Among the 24 different defenses Republicans have trotted out in an effort to convince people Donald Trump should not be impeached, one of the most absurd is that the president was just an innocent patsy in this whole Ukraine business, and that his deputies acted alone. It’s not remotely believable, given the president’s documented love of corruption and obvious belief that it’s his right as the king of America to make other countries investigate his rivals, but that didn’t stop Trump himself from trying out the explanation this week, like the desperate man he is.

In an interview with former Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly, Trump told the disgraced ex-host that he did not direct Rudy Giuliani to go to Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rivals and, in fact, had no idea what his personal attorney was doing there. “You have to ask that to Rudy,” Trump said, noting that “Rudy has other clients, other than me,” and “has done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years.” “You didn’t direct him to go there on your behalf?” O’Reilly pressed. “No,” the pathological liar insisted.

Of course, the idea that Giuliani was not acting directly on Trump’s behalf is not only ridiculous knowing what we know about the ex-real estate developer, but damn near impossible given the high volume of evidence to the contrary. For starters, long before the formal impeachment inquiry had been launched, Giuliani was telling anyone who would listen—including the New York Times and Hannity—that he was encouraging Ukraine to open investigations he hoped would help Trump. As New York’s Jonathan Chait notes, “If Giuliani was somehow doing all this without Trump’s permission, Trump might have said something.” Then there are the sworn testimonies of both Trump donor turned E.U. ambassador Gordon Sondland and former U.S. special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, who both told lawmakers that Trump had directed them to work with Giuliani. As Sondland said in his opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee last week, he, Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry “did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani,” but did so “at the express direction of the president of the United States.”

Then there’s the recent claim from the attorney of Lev Parnas, Giuliani’s business associate, that Trump pulled both Parnas and Igor Fruman aside at last year’s White House Hanukkah party and tasked them with working on the “secret mission” to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. And of course, because Trump has repeatedly insisted we all of his July 25 phone call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, here’s a fun little passage from that document: