Veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward said the president has been distorting the facts in recent statements about the sequester cuts.

Woodward first gained prominence when he and Carl Bernstein, both working for The Washington Post, broke the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Richard Nixon’s resignation as president.

The brouhaha started when the White House responded to a Washington Post op-ed in which Woodward wrote that Obama is “moving the goal posts” by adding tax revenue as a condition of averting the sequester cuts. Woodward called sequester the “brainchild” of the White House.

“My extensive reporting for my book ‘The Price of Politics’ shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of [Jack Lew, then-budget director during the negotiations] and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government,” Woodward wrote, according to Politico.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney fired back that Woodward was “willfully wrong.”

Not about to let the Obama administration have the last word, Woodward shot an email to Politico Playback.

“The White House pushback is a classic case of distortion and confusion,” Woodward wrote. “We unfortunately have seen this too often in recent presidential history. … I do not think it is willful. They are just mixed up, surprisingly so.”

I agree. We’ve seen a lot of this lately. As to whether it’s willful or not, I’ll let history be the final arbiter.

Read more at Politico.

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