"Hitler did nothing wrong..." "Orangutan did nothing wrong..."

Sarah Sanders' refrain: Trump 'did nothing wrong'

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

One day after a series of punishing legal hits for the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stuck to a refrain: The president “did nothing wrong,” she reiterated, using nearly identical language at least 11 times.

On Tuesday, the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was found guilty on eight counts of tax and bank fraud. His former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to fraud and campaign finance violations. And Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), one of the first lawmakers to back Trump ahead of the 2016 election, was charged with campaign finance violations.

But none of that, Sanders said during the White House press briefing, meant the president was involved in any wrongdoing.

Sanders kicked off the briefing with a statement on the Category 4 hurricane bearing down on Hawaii, and she also touched on a summary of a call between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and on an Iowa college student who police said was killed by an undocumented immigrant.

But reporters’ questions kept returning to Manafort, Cohen and how the White House was handling the legal woes.

Cecilia Vega of ABC News pointed out that Cohen said Tuesday under oath that he was acting on Trump’s directions when he made payments to two women who alleged they had affairs with the president. “Did President Trump commit a crime?” Vega asked.

“As the president said, we stated many times, he did nothing wrong,” Sanders responded.

“Why not report the payments?” Vega followed up.

“Again, I’m not getting into the back-and-forth details. I can tell you as the president has stated on numerous occasions, he did nothing wrong,” Sanders said. “There are no charges against him in this.”

“Can you say the president has never lied to the American people?” Vega asked, referencing an assertion Trump made months ago that he didn’t know about Cohen’s payments to the women.

“I think that’s a ridiculous accusation,” Sanders said, before returning to her theme: “The president in this matter has done nothing wrong. There are no charges against him.”

By the time she called on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Sanders had grown exasperated with being hammered on the topic.

“Once again, I have addressed this a number of times,” she told Collins in response to a question about a recent interview on Cohen that Trump had given to Fox News. “Just because you continue to ask the same questions over and over, I am not giving a different answer.”

After Sanders told another reporter that she had “addressed all that I’m going to say on the Cohen issue” and directed the correspondent to reach out to Trump’s outside counsel, the reporter responded, “Can’t we bring them in here for the briefing? Even better, have a press conference.”

“I would encourage you to reach out to them,” Sanders said. Then she moved on.