An official on the administration’s antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization.

On Monday, after Harvard University publicly rejected a series of authoritarian demands Trump administration officials sent to Harvard the previous Friday, one of those officials tried out a novel de-escalation technique: He frantically called the university up and insisted the letter had been sent by mistake.

Harvard University was told by an unidentified official on Trump’s antisemitism task force that a letter of demands had been sent to the university without authorization, the New York Times reports, citing two unidentified people familiar with the matter.