It’s all about maintaining plausible deniability with this crowd. As the plausible possibilities are ruled out and narrow, their manufactured backstory gets inevitably more ridiculous trying to match the known with being aboveboard and legal. That is, if it’s pursued. Republicans are notoriously casual about that. Trump is different, we’ll see but garden variety GOPe are still attempting to have their collegial way.
The longer the carries on the more lies they lay out and may be trapped by.