This morning, Senator Lindsey Graham [R-SC] told a reporter that criminals usually don’t write checks when they are involved in a crime, The Hill reports.
He was asked, “The Stormy Daniels payments and the check Michael Cohen brought yesterday to the committee hearing. Do you have any concerns that the sitting president committed a crime in campaign finance violations?”
Graham answered, “Well, number one, um, I think the campaign finance law is that the only reason you would do this would be to avoid, uh, you know, to help your campaign. If there is another reason like protecting your family or your wife, I mean, I think Trump has done this in the past but… I found that most people don’t write checks if they think they are involved in a crime. You know… Here’s my part of the crime. So, good luck with that one. We’ll see what the Southern District of New York does but generally speaking people don’t write checks if they think they are committing a crime.”
The Senator’s comments caught the attention of folks on Twitter, who pointed out that criminals write checks while committing crimes quite often, the recent case of Jussie Smollett is one notable instance and Watergate another notable and pertinent case.
Why It Matters
Senator Graham, like most of his Republican colleagues, is willing to sacrifice his integrity for a president and head of his party who has dragged the GOP into the swamp of humiliation. Graham, who once served as both a prosecutor and defense attorney in the military, certainly knows that criminals frequently write checks in the commission of crimes and that that overconfidence is often how they are proven guilty.
But he can’t even bring himself to say, “people don’t write checks when they commit a crime” because that could cast a shadow of a doubt on the man about whom Lindsey once said, “If we nominate Trump he will destroy us and we will deserve it.” Instead, today, the former prosecutor says, “people don’t write checks if they think they are committing a crime.”
History, like Twitter has today, will not judge Lindsey Graham kindly.
