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No, I’m talking about the law. You’re wrong about what you think campaign finance law says.
> You also can't have your personal lawyer take out a loan and spend it on expenses for your campaign and not report that as a campaign expense.
The law is the exact opposite. You cannot call something a “campaign expense” if it is an expense you would incur “irrespective of the campaign.” (That’s the magic phrase in FEC regulations.) If you pay off your mistress and call it a campaign expense, you’ll be prosecuted for campaign finance violations, because the prosecutor would say that you could have non-campaign reasons to do that. John Edwards was prosecuted for doing exactly that.
The New York federal prosecutor (SDNY) investigated the exact theory you are talking about: charging Trump with a campaign finance violation. They didn’t bring the case because all Trump would have to do is prove that he would have paid off Stormy Daniels “irrespective of the campaign.”