Here’s some video of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is under fire for embellishing his war record, stating clearly in a high profile setting earlier this year: “I did not serve Vietnam.”

The video, which was sent over by the DSCC, will be central to Blumenthal’s damage control efforts in the wake of The New York Time’s stunning report saying Blumenthal never served in Vietnam despite repeatedly suggesting otherwise. The pushback from Blumenthal, the heavy favorite to win the Senate race, will be that Blumenthal did not intend to deceive.

To be clear, the video does not get Blumenthal off the hook for his previous claims to having served. But the video, which is from a debate in March, suggests that Blumenthal was not wedded in all settings to maintaining the fiction that he did active duty:

Blumenthal said:

“Although I did not serve in Vietnam, I have seen firsthand the effects of military action, and no one wants it to be the first resort, nor do we want to mortgage the country’s future with a deficit that is ballooning out of control.”