Hello native English teachers.
Queries about a long sentence.
These are not the words that I used or how I said it to him, and that, you know, maybe she had seen drafts of notes, trying to obviously give an excuse as to how Linda Tripp could possibly know about my relationship with the President without me having been the one to have told her. (original)
Query:
Is the original grammatically correct?
1. I don't confidently understand the "or how I said it to him" , but I guess it as : or these (words) are not the words I used in the way I said it to him.
Is my guess correct?
another query: the exact meaning of the "it" here depends on the context, without the context we don't know what the pronoun "it" refer to.??
2. Why is the "and that" here used?what does it means?
3. an excuse as to how Linda Tripp could possibly know about my relationship with the President
=
(I guess) an excuse on/about how Linda Tripp could possibly know about my relationship with the President.
is my guess correct?
4. Does the "she" here refer to Linda Tripp? (I think so)
5. I understand the " without me having been the one to have told her" this way: because I was not the one (man or woman?) at all who had told Linda Tripp that I had relationship with the President.
Is my guess correct?