Canberra's most senior prosecutor accepts he should have clarified his "extremely grave" claims about the possibility of a political conspiracy in the Parliament House rape case.
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The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, Shane Drumgold SC, told an inquiry on Wednesday he had feared an unnamed senator had pressured police to make the case against Bruce Lehrmann "go away".
Mr Lehrmann has always denied raping Brittany Higgins at Parliament House in 2019, when the pair were Liberal Party staffers, and there have been no findings made against him.
Asked again on Thursday about his concerns a minister in the former Coalition government might have interfered with investigators, through the Australian Federal Police commissioner, Mr Drumgold said he had been "mistaken" to think that.
Katherine Richardson SC, representing the police force, grilled Mr Drumgold about this issue when the prosecutor returned to the witness box for a fifth day of evidence on Friday.
Ms Richardson suggested Mr Drumgold had made an allegation "of the gravest kind" when claiming, in a public inquiry about the conduct of authorities in the case, a political conspiracy may have existed.
She also put it to Mr Drumgold that it had been improper for him to give this evidence when he could not even remember if he had read AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw's statement to the inquiry.
Mr Drumgold denied it had been wrong to give the evidence he did on Wednesday, saying he had been responding to questions about his state of mind at the time of a letter he wrote in November 2022.
He said he had suspected political interference at that stage, when he called for a public inquiry into "political and police conduct", but his fears had been allayed before the inquiry began this week.
A battle subsequently broke out about whether Mr Drumgold had been giving evidence in the past or present tense when he first articulated his views about suspected political interference.
During a lengthy back-and-forth, Mr Drumgold accepted he should have made it clear from the start he no longer held the suspicions he once did.
"I should have injected the addendum," he told the inquiry.
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Inquiry chairman Walter Sofronoff KC agreed with Ms Richardson that the suggestion of political interference had been "an extremely grave matter", which would have amounted to an attempt to pervert the course of justice had it been true.
Mr Drumgold's evidence continues at the inquiry, where Sue Chrysanthou SC has begun cross-examining him on behalf of television presenter Lisa Wilkinson.
Ms Wilkinson was at the centre of a controversy that resulted in Mr Lehrmann's ACT Supreme Court trial being delayed for months.
When the trial finally did occur, last October, it had to be aborted during deliberations as a result of juror misconduct.
The ACT government subsequently ordered the current inquiry, which is investigating whether Mr Drumgold, police and Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates acted appropriately.
The inquiry has heard the relationship between Mr Drumgold and police was "beset by tension" from the outset, with the prosecutor pushing for Mr Lehrmann to be charged despite investigators expressing concerns about the strength of the evidence and the credibility of Ms Higgins.
