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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes used the president’s own campaign-season rhetoric against him on Wednesday, rolling footage of then-GOP nominee Donald Trump falsely accusing Hillary Clinton of a pay-to-play scheme.

Little did we know at the time that Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen were involved in the very same conduct they accused Hillary Clinton of in 2016 – taking money in exchange for access and influence.

Video:

Trump and Cohen apparently engaged in the very same pay-to-play scheme they accused Hillary Clinton of in 2016, says Chris Hayes. #inners pic.twitter.com/h23mi2ylTH — PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) May 10, 2018

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Chris Hayes explained:

For the year and a half that we have been tracking every development in the Russia story, we had no idea there was another possibly even bigger scandal connected to the Trump administration and part of the Mueller probe, a potential corruption scandal that could involve the very same conduct the president accused his opponent of during the campaign. … Tonight we now know that large sums of money have been flowing through a shell company set up by a close associate of the President of the United States before the election. Robert Mueller, on the other hand, has already been on the trail on this for at least six months. Yet again, his investigation several steps ahead of what’s known to us in the public.

For once, Trump is right

Trump’s campaign-season rhetoric has taken new meaning over the past 24 as it becomes increasingly clear that Michael Cohen was paid large sums of money to get access to Trump.

As Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti noted on Tuesday, Cohen essentially set up a shell company – the same one he used to pay off the adult film star – to receive money from companies who wanted influence over and access to Donald Trump.

“They don’t want the American people to know the truth of where the money came from and where the money went,” Avenatti told Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday.

As Donald Trump said in 2016 when spewing one of his debunked Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories: “It’s called pay for play. … It’s illegal.”

For once, Trump is correct. This time, though, it’s he who is embroiled in a potentially illegal scheme – not his political opponent.

And unlike the Hillary Clinton non-scandal that he spent months lying about during the campaign, this one has a money trail.