Steve Benen is a producer for 'The Rachel Maddow Show,' the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of 'The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics.'
It wasn’t long after Donald Trump’s classified-documents scandal broke when the former president and his allies concocted a series of flawed defenses. Among the worst was the “everybody does it” line, rooted in the idea that many former presidents did effectively the same thing that Trump did. The principal problem with the defense was that it was ridiculous: The circumstances surrounding the Republican’s alleged felonies made his controversy unique.
As Election Day 2016 approached, Trump and his political operation were concerned about the public learning about his alleged extramarital sexual encounter with a porn star who goes by the name Stormy Daniels. With those fears in mind, the then-candidate and his team created a shell company, which Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, used to pay off Daniels, effectively buying her silence.
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