WASHINGTON — President Trump defended himself on Monday against prosecutors’ accusation that he directed illegal payments ahead of the 2016 election to two women to stay silent about alleged extramarital affairs with him, insisting that the payments were “a simple private transaction” — not election-related spending subject to campaign-finance laws. In a pair of early-morning tweets, Mr. Trump also maintained that even if the hush-money payments did count as campaign transactions, any failure to obey federal election regulations should be considered only a civil offense, not a criminal one. And he blamed his former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, who has admitted to helping arrange the payments. “Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me,” Mr. Trump wrote. But Mr. Trump’s plea of ignorance has flaws, said Richard L. Hasen, a professor of election law at the University of California, Irvine.

Source: New York Times December 11, 2018 01:49 UTC