Holocaust denier Trump White House official Paul Ingrassia’s lawyer Ed Paltzik wasted very little time on Friday responding to Politico’s early morning story about his client’s really weak-ass attempt to eff a female colleague, raging at them in a letter reading “Politico’s hit piece about Mr Ingrassia is calculated to cause maximum harm to his promising career – and torpedo his nomination for Special Counsel. This vexatious political attack masquerading as ‘journalism’ is defamatory and will be addressed in forthcoming litigation. To be 100 percent crystal clear, so that there is zero room for doubt: Mr Ingrassia did not engage in any wrongdoing in connection with the matters reported.”

The “matters reported” were that Ingrassia had secretly rigged travel accommodations to force a subordinate female co-worker in a transparent attempt to initiate sex by forced proximity. By denying “wrongdoing” rather than the allegation well he’s kind of indirectly acknowledging that it happened but it’s totally cool for Ingrassia to have made a woman share a hotel room with him. The lawyer did admit that the sleeping arrangement part was true in comments on the initial piece.

Paltzik continues with “As Politico itself reported: ‘The woman, whom Politico is not naming, said in a statement that she never felt uncomfortable’ about Ingrassia’s behavior and said she had never made a complaint.’ This is one of the only accurate parts of Politico’s otherwise fantastical and fictional partisan fairy tale.” Bitchy, histrionic complaining aside, he did at least acknowledge that it was contradictory for him to credit one part of the story but not the other key details.

Key details such as that Politico only approached the woman after they had heard it from other sources with knowledge of the situation, sources who had already told them the woman had twice protested and then backed off for fear of retaliation: First at the hotel itself on the night in question and then through a formal complaint to HR that she later withdrew. So given that she didn’t want it litigated internally is that much of a surprise she doesn’t want to tell friggin Politico? Jesus Christ.

“Accordingly, one last time, I call upon Politico to publicly apologize and issue a full retraction of this disgraceful and partisan sludge,” Paltzik concludes and it’s pretty hard to try to see what the point was here if it wasn’t to just emptily soothe his client after what would be like an extinction-level embarrassment for any man with any shred of self-confidence whatsoever was amplified so publicly.

The only thing Paltzik is still clinging onto is the hotel arrangements and for all we know someone from the Orlando Sentinel is there right now chatting up the manager and angling for some access to the reservation records. Politico themselves can handle the White House/Homeland Security internal investigation angle and are probably working to get more confirmation on that part of the story too.

Also who the hell thinks Politico is partisan sludge? That’s defamatory and deeply disrespectful to an august institution known as the gold standard in pants-pissing bothsiderist sludge.