the passage of strict data laws in places like Europe, there will no way to guarantee the integrity and use of data if it flows through a CCP-made 5G system.
[Dan Blumenthal, "Huawei Is the Doorway to China's Police State," American Enterprise Institute, December 12]
Solzhenitsyn at 100. Daniel Mahoney writes:
[Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn wrote with "lucid understanding," and with no small dose of scorn, about the "Progressive Doctrine," the inhuman ideology that justified terror and tyranny as no regime or ideological movement had ever justified the killing and repression of real or imagined "enemies of the People." He showed that the heart of Bolshevism lay in a monstrous coming together of violence and lies that gave rise not to mere dictatorship but to a totalitarianism that transformed betrayal and lying into "forms of existence." This totalitarianism demanded fierce resistance, both for the sake of liberty and for the right of the human soul to breathe freely, with the dignity afforded it by God.
Solzhenitsyn would become the most eloquent critic of ideological revolution, the "vain hope that revolution can improve human nature," as he said in the Vendée in the fall of 1993. He saw many affinities between the French and Russian revolutions, not least the shared hope that revolution could transform human nature and regenerate the human race. Instead, Solzhenitsyn stood for repentance and self-limitation, and for a conception of self-government (beginning with the arts of local liberty) that emphasized the importance of civic virtue. Here he was indebted to Tocqueville, to the zemstvos or nineteenth century Russian provincial and local councils, and to the experience of local liberty that he witnessed (and admired) during his western exile in Switzerland and New England between 1974 and 1994. He spoke with admiration for such local liberty in his farewell to the people of Cavendish, Vermont, on February 28, 1994. It was a tradition of liberty from the bottom up much needed in contemporary Russia, he observed. [...]
In 1998's Russia in Collapse, he forcefully attacked "radical nationalism…the elevation of one's nationality above our higher spiritual plank, above our humble stance before heaven." And he never ceased castigating so-called Russian nationalists, who preferred "a small-minded alliance with [Russia's] destroyers" (the Communists or Bolsheviks). He loved his country but loved truth and justice more. But as Solzhenitsyn stated with great eloquence in the Nobel Lecture, "nations are the wealth of mankind, its generalized personalities." He did not support the leveling of nations in the name of cosmopolitanism or of a pagan nationalism that forgot that all nations remain under the judgment of God and the moral law. In this regard, Solzhenitsyn combines patriotism with moderation or self-limitation.
[Daniel J. Mahoney, "Solzhenitsyn: A Centential Tribute," City Journal, December 9]
President Trump's trade restrictions are widening, not narrowing, the trade deficit. Desmond Lachman writes:
[T]he Trump administration's seeming-march toward a world trade war has had the effect of roiling global financial markets and diminishing world economic growth prospects.
In those circumstances, global money has sought the safe haven of the U.S. dollar, and in so doing, it has increased the U.S. capital account surplus.
Once again purely as a matter of arithmetic, with a floating exchange rate, any increase in the U.S. capital account surplus has to be matched by an increase in the U.S. trade deficit if the U.S. external accounts are to balance.
All of this would suggest that if the Trump administration were really serious about wanting to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, it needs to mend its ways and not go down the path of increased import tariff protection.
A good place to start would be to revisit the country's inappropriately expansive budget policy, which is sapping the country's savings and is forcing the U.S. dollar ever higher.
[Desmond Lachman, "The Trade Deficit Widens Despite Trump's Best, Misguided Efforts," The Hill, December 10]
There are socialists in both parties. Chris Edwards writes:
Republicans have criticized the socialism of Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but they should reflect on their own party's socialist vote in the Senate yesterday. The upper chamber voted 87-13 for the bloated monstrosity known as the farm bill, which funds farm subsidies and food stamps. Republicans in the Senate voted in favor 38-13.
It is not hyperbole to call the farm bill "socialism." It will spend $867 billion over the next decade, thus pushing up government debt and taxes. It includes large-scale wealth redistribution in the form of food stamps. At its core is central planning, which is obvious when you consider that the bill is 807 pages of legalese laying out excruciating details on crop prices, acres, yields, and other micromanagement. Furthermore, the bill lines the pockets of wealthy elites (landowners), which is a central feature of socialism in practice around the world.
The bill does not represent incremental reform toward smaller government. It is an extension and expansion of big government programs.
[Chris Edwards, "Farm Bill Socialism in Senate," Cato Institute, December 12]
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