'If you’re running for president, and you want to make a hush money payment to a porn star, it’s probably unwise to pay by check.'
Here’s one takeaway from the Michael Cohen hearings that probably everyone can agree on — from Donald Trump to Michael Cohen, and from Rush Limbaugh to Rachel Maddow.
“Obviously, by writing a check for a dubious payment, one is leaving a paper trail,” said Chicago attorney Nancy DePodesta at Saul, Ewing, Arnstein & Lehr. “People pay in cash or services, for this exact reason.” DePodesta, who was a federal prosecutor for 12 years, says checks and other proof of financial transactions were often gold dust for investigators. “We’d follow the money,” she says.
Those payments are the only concrete proof connecting Trump, Cohen and Daniels. New York prosecutors are now investigating whether they amounted to campaign finance violations by candidate Trump. Cohen has now been disbarred — for a variety of offenses — and is going to jail, and he is co-operating with prosecutors against Trump. That has led directly to Cohen’s testimony to Congress against Trump — damaging testimony watched across America and the world.
Making legal payments with checks creates a paper trail through the banking system that anyone can follow. are popular with criminals. But making payments with cash or certain other alternatives would have left them completely anonymous. That’s one reason that criminals like crytocurrencies like bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.27%
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