I want to ask a general question and not get into the Trump stuff, but something I wonder about. If a person is charged with bribing someone to keep them from revealing something about that person, why isn’t the one receiving the hush money guilty of blackmail or extortion?
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Stormy’s agent was shopping the story. For money. DJT and the David Pecker bought the story and killed it. They paid more than another publication was likely to pay and chose not to run it.
I learned a whole bunch listening to the catch-and-kill strategies used by agents of public figures. Sometimes these stories are bought and killed even if false because the payoff is worth avoiding the publicity.
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No it wasn’t extortion or blackmail because it wasn’t a “pay me or else” situation.
If the NDA is a binding legal contract that’s initiated by the payer and the payee accepts the contract with no proof of extortion or blackmail prior to contract, then how would it be extortion or blackmail?
So it can’t be blackmail/extortion as there is no evidence of “pay me or I’ll go to the media” vs. shopping the story into a catch and kill scenario.
But also in this specific instance, the crime didn’t come from the payment. It was being too cheap/lazy to just write a check from a personal account with a “For NDA” in the memo. If that had happened there is no crime. Writing it from your business account, and then trying to move it through business channels to write it off as a business expense is the crime.
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I didn’t say it was. I’m saying that an NDA doesn’t necessarily make it not extortion or blackmail. You could be extorted or blackmailed and include the NDA as part of paying.
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Gotcha
+1. It was a non disclosure agreement if you work for an employer you probably have one too.
Exactly…so it was either tax evasion or election interference.
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True, the real coup
Again for the dummies, the crime isn’t the NDA or the payment. If the individual in question would’ve just cut a check and expensed it correctly there wouldn’t be any crime.
Now as you are not good faith, or honest brokers I expect that to be ignored
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So Mike, I’ve nothing to add as others here seemed to have already covered all the bases,
did that answer your question and clarify the distinction?
and what would that expense have been, other, instead of lawyer fees? Lawfare plain and simple.
Guys, I said I didn’t want it to be about Trump. Let’s just say person A and person B, the Trump trial is over and I didn’t want that can of worms discussed. I wanted it as a general question and would someone please say what NDA stands for.
Only for simple people. Yeah he could’ve just said settlement, or again just write the check from his personal account, he’s a billionaire right? 138k is walking around money
non disclosure agreement. It is not an admission of wrongdoing. He had one against his doorman for 30k even though that was a false allegation.
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Hard to believe, that’s not what you were going for. Unless you have some other unrelated case of business records and NDA’s
was that an option in thier accounting sofware? What did Hillarys use to pay for the Steele report, legal fees, same thing.