Trump has been taking it easy this week on campaigning, preferring to spend his time mudslinging about infidelity and nude photos. In a final installment on the subject for now, Donald Trump claimed yesterday that Ted Cruz bought the rights to the GQ photos of his wife that were used in the distasteful attack ad in Utah last week.

In an interview yesterday on ABC News, he stated unequivocally that “From what I hear, [Ted Cruz] and his campaign went out and bought the cover shoot. Melania did a cover story for ‘GQ,’ a very strong modeling picture. But it was a cover story for ‘GQ,’ a big magazine,” Trump told ABC. “And it was, you know, fine. And from what I hear, somebody bought the rights to it and he was the one or his campaign bought the rights and they gave it to the super PAC.”

GQ UK Magazine, the magazine that originally published the photos and republished them a few weeks ago, repeatedly deny that Ted Cruz was the source of the photos. “In fact, this image was created by the anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome (which is an awesome name for a political action committee),” GQ UK said, “and Ted Cruz’s campaign team had nothing to do with it…the attack ad clearly shows it was created by a political action group.”

While the GQ article falls short of saying who actually bought the rights to the photos, if anyone, GQ UK states twice that Ted Cruz had nothing to do with the ads. It seems most likely that Make America Awesome did not actually have the rights to the photos.

For further proof here is a tweet from Liz Mair, the woman in charge of the Make America Awesome PAC:

Sources:
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEOSjcmvUC8#action=share
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/donald-trump-melania-trump-gq-photo-shoot
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/274411-trump-cruzs-campaign-bought-rights-to-gq-photo
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/03/23/gq-republishes-melania-trump-photo-shoot-that-utah-super-pac-used-in-ad/