When former national security adviser Susan Rice on Tuesday claimed, “I leaked nothing to nobody,” she conjured at least two misdirections to throw investigators off the scent of actions she may have taken improperly to “unmask” Americans surveilled by federal intelligence agencies.

The first misdirection was in her grammar and syntax. If you say you’ve done nothing to nobody you are, strictly, admitting the very thing you ostensibly deny. A single negative — I did nothing to anybody — is a real denial. A double negative negates the denial.