The @nytimes knows full well that Trump is being deceptive and misleading in his suggestion that his lawyers' letter was leaked by Mueller.
Consider that this unsourced and yet in no way qualified paragraph is the Times clearly indicating that they were told things directly by Trump's lawyers, but only on condition that then not attribute it to anyone at all.
hyp.is/c2IuomdOEeimsY…
hyp.is/c2IuomdOEeimsY…
That's actually a strange amalgam of "off the record" which means they can't publish it at all unless they get it from someone else, and "on background" which means they can use it but only attribute it in an agreed-upon way.
So what exactly did the Times reporters promise Trump's lawyers? Did they promise to publicly leave open the possibility that the leak came from Mueller's team?
Because it seems to me that it would serve the public interest to know that Trump was wrong, and that it didn't come from Mueller, if the Times knows that to be the case.
So if the Times reporters promised they wouldn't deny it came from Mueller, they were essentially abetting a big lie.
I also thought the story was ridiculously lacking in skepticism and pushback. It's not hard to explain that corrupt intent may well Trump any executive assertion of power.
