President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen is heading to jail for three years. But the president is trying to remove himself from the narrative, even claiming the crimes that Cohen is going to jail over aren’t actually crimes.

Cohen claimed that Trump used him as a middle-man for hush money payments made to two women who allegedly had affairs with Trump, former Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels. He said the payments were made “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” therefore making them a campaign finance violation.

Trump, who first denied the payments were ever made, called the payments “a simple private transaction” in a tweet earlier this week. With Cohen’s sentencing on Wednesday, the president returned to Twitter to defend himself.

“I never directed Cohen to break the law,” he tweeted Thursday morning, adding that because he acted on Cohen’s legal advice, he’s not at fault.

I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called “advice of counsel,” and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid. Despite that many campaign finance lawyers have strongly……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018

The president continued, doubting the legitimacy of Cohen’s guilty plea, “He plead to two campaign charges which were not criminal and of which he probably was not guilty even on a civil basis.”

….stated that I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws, if they even apply, because this was not campaign finance. Cohen was guilty on many charges unrelated to me, but he plead to two campaign charges which were not criminal and of which he probably was not…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018

Trump concluded by stating that Cohen agreed to the charges to “embarrass the president,” referring to himself in the third person.

….guilty even on a civil basis. Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did-including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook. As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018

While Trump is trying to diminish the seriousness of Cohen’s crimes, legal experts disagree.

Judge William Pauley, who presided over the case, said in court that “each of these crimes is a serious offense against the United States … Mr. Cohen pled guilty to a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.”