This timeline shows the damning evolution of Trump's Russia collusion denials

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday moved the goal posts during a stunning CNN interview in which he allowed that some members of President Donald Trump's campaign may have conspired with the Russian government.

Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake has taken a look back at past defenses of the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia, and he found that Giuliani's admission is the largest departure yet from the "no collusion" line of defense, but it's far from the only one.

In fact, as Blake writes, former Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks initially said back in November that "there was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign." Within three months, that line had changed to there being no communications "to the best of our knowledge."

Just one month after that, Donald Trump Jr. admitted that he might have met with Russians, but he said that there were no prearranged meetings during the campaign.

That, of course, was revealed to have been a lie just four months later when we learned that Trump Jr. took a meeting with a Russian operative in June 2016 in which he was promised dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

That brings us to the next step in the evolution: Admitting, as Giuliani did in July 2018, that there was a prearranged meeting with Russian officials, but that Trump was not present at that meeting.

Read the entire timeline at this link.