The Definative Story Of A Trump Lie
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/23/not-just-misleading-not-merely-false-lie/
The first denial that Donald Trump knew about hush-money payments to silence women came four days before he was elected president, when his spokeswoman Hope Hicks said, without hedging, We have no knowledge of any of this.
The second came in January of this year, when his attorney Michael Cohen said the allegations were outlandish. By March, two of the presidents spokesmen Raj Shah and Sarah Huckabee Sanders said publicly that Trump denied all the allegations and any payments.
Even Cohens attorney, David Schwartz, got in on the action, saying the president was not aware of any of it.
In April, Trump finally weighed in, answering a question about whether he knew about a payment to porn star Stephanie Clifford, who uses the stage name Stormy Daniels, with a flat no.
Its now clear that the presidents statement was a lie and that the people speaking for him repeated it.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Donald Trumps presidency has been his loose relationship with facts. As of the beginning of this month, The Washington Posts Fact Checker had documented 4,229 false or misleading claims from the president an average of nearly 7.6 a day.