The Trump administration has a problem with anonymous sources and the media outlets who run stories based entirely on them. This, in the White House’s view, is how unfair and untrue narratives about the Trump campaign’s nefarious connections with Russia persist. “People start taking things as fact because a series of off-the-record, anonymous sources say they [are],” press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday. “At some point, I would ask people to take on-the-record sources and quotes as important as the countless numbers of anonymous and off-the-record [sources].”

It’s a fair point. So why doesn’t the same apply to the administration’s own defense of President Trump’s claim he was wiretapped by President Obama?