Flashback: Obama Paid Largest FEC Campaign Finance Fine Ever

Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen plead guilty yesterday to charges completely unrelated to the Robert Mueller Special Counsel’s stated mission of investigating alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. While liberals are celebrating, they seem completely unaware that this further proves the Russia investigation is one big hoax.

Manafort’s charges stem from his past shady business dealings, and the “damning” revelation from Michael Cohen in his guilty plea has to do with Stormy Daniels, not Russia. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts — two of which were campaign finance violations involving hush money for women alleging they had extramarital affairs with Trump. Believing the allegations would be damaging to Trump’s campaign, Cohen stated in court that he made the illegal campaign contributions “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.”

Bad news for Cohen – but in the words of the liberal Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz, it’s not nearly as bad as it looks. “Remember as Judge Ellis said it when they squeeze people like Manafort or Cohen, they squeeze them not only to sing but sometimes to compose and it’s very easy to embellish a story.  All he has to do then is say, ‘And the president directed me to do it.’ That’s the kind of embellishment that people put on a story when they want to avoid dying in prison. When the prosecutor says to them, ‘You have two choices. You’ll die in prison, or you can give me a story that I can use to go and get the president.'”

And as President Trump reminded his audience on Twitter last night, Barack Obama too had some campaign finance troubles.

While known for his use of hyperbole, Trump was actually understating how “big” Obama’s campaign violation was. As Politico reported back in 2013, “President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for campaign reporting violations — one of the largest fees ever levied against a presidential campaign.” Prior to that, Bob Dole set a record for FEC fines from his 1996 presidential campaign, paying $100,000.

Among many miscellaneous reporting errors, the main issue with Obama’s campaign finances was a series of missing 48-hour notices for almost 1,300 contributions totaling more than $1.8 million. The notices must be filed out for contributions of over $1,000 that are received within 20 days of election day.

[totalpoll id=”145339″]

That reminder aside, Trump has some parting advice for the rest of us:

Hopefully, he’s not saying the same thing about Giuliani a year from now.