New York Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly said that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed to let them interview him for their upcoming book ― as long as they would publicly lie about it.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, Kelly and Pogrebin said that Kavanaugh told them he would talk to the reporters to provide them with background information as long as they falsely noted in the book that he declined to be interviewed.

On Thursday, the Times reporters told The Hill’s chief Washington correspondent Saagar Enjeti that a Kavanaugh representative laid out the deal: a line in the book that “Kavanaugh declined to comment” in return for the justice talking to them.

Reporters from The Atlantic and The Washingtonian shared the Times reporters’ revelation on Twitter.

The Times reporters said their talks about setting up an interview with Kavanaugh took place when the book was in its final stages. Kelly and Pogrebin said they couldn’t agree to the justice’s terms, so they couldn’t conduct the interview.

The “Education of Brett Kavanaugh” authors declined to comment further on the matter on Thursday and pointed HuffPost to remarks they made in previous interviews this week. Representatives for Kavanaugh did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

On the same day of the National Press Club event, the reporters told the hosts of Yahoo’s Skullduggery podcast that they initially asked Kavanaugh to meet with them “very early on” in their book-writing process, though he didn’t consider it seriously until “kind of late in the process.”