Daily Mail uses the term “denies”, with its pejorative connotation of defensiveness.
NBC (!) stated that the White House identified the AP report as “untrue” or “false” (I can’t remember the actual wording).
NBC was actually more honest than Daily Mail.
Wow.
It sounds like a contingency plan to me - the kind that pencil pushers in the WH write up because they need something to do. They used to leak these to the press in the Reagan administration.