This Is as Obvious and Blatant a Presidential Lie as You're Going to See
The president lies all the time, about things large and small. This is not a controversial statement. Often, those reluctant to use the word "lie"-in the media and elsewhere-will say that to call something a lie, you have to know what's in a person's heart. You have to know they knew the truth, but instead intended to deceive, when they offered up a false statement. (The Washington Post, for instance, has compiled a list of more than 5,000 Trumpian "false claims" while in office.) But even under that strict definition, Donald J. Trump has been caught lying repeatedly while serving as the American president.
There was another example Tuesday, thanks to new reporting from The Wall Street Journal:
President Trump personally directed an effort in February to stop Stormy Daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, people familiar with the events say.
In a phone call, Mr. Trump instructed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to seek a restraining order against the former adult-film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, through a confidential arbitration proceeding, one of the people said. Messrs. Trump and Cohen had learned shortly before that Ms. Clifford was considering giving a media interview about her alleged relationship with Mr. Trump, despite having signed an October 2016 nondisclosure agreement.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohen to coordinate the legal response with Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, and another outside lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in other matters.
This is the first time we're learning the president and his son were directly involved in the legal response to Stormy Daniels's attempt to go public with her allegations.
(As an aside, it's worth remarking on the fact that the President of the United States directed his son to pay off a porn actress with whom he'd had an extramarital affair in order to hush her up. That it was a son from two wives back, rather than the wife he'd cheated on in this instance, should make only a modicum of difference. Maybe this is what the president's ardent defenders in the Evangelical community might call Family Values.)
That isn't wholly surprising, though. The really interesting bit is the timing of Trump's intervention: February. Here's what he had to say on April 5, via USA TODAY:
Reporter: "Mr. President, did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?"
Trump: "No. No. What else?"
Reporter: "Then why did Michael Cohen make those if there was no truth to her allegations?"
Trump: "Well, you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. And you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen."
Reporter: "Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?"
Trump: "No, I don’t know. No."
Considering April is after February, it appears Trump denied any knowledge of the payoff a couple of months after he directly intervened in the legal effort to enforce the terms of the agreement tied to the payoff. He knew about the payoff, but said he didn't. He knew the truth, and he said the opposite. That is to say, he lied-completely, totally, and unequivocally.
This is not the first time Trump was caught completely lying about whether he knew about the hush money, which was always absurd on its face. (Lawyers do not run around making payoffs on their client's behalf out of their own pockets with no expectation of being paid back.) In May, Trump tweeted to second lawyer Rudy Giuliani's complete 180-degree-turn on his claims, declaring he did know about the payment after, as cited above, completely denying it a month earlier. You'll notice Giuliani (and Trump's tweets) also exposed as a lie Trump's claim he didn't know where Michael Cohen got the money. Trump reimbursed Cohen.
This was one in a long list of Trumpworld false denials about the payment:
Hope Hicks, then a spokesperson, denied the story outright during crunch time of the campaign.
The White House, and Cohen, denied it outright again when the Journal first reported on the payment in January 2018.
In March, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to quash the story from the White House podium, but mistakenly revealed there had been arbitration proceedings-which, we now know, President Trump himself directed his people to pursue.
Again in March, Cohen admitted to the payment, but said he'd done it on his own.
Then there was Giuliani's May admission that Trump repaid Cohen-and "funneled it through a law firm," which sounds totally above-board and not at all sketchy for the President of the United States.
By August 21, Cohen was pleading guilty to violating campaign finance laws, and admitted in open court that Trump had directed him to make the payments.
This is an absolute festival of lies. Maybe Hicks or Sanders legitimately did not know the story was real, but Cohen and Trump certainly did. They lied at every turn.
Speaking of, there's another intriguing little detail buried in Tuesday's Journal story:
Direct involvement of the president and his son in the effort to silence Ms. Clifford hasn’t previously been reported. The accounts of that effort recently provided to The Wall Street Journal suggest that the president’s ties to his company continued into this year and contradict public statements made at the time by the Trump Organization, the White House and Mr. Cohen.
Remember when the president made a grand show of "divesting" from his company, holding a press conference with all those manila folders stacked up next to him, all of which were Definitely Full of Important Paperwork? Remember when we were supposed to believe he wouldn't be involved with the Trump Organization while in public office, despite the fact he'd tapped his two Large Adult Sons to run it and they soon publicly admitted they'd be providing him regular updates on how things were going? As the Journal wisely observed-despite burying the lede a bit-if Trump was using Trump Organization lawyers to do his legal bidding in a battle with Stormy Daniels this year, he certainly wasn't fully detached from the company's operations.
That's a concern because every weekend seems to be an advertisement for a Trump property, and his hotel in D.C. has become the place to be if you're a foreign diplomat-or anyone else-looking to curry favor with the president. This is why the concept of "conflicts of interest" developed. If Trump knows about his company's operations-including which entities are generating money for it-that may impact the decisions he makes in office, which are supposed to be made with the interests of the American people in mind. What happens when their interest conflicts with his interest?
And of course, at the root of all this, we see the problem in having elected officials who lie all the time.
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