At every step in this story, as in the Russia investigation, Trump and his team have outright lied about it all. Their story has morphed from there was no payments, to they had no knowledge of payments, to Cohen made the payments on his own but Trump didn't know about it, to Trump knew generalities about the agreements and repaid Cohen, to Trump agreed to the payments to protect his family, and now we're back to Cohen made the payments on his own and Trump only found out about them later and paid Cohen back, but not with campaign funds. This despite an actual tape recording of Trump instructing Cohen to pay with cash rather than by check.
Right now, the President's defense is refuted not only by that tape but also by Giuliani's prior statements that Trump approved these payments to protect his family. Trump also claims that he committed no campaign violations because he repaid Cohen back with his own money. Apparently Dershowitz has leapt on this to bolster Trump's claim because a candidate can spend as much of his own money as he wants on a campaign it's not really a campaign finance violation. While not reporting these payments would still be a campaign violation, it would not be criminal which, to Trump, means it's not really a crime.
But this is yet another Trump lie. The repayment came from the trust now running the Trump Organization which is currently overseen by Don Jr. and Eric and which Trump supposedly has no control over. It did not come from Trump directly. In addition, the payment was made via a series of bogus and inflated invoices with the express purpose of hiding the real reason for the repayments and perhaps rewarding Cohen for his silence on the matter.
Remarkably, I heard NPR repeat Trump's lie about not knowing about the payments until afterward without even mentioning that Cohen has already produced a tape that proves the statement false. Similarly, Chris Matthews went down the Dershowitz rabbit-hole about Trump using his own money to repay Cohen when that is factually false. Of course, there will always be Trumpsters like Sam Nunberg who told MSNBC he didn't believe the tape, but why do these people even have platform at this point.
In addition, Sarah Sanders offered another ridiculous but dangerous defense yesterday, saying that the President hasn't been indicted so therefore he hasn't done anything wrong. Of course, current DOJ policy says that a sitting President can't be indicted so Sanders' statement has no real meaning. In fact, it is perilously close to the defense of "if the President does it, it's not illegal", which seems to be a standard trope for recent Republican presidents.
Most of the news stories revolved around the fact that Trump basically admitted to violating campaign finance law, whether wittingly or not, in his Fox friendly interview. But that admission was merely an attempt to mitigate his guilt. More importantly, that admission itself was a lie.
At this point, shouldn't the lede of every story about Trump start with the fact that he is lying and then describe the particular lie or lies of the day. And shouldn't that be complemented with reporting that shows that virtually every day Trump does or says something to tear down the rule of law in this country. And down that path does lie autocracy.
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