Hey, Belz! Welcome back.
Don't look for "reasonable" from TBD. He's anxious to distract from his and Zig's D-minus performance.
Their contention amounts to their learned opinion (where "learned" means "I pulled it out of my butt") that the Edwards ruling on personal use means that if you can claim any portion of personal use then the contributions were not for the campaign but for, well, personal use. I'd imagine that'd come as a surprise to people who thought they were contributing to a political campaign but I'm sure in Post Hoc Justification World the fact that the wrote the check out to "John Edwards Super PAC" or however it was addressed really means, "Here, this isn't a political contribution so you just use this money however you want!"
Since it wasn't a crime with Edwards then it's not a crime with Trump/Cohen. Q.E.D.
That's the gist of the argument. An argument not proffered by Cohen, his attorney, or Giuliani. Apparently Trump doesn't follow Zig or TBD because he hasn't made it yet, either. Zig and TBD can be excused, though, as the directions from the WH aren't clear. They definitely want to claim that it wasn't campaign money and apparently the payments came from a Trump Org (not Trump Campaign) shell company account.
The counter arguments are everywhere; I'll let you come up with your own. The most obvious, though, is that the Edwards case and the Trump case are completely different. Edwards' was ongoing, Trump's was on the eve of the election. We haven't seen the SDNY evidence but if one of those tapes has conversation saying "we've gotta stop this from getting out because people won't like it", the whole conceptual defense is through.Oh, that and the fact that he ******* well pled guilty and no one ever said,"Oh, I can't take that item in the plea bargain, that's not a crime".
TBD further claims that Cohen just parroted whatever the DA told him to say because he was selling out Trump in order to get himself and Mrs. Cohen a break on their tax evasion charges.