CNN called White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders a liar Wednesday evening in a growing dispute over the conduct of Jim Acosta and the revocation of his press pass over a tussle with a White House intern.

In her statement announcing the revocation of Mr. Acosta’s access to the White House, Mrs. Sanders had said President Trump will “never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”

CNN begged to differ.

“In an explanation, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders lied. She provided fraudulent accusations and cited an incident that never happened,” stated CNN, a network that frequently labels White House statements as false in its coverage and on its chyrons.

Mr. Acosta himself also used the L-word, responding to Mrs. Sanders on Twitter claiming he had placed his hands on a White House intern by quoting her tweet and writing “this is a lie.”

Later on Wednesday evening, Mrs. Sanders rebutted the claim she is a liar, tweeting out a video of the incident that highlighted Mr. Acosta chopping his arm across hers in an attempt to push her away from the microphone.

We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video. pic.twitter.com/T8X1Ng912y — Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8, 2018

The CNN statement said the network stood behind Mr. Acosta.

The White House Correspondents Association also criticized the decision, albeit in less emphatic language, calling the Trump administration’s revocation “out of line to the purported offense” in its statement without using the word “lie.”

Still, the WHCA called the Acosta revocation “unacceptable”.

“We urge the White House to immediately reverse this weak and misguided action. We encourage anyone with doubts that this reaction was disproportionate to the perceived offense to view the video of the events from earlier today,” the association said.

• Dave Boyer contributed to this report.

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