Instead, they are making what many see as a more damaging assertion: that the president misled the American people by promising nothing would change about their health plans if they liked them.
Priebus also faced reports that, as a corporate attorney at the Wisconsin firm Michael Best & Friedrich, he helped clients tap into federal stimulus funds - a potentially damaging assertion in conservative circles.
Britain's prime minister has a duty to urgently review the UK's equivocal position on Libya and avoid the damaging assertion, to which civil servants cling tight, that "there is no military solution to Libya, only political".
Perhaps the most damaging assertion is that several starting pitchers were sneaking off to the clubhouse for beer, fried chicken and video games while their teammates were on the field.
However, the statement issued by the spokesman for the president did not directly address the report's most damaging assertion: that Mr. Uribe was linked to the top drug kingpin of the era, Pablo Escobar.
Lawyers say Mr. Oteri's strategy of admitting some damaging assertions is a common but hazardous one.
Some of the legal experts said that the most damaging assertions included accusations that Mr. Clinton committed crimes.
But the Golf Digest excerpt did not include one of the more damaging assertions by Haney about the effect of this training.
The CIA is going to be under intense pressure in the years to come, both because of the plethora of international threats and the inclination of this president to make ludicrously inaccurate, damaging assertions.
Among the most damaging assertions by Mr. Abramoff is that Mr. Ney knew that an expensive golfing trip to Scotland in 2002 was being financed by the lobbyist around the time that Mr. Ney was pushing a measure in Congress beneficial to one of Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribe clients.
"Over the last 12 months, I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as 'muppets', sometimes over internal email". Quite what Blankfein will do if the phrase is found in internal emails is not yet clear to employees or external observers, although he did tell staff on the day of Smith's claims two weeks ago that he would examine his damaging assertions carefully.
