Donald Trump’s lawyer is claiming that the October 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels came out of his own pocket. The lawyer’s, not Trump’s. This raises some questions, and Michael Cohen, who is one of Trump’s longtime personal lawyers, not one of his Russia investigation lawyers, isn’t giving plausible answers:

“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly,” Mr. Cohen said in a statement to The New York Times. “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”

He declined to answer several follow-up questions, including whether Mr. Trump had been aware that Mr. Cohen made the payment, why he made the payment or whether he had made similar payments to other people over the years.

So Cohen wishes us to believe that, right before the election, he paid $130,000 of his own personal money to prevent reports that Trump had an affair, but it wasn’t a campaign contribution? The payment was unrelated to Trump’s election prospects? How exactly does that work? And Cohen isn’t saying whether he’s made a habit of frequently paying out six figures out of his own pocket merely to spare Donald Trump marital strife when the presidency wasn’t on the line, which would be the way to prove he didn’t do it just because of the election … but might be a problem for Trump if it turned out to have happened frequently.

None of this passes the smell test, like so many other things in Donald Trump’s orbit. It’s pretty clear that when you’re paying out hush money right before an election, it’s an election expenditure, and when someone other than the candidate, his campaign, or his business does it, it’s very hard to see how it’s not a campaign contribution. Which would be rather more than the $2,700 maximum legal contribution.

But while in a normal presidency this would be a major scandal, this is Trump. It’s probably not even the third most egregious scandal we’ll see from him and his inner circle this week.