the independent covered it too but were very careful to say 'according to the daily mail' and to throw 'alleged to' in there a lot. didn't know reporting what another newspaper had reported without finding your own sources counted as journalism.
could be another red herring, could be a leak, the whole thing has been so obfuscated that it is indeed difficult to know what to think. it could have been a 'feeler' to see what people were willing to swallow. a lot of this feels like that tbh - as if things are released, there is incredulity or people not following the direction you'd think they'd go with it and then it either gets claimed to have been wrong or just goes quiet and is abandoned.