by William Upton, The National Pulse:
Former Federal Election Commission (FEC) Commissioner Bradley Smith has revealed what he would have told the jury in former President Donald J. Trump‘s hush money trial if Democrat-aligned Judge Juan Merchan had allowed him to testify.
Smith, a Harvard-educated campaign finance lawyer, was slated to address claims made by District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s prosecutors that the former President had violated campaign finance law. However, before testifying, Judge Merchan severely limited the scope of Smith’s testimony — allowing him to essentially only address the history of the commission and a handful of legal definitions.
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SMITH VERSUS MERCHAN.
“Judges instruct the juries on the law, and they don’t want a battle of competing experts saying here’s what the law is,” Smith said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. He added: “They feel it’s their province to make that determination. The problem, of course, is that campaign finance law is extremely complex, and just reading the statute to people isn’t really going to help them very much.”
Addressing District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s dubious claims regarding federal election law, Smith said he would have “[laid] out the ways the law has been interpreted in ways that might not be obvious.”
A COMPLICATED LAW.
“You read the law, and it says that anything intended for the purpose of influencing an election is a contribution or an expenditure,” Smith explained, adding: “But that’s not, in fact, the entirety of the law. There is the obscure, and separate from the definitional part, idea of personal use, which is a separate part of the law that says you can’t divert campaign funds to personal use.”
Based on federal law, Smith said: “I can tell you my personal belief is that clearly paying hush money, or paying for a nondisclosure agreement, does not constitute a campaign expense.”
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