President Trump didn’t violate campaign-finance law Why should Congress perpetuate this witch hunt?: Opposing view

Dan Backer | USA TODAY

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In light of Michael Cohen’s plea deal, Democrats and the liberal news media are out for blood. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., called for a congressional hearing to “obtain sworn testimony directly from Mr. Cohen.” Time magazine proclaimed: “Trump is in trouble. Here’s how much worse it can get.”

Except he’s not, and it won’t get “worse.” Actual campaign-finance experts, outside the liberal outrage mob, generally agree: Even if Cohen’s activities are campaign-related — though they probably aren’t — they amount to a Federal Election Commission speeding ticket.

President Donald Trump didn’t violate campaign-finance law; the payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal came from his personal finances, not campaign funds, for something he believed was unrelated to the campaign. As the president told Fox News, “They didn’t come out of the campaign; they came from me.”

At the very worst, even if re-characterized to be campaign-related, the “violation” amounts to underreporting relatively insignificant contributions from a candidate to his own campaign.

OUR VIEW: Hey Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, come get your spines

But the liberal mob never misses an opportunity to undermine the Trump presidency, lobbying for an endless investigation into President Trump. All this after the Mueller investigation has already cost roughly $20 million — and no Russian collusion found.

Why should Congress perpetuate this witch hunt? The Mueller investigation has morphed from chasing after paid-for allegations of Russian collusion to chasing down Paul Manafort’s and Michael Cohen’s transgressions — a testament to the investigation’s ineffectiveness. However justified, albeit politically motivated, the underlying prosecutions of Manafort and Cohen may be, they stem from business dealings long before there was a Trump campaign.

Mueller and his team of Democratic lawyers should either produce actual evidence of collusion or pack it up.

There’s no fire here; there isn’t even any smoke. In the face of a booming economy, the left is just running out of ways to attack President Trump — and hoping you won’t notice.

Dan Backer is founding attorney of political.law, a campaign-finance and political law firm in Alexandria, Virginia.

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