Throw the flag against: Barack Obama.
Call: Unsportsmanlike conduct.
What happened: Obama and his campaign have flatly denied since last week that there was a meeting between his senior economic policy adviser Austan Goolsbee and the Canadian government regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement, as reported by Canadian media.
On Monday, the Associated Press reported that it had obtained an internal memo written by a Canadian official who attended a meeting with Goolsbee. Only then did Obama acknowledge that the meeting had taken place. He maintained he hadn't known about it when he first refuted it.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe claimed Monday that Goolsbee had met with the Canadians not in his capacity with the campaign, but as a professor. But the Canadians have since indicated that they had reached out to Goolsbee because of his role with the Obama campaign.
Obama has been critical of NAFTA on the campaign trail and vowed to require Canada and Mexico to amend it on labor and environmental issues.
Rival Hillary Clinton has been emphasizing one Canadian official's apparent impression, as conveyed in the memo, that Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric is political posturing and shouldn't be taken literally. Obama denies that.
But his denial of the meeting for days after questions about it had arisen raises doubts about his veracity. Obama has campaigned on promises of government transparency and ending business as usual. His explanations about the Canada meeting defy credibility.
Penalty: Push his credibility back 15 yards.
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