Trump says Michael Cohen didn’t commit crimes. He’s wrong.

Trump and his supporters now argue that these facts do not constitute violations of federal election laws, because the payments involved private matters and were ultimately reimbursed out of his personal — not campaign — funds. “They weren’t taken out of the campaign finance, that’s the big thing. That’s a much bigger thing,” Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired Wednesday and Thursday. “Did they come out of the campaign? They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me.” He went on to claim that Cohen had pleaded guilty to “two counts that aren’t a crime, which nobody understands.” Former FEC commissioner Bradley Smith argued in The Washington Post Wednesday that Cohen’s payment to Daniels cannot be a campaign expense because FEC regulations prohibit candidates from using campaign funds for personal obligations that would exist “irrespective” of the campaign; Smith suggests that the need to pay for the actress’s silence would have existed irrespective of whether Trump was a candidate.

But Trump and his defenders are wrong. What we know about the facts would provide substantial evidence to any jury that these payments were all about influencing the election at a crucial moment, rather than purely personal matters — and thus, the payments were violations of federal election laws. The fact that Cohen was reimbursed by Trump for the payments the next year does not change the fact that Cohen’s initial payment was illegal, and we now know that AMI was never reimbursed by Trump at all.