Alex Sink, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Florida, is lying about the incident in which she was caught cheating during a CNN debate with conservative rival Rick Scott. The Florida Tribune reports:

Sink told reporters in Tallahassee that she did not know ahead of the time that the message would be shown to her even though it appears she says “ok” right before she is given the phone by the make-up artist assisting her. She said she fired the aide, Brian May, who sent the text message, which told her to mention that a lawyer involved with a dispute with Sykes Investments said Sink had done nothing wrong. Scott has criticized Sink because Sykes was sued by Florida’s pension fund when she was on the company board.

“I looked around and she put this phone in my face and said I don’t know who this is from and I turned around and looked,” Sink said. “I mean I couldn’t tell really what it was.”

Sink said that when she found out the message came from the campaign she took action.

“When I learned what had happened and got to the bottom of it, I took accountability and I held the person who was responsible for the cheating accountable and he’s no longer with my campaign,” she said.

Oh, well, that all sounds nice. But even CNN isn’t buying it. Sink was told about the message before she looked at the phone:

But CNN reported on Tuesday night that Sink was told by the make-up artist that she had a “message from the staff” to give her.

And indeed, the video shows Sink in less than a hurry to look away from the phone. She does and says nothing about the message until Scott mentions what he witnessed to an official from CNN. Only then does Ms. Accountability decide she needs to do something.

She cheated, and she knew she was cheating. But instead of simply accepting responsibility and moving on, she’s lying. Which is a problem considering her chief selling point has been that she’s trustworthy.