Mike Pence Is a Liar

So I'm reading this Politico piece about Mike Pence's denial that he knew anything about Don Jr. being penpals with Wikileaks, and I come to this incredible passage:

"The Vice President was never aware of anyone associated with the campaign being in contact with Wikileaks," said Pence's press secretary, Alyssa Farah, in a statement. "He first learned of this news from a published report earlier tonight."

Pence, as you may recall, has used this very same excuse multiple times before.

In fact, in a piece I wrote in February, after he made the same incredible claim about Mike Flynn's contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, I called it "his go-to move."

While Governor of Indiana, Pence used the old "had no knowledge" chestnut to distance himself from scandal. And it was just as absurd then as it is now.

Perhaps most famously, Pence claimed, exactly as he is now, that he learned from the press about the proposal for a state-run and taxpayer-funded news (propaganda) outlet: "I frankly learned about the memo from press reports late Monday."

He made this incredible claim despite the fact that two employees had already been hired; that "a governance board of communications directors" had been established; that a draft story had already been circulated; and that Pence himself had tweeted about it.

And he claimed that he learned about it from the media, just as he is claiming now.

This is his go-to move to try to disassociate himself from troubling stories that go public via leaks. He feigns ignorance, because it's preferable to look like he's out of the loop than intractably corrupt.

This is an identifiable play from his playbook. It's a lie to which he returns over and over.

Pence is a snake. And every single reporter covering this denial needs to contextualize it with his history of saying precisely the same thing: "Who me?! Oh geez, I found out about it from the news."

The fuck he did.