AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s distorted reality in expanding probes
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump keeps changing his story in the swirling investigations into Russia election interference and hush money payments to women who say they had affairs with him.
He insists that payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 campaign were “private transactions” and that any crime committed would be the fault of his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, not him. That’s a change from what the president said before. Trump previously had denied knowledge of payments and dismissed any hint of a crime.
In the special counsel’s probe into contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump tried to cast doubt on whether his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI. Flynn in fact pleaded guilty to doing just that.
Over the past week, Trump also made a flurry of false or unsupported statements about immigration. He said, with no evidence, that migrants are plagued with disease. He asserted that Mexico has in effect agreed to pay for his border wall, even as he threatens a partial government shutdown if Congress doesn’t approve billions of dollars to build it. He twisted federal statistics to claim the recent arrest of 10 terrorists who don’t exist.