Isn't it something that we can't even get to the bottom of even something this precise?
It sure is. But it might have been a series of oral communications, not a single blast. Like, "Oh, don't prosecute Hunter, and this other guy." And then, a few weeks later, "Remember our conversation? We'd appreciate it if you didn't hassle this other fella, either."
If done in a slippery fashion, it rapidly becomes he said/she said, and far less precise.
That's my point. It seems everything these swamp folks do or say is cloaked in "cloak and dagger."