In his DailyKos diary, Hunter claims that Gilliard's email on the Townhouse list was totally fabricated.

The email in question:

I dont see how this can be ignored. We should all write in defense of this once we know the facts. Jerome? (Gilliard)

Hunter's claim in his diary:

That email is completely fictitious.  Gilliard never sent any such thing to the Townhouse list, nor did anyone else do so.  Nor, according to Gilliard, did he ever write any such e-mail at all, to Townhouse or anyone else.

Now on to Steve Gilliard's statement from HIS blog (emphasis mine):

To be fair, I told Glenn (Greenwald) I disagreed with the characterization of it being false, because I may have express some kind of sentiment close to that. The issue to me is not that Zengerle created it out of whole cloth, but if he got it from a source that he was too lazy and sloppy to confirm it with me. Let me be clear, I didn't deny writing the e-mail. I said that I had no record of writing such an e-mail with that phrase, to the list on that day.

I told Zengerle the same thing and that he needs to provide the provenance of the e-mail so I can confirm or deny it. If it turns out I didn't write those words, I'm going to write Franklin Foer, the editor of the New Republic and demand a retraction and an apology.

I write thousands of words a day between e-mails, IM, posts and comments. It is easy to lose a phrase or e-mail in that, which I why I can't call it a fabrication. It may be taken from another e-mail, or a post, but I cannot find those words in my mailbox.

Which means he needs to provide me with the entire e-mail in context.

Now, I could have claimed to have not written it, and then say I forgot if it came up, but I'm not going to play that way. I was taught journalistic ethics at NYU, and I still practice them. I told Zengerle I couldn't find the words, and that Greenwald had a piece up, because I'm not going to sandbag anyone, I'm not going to make shit up and I'm not going to leave anyone unable to respond.  

So--Gilliard is NOT saying the email Zengerle quoted is false, he's saying that he honestly can't remember it, and he wants to see Zengerle's source before he calls "bullshit" on it.

This is far more nuanced and cautious than Hunter's bold claim that the Gilliard email is a total fabrication.  Gilliard refuses to say that at this point.

So we'll have to wait and see what Gilliard has to say on this.

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?