In a free-wheeling interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Wednesday, Rudy Giuliani may have admitted that President Trump committed a crime.
He didn’t own up to obstruction of justice or Russian collusion. He confirmed instead what almost everyone already assumed: Namely that Trump had hush money for porn star Stormy Daniels “funneled it through a law firm and the president repaid it.”
Giuliani said, like the president has admitted again and again on different occasions with different women, that Trump cheated on his wife. In the state of New York, that is still a crime.
“Adultery,” Deborah L. Rhodes, a professor of law at Stanford University, wrote in the Los Angeles Times ahead of the 2016 election “is illegal in 21 states, including New York, where Trump lives.”
A quick look at Section 255.17 of the New York Penal Code confirms as much: “A person is guilty of adultery when he engages in sexual intercourse with another person at a time when he has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse.”
A holdover from the Progressive Era, the ban officially hit the books in 1907. What’s the punishment for violating New York values? A class B misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $500 or 90 days in jail.
But this crime is seldom prosecuted. More often than not, infidelity and the law intersect during divorce cases, not criminal cases.
That didn’t stop the New York Times from calling out Gov. David Paterson in 2008. It was in the wake of Eliot Spitzer that his replacement decided to come clean at a television news conference. Behind a microphone and standing by his wife, the Democrat admitted that he had several extramarital affairs including one with a state employee.
Patterson admitted his wrongs but insisted that he “didn’t break the law.” The next day, the New York Times wrote, “Well, actually…”
None of this means that Trump is or isn’t qualified for office. That decision was already made at the ballot box by voters fully aware of the man’s past. More than anything, this is an interesting historical quirk and a vice law that should be ironed out by the Empire State. It’s not like infidelity disqualifies someone from holding office or anything.
