LEGAL/MICHAEL COHEN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WOMEN: “Just before Election Day, when The Wall Street Journal uncovered a secret deal by the National Enquirer to buy the silence of a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Donald J. Trump, his campaign issued a flat denial. ‘We have no knowledge of any of this,’ Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, told the newspaper. She said the claim of an affair was ‘totally untrue.’ Then last week, when The New York Times revealed the existence of a recorded conversation about the very payment Mr. Trump denied knowing about, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, described the recording as ‘exculpatory’ — suggesting it would actually help Mr. Trump if it became public…The recording, and the repeated statements it contradicts, is a stark example of how Mr. Trump and his aides have used falsehoods as a shield against tough questions and unflattering stories. Building upon his repeated cry of ‘fake news,’ he told supporters this week not to believe the news. ‘What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,’ the president added. In a capital where politicians have made an art form of the nondenial denial, press secretaries typically reserve their on-the-record denials for stories that are outright false. Candidates can weather most embarrassing stories, and press officers know that getting caught in a lie only make things worse.”
-Matt Apuzzo and Maggie Haberman, “How Michael Cohen’s Audio Clip Unraveled Trump’s False Statements,” The New York Times online, July 25, 2018