(1) First their senior business executive (Michael) not only floats his plan at very public venue, but mentions both the budget ($1M) and the number of researches (4) they were thinking of hiring.

(2) And then later, in damage control mode, the spokesperson (Hourdajian) tries to clean up by saying they've "never considered" doing opposition research -- despite Michael having just named both a specific budget they were thinking of allocating, and a specific number of researchers they were thinking of hiring.