Hipkins<\/a> and Mitchell have strongly denied that.<\/p>\nSpeaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, Luxon said he “absolutely” believed Hipkins over Coster.<\/p>\n
“All I can do is take him at his word,” Luxon said. “There’s no reason why I wouldn’t.”<\/p>\n
Luxon has previously said he trusted Mitchell’s account as well.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Mitchell also told reporters that based on his own experience, he too sided with Hipkins: “I think that he’s telling the truth.”<\/p>\n
Mitchell said Coster had a “very different recollection of events” to everyone else involved in the saga.<\/p>\n
But in a tweet early on Tuesday morning, the official New Zealand First account posted: “Is it not a fact that Chris Hipkins knew about Jevon McSkimming affair in 2022 when he was Police Minister?”<\/p>\n
Asked for his response on Tuesday, Hipkins responded succinctly: “It is not a fact”.<\/p>\n
Hipkins said he had searched his memories and checked with a staffer who was with him when Coster claimed the informal briefing took place.<\/p>\n
“I checked that with the only other person who I could check that with. They’ve also verified that that conversation never happened.”<\/p>\n
Hipkins said if New Zealand First was questioning his word, then it was also questioning the word of Mitchell.<\/p>\n
“That’s probably something that the prime minister might want to take up with his former deputy.”<\/p>\n
RNZ has approached NZ First for comment.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, Luxon said he “absolutely” believed Hipkins over Coster. Photo: RNZ Prime Minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-175595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}