so this morning two associates of rudy giuliani are charged with federal elections crimes as the president openly asks ukraine and china to investigate his political rival. joining me now is ellen winthrop. we re excited to have you on to help us understand what the rules actually are. i don t want to read the indictment to you, but these men are charged with funneling foreign money into the u.s. elections system. broadly speaking, what laws did they break and why do they exist? thanks, john, for having me. i don t want to talk about the specifics of this case. but i am happy to talk to you about the law. there are laws against individuals or groups funneling money through other groups in order to hide the source of the money. it s a law against contributions in the name of another, and there s another really important law against foreign contributions.
to cohen. cohen says they were to pay him back for the money he paid to stormy daniels. if he paid money to stormy daniels to keep her quiet during the election, then that is a campaign contribution from michael cohen. if trump paid it back, you then have trump making a contribution in the name of another. you have reporting violations. you have excessive contributions by cohen. this is a serious matter. the fact they tried to hide it as shown by the chucks suggests it was a knowing and willness v willful violation. it doesn t say, to pay stormy daniels. there s debate about that. it does fit into the narrative about those payments. it does tend to support the argument that trump knew about the payments and that trump wanted to pay stormy daniels to keep her from talking during the election. cohen says all three of the executives mentioned in the piece would have knowledge of trump allegedly overvaluing his assets for insurance purposes. here is an example from the
making a donation to a, what appears to be a completely shell corporation designed just for the purpose of laundering money into a super pac and violating the law that would require disclosure of true identity. which would seem to be a pretty clear 441-f violation. making a contribution in the name of another. i am wondering why the justice department doesn t appear to bring any of the cases. making a false statement is something the department prosecutes all the time. it doesn t take particular tax expertise to recognize a false statement when you see one or to prosecute one when you see one. now the hearing and the learner doj conversation took place in 2013. after the 2012 presidential election.
which would seem to be a pretty clear 441-f violation. making a contribution in the name of another. i am wondering why the justice department doesn t apapear to bring any of the cases. making a false statement is something the department prosecutes all the time. it doesn t take particular tax expertise to recognize a false statement when you see one or to prosecute one when you now the hearing and the learner doj conversation took place in 2013. after the 2012 presidential election. not a single application for this status. this tax-exempt status was denied. joining me now is the
the dow jones industrial is down 512 points. stocks dropping 4% on the day, concluding their worst nine-day decline in two years time. since december 1 of 2008 was the last time we were down more than 400 points. blue chip suffering the 10th biggest drop on record today, down 513 points at 11,384. you can t say you can t be worried. that s a big number to lose in a day. more than 10% in the last 10 days or so. that s worrisome. and it is 4:00 on wall street. do you know where your money is? the dow fell nearly 513 points today. 155 of those points in the final very dramatic hour of trading. some of which you saw there. that s a drop of 4.3% in one day. the market s worst day since december 2008. and yes, december 2008 is when we were still in end of the world territory. the nasdaq and the s&p 500 did even worse than the dow did today. why is this happening? why is the stock market doing this again?