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When at last Trudeau himself addressed the matter, after the National Post published a story in which the newspaper’s former editor and publisher confirmed the reporter came to them with the same accusation, it was on precisely the same line. He told reporters Sunday that he remembered “that day in Creston well,” that he had “a good day that day,” and that “I don’t remember any negative interactions that day at all.”

All of which succeeded only in raising more questions. But then, as many asked, what else could he say?

Ah, but that was to reckon without the prime minister’s cunning. Knowing the question was coming, Trudeau took the occasion of a press conference Thursday to give an answer that managed neither to deny the charge nor to admit to it. Or rather it seemed at times both to deny it and to admit it. It was in short a masterpiece of calculated ambiguity — and an unmitigated disaster.

It started out as a fairly straightforward denial. “I’ve been reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago,” he began. “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way.”

Fair enough. But then he went on. “But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.” After all, as he later elaborated: “the same interactions can be experienced very differently from one person to the next.”

This is of course true. Criminal trials often turn on the differences in people’s recollections and indeed their experiences of the same events. And yet the judge is required to return a verdict all the same. People’s perceptions of the facts may differ, but the facts exist independent of them. It is the business of a trial to decide whose version of the facts is closer to the truth — not to conclude that each is true to them.