CNBC News Quotes Trevor Potter on Possible Campaign Finance Violations in Trump Campaign

President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen on Thursday said he tried to rig online polls — including one conducted by CNBC — "at the direction and for the sole benefit of" Trump when he was thinking about making a run for the White House.

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The [Wall Street] Journal reported that a man named John Gauger, owner of RedFinch Solutions and chief information officer of Liberty University in Virginia, was given more than $12,000 by Cohen in 2015 for having helped rig online polls to boost Trump's ranking in them. The Journal's article cites Gauger as a source for its report.

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Trevor Potter, a campaign finance lawyer and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, told NBC News that Cohen's payments to RedFinch should have been accounted for and disclosed in campaign reports because Trump was "testing the waters" at the time for a presidential run. FEC records show no indication of such a disclosure.

"Once he became a candidate, this should have been reported as an in-kind contribution to the campaign, because it is required to report all testing expenditures and contributions on its initial FEC reports upon qualifying as a candidate," Potter said.

Mr. Potter is also the head of Caplin & Drysdale’s Political Law Group in Washington, D.C.

For the full article, please visit CNBC News’ website.

Excerpt taken from the article “Michael Cohen Says He Tried to Rig Online Polls 'At The Direction' of Donald Trump” by Dan Mangan for CNBC.