MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell straight-up asked Maggie Haberman and co-author Jonathan Swan if they have audiotapes of meetings in the Trump Situation Room.

For weeks, Haberman and Swan have been dropping bombshells from their book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump — released on June 23 — which have been chock-full of splashy revelations.

The disturbing accounts of Situation Room meetings have sparked concern in the Trump administration that their own people have leaked recordings to the authors.

The authors were guests on Monday night’s edition of MS NOW’s The Last Word, during which O’Donnell cut right to the heart of the matter, grilling them about the tapes some believe they had obtained.

Haberman capped off the exchange with a quip about the reaction from the White House, telling O’Donnell “to have the only comment we have had from the White House so far be this is — this is accurate reporting, we agree”:

O’DONNELL: Jonathan, you got the greatest compliment a White House has ever given a book in the inside the White House genre created by Bob Woodward, honorably — honorably carried on by you. And this is the first time any White House and any administration has ever received such a book, accusing the authors of having obtained audiotapes of meetings in the White House, including audiotapes of meetings in the Situation Room, which is the White House way of saying this book, as far as they can tell, is 100 percent accurate. Is that because you have audiotapes of the Situation Room?

SWAN: We’re not going to comment on the — on the tapes. All we’ll say is that it is notable that there haven’t been denials of very specific scenes inside the Situation Room, which include extensive dialog.

O’DONNELL: You have — Maggie, you explain in the book the use of quotation marks, and you use quotation marks only if you got the statement from someone who was in the conversation or right there in the room when the words were said. Someone had to either say the words or hear the words for you to put it in quotation marks. Other statements are in there, they’re not in quotation marks. It’s someone giving you their best recollection of what was said there.

But as you study the quotation marks in some of these one-on-one conversations, it seems based on the rules, which you explained, the rules of quotation marks in the book, there’s a — I would — I would just leave it to the reader to see if you can figure out who might be the source of — of some of these. But what was your reaction to the White House just assuming, it’s so accurate, they must have tapes?

HABERMAN: Again, we’re not going to discuss sourcing, including their speculation that we’ve seen out there.

But, look, we were surprised that the vice president told Megyn Kelly really that the reporting was — was so accurate. And we have not yet had the White House say that anything is incorrect here. Doesn’t mean they won’t at some point. The book comes out tomorrow. But we worked really hard to make sure that this was — that this was accurate and that we were delivering the most accurate first draft of history that we could.

And so, yes, that — to have the only comment we have had from the White House so far be this is — this is accurate reporting, we agree.

Watch above via MS NOW’s The Last Word.

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