united-states politics
Has anyone been convicted of campaign finance violations by paying an informant before an election?
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trump-cohen-manafort-collusion/568132/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Atlantic reports</a></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>In pleading guilty to violations of campaign-finance laws, Cohen said that the then-candidate Trump had directed him to do so, arranging payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump in order to hush them up and affect the result of the 2016 election.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Cohen has plead guilty to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4779502-Michael-Cohen.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">eight felonies</a>, including  campaign finance violations by paying of a woman to keep her quiet leading up to the US Federal election.</p>

<p>Has anyone ever been charged with - much less convicted of - unduly influencing a campaign and election results by paying an informant to not come forward with "damning" information?</p>

<p>Has anyone ever been tried and convicted of similar transgressions in any US election?</p>

<p>John Edwards was charged and acquitted on similar facts.</p>

<p>Note, though, that Cohen isn't being charged with <em>unduly</em> influencing the election. As far as campaign-finance laws are concerned, there's nothing wrong with influencing an election by paying hush money to a candidate's side piece.</p>

<p>Instead, the law simply asks that you disclose the money you spend when you file your campaign finance reports, and it prohibits direct corporate contributions to a campaign, as well as individual contributions in excess of $2,700.</p>

<p>Cohen went wrong by coordinating his work with "Individual-1" to help his campaign by providing valuable legal services and paying hush money to "Woman-1" and "Woman-2" <em>without the campaign paying for it and without the campaign disclosing it.</em></p>

<p>Had Cohen been on the campaign's payroll, and had the hush money come out of the campaign treasury, and had the campaign disclosed it all on their campaign-finance reports, I think he would not be in any legal trouble (although there is the tax evasion, too).</p>

<p>I think it's probably safe to say that campaigns make these types of payments to people with damaging information somewhat frequently, and they don't get in trouble because the money comes from campaign funds (why would you want to go out of pocket, anyway?) and they report the expenditures as required. Because the campaign-finance laws are so loose, "disclosing" the expenditure isn't going to give anything away, because you can basically just say "$100,000 to Stephanie Clifford for personal services."</p>

<p>Probably the closest precedent:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>In a case that had no precedent, the Department of Justice began an investigation aimed at proving Mr. Edwards conspired to secretly use the money to influence the outcome of his presidential bid in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, accepting contributions that exceeded campaign finance limits, and causing his campaign to file a false financial disclosure report.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>He was indicted in June 2011.</p>

<p>In response to your question about conviction:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Edwards Not Guilty on One Count; Mistrial on Five Others</p>
</blockquote>

<p>As best as I can understand it, these charges were relative to <strong>primary</strong> elections in the runup to the convention, (Edwards dropped out before the Democratic convention) so the violations were attendant to state party preference elections as versus a nationwide general election. </p>

<p>As an interesting sidelight, the initial story was broken by the National Enquirer.</p>

<p>As we know, in federal court it takes only one hold-out juror to deadlock and cause a mistrial.</p>

<p>The DOJ subsequently did not refile and try the remaining charges.  (one can speculate .. "what was the point of retrying?" Edwards was finished politically and his reputation shot)</p>
