Former prosecutor Barbara McQuade got right to the point in a round-table discussion of yesterday's Cohen memos.
"Michael Cohen takes us back to 2015, when they're having conversations with Russia about putting together this deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow. This is a significant matter," McQuade said.
"This is not just a regulatory offense when you talk about campaign finance violations. It could be that President Trump procured the presidency by fraud. If you look at that filing by the Southern District of New York, they talk about the seriousness of this offense. Democracy is all about giving full information to voters so they can cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice.
"By lying and covering up about his past on the eve of the election and violating the laws designed to create transparency, they say that President Trump clouded the process for the American voters. When immigrants procure their citizenship by fraud, we strip them of their citizenship. When a president procures his office by fraud, should we consider doing the same?"
Of course! This is more important that a deflated football and the Super Bowl, right?
This is really the heart of the matter. I'd heard so many people say, "Campaign finance fraud? Meh." The panel discussed earlier how numb people are to Trump's multitude of transgressions. But McQuade zeroes in on the real danger of this kind of fraud: It really is about giving the voters as much information as possible.
I know I wasn't the only person who was shocked and dismayed about when the John Edwards scandal came out, and this is what I keep thinking about. Edwards shouldn't even have been on the ticket with Kerry, and if the truth had come out earlier, he wouldn't have been.
We need to know, and we deserve to know.
