"Georges stated in his interrogations that he had come to find out the prospects for a movement against Bonaparte and that if he considered it appropriate he would have sent for one of the princes and then acted under his orders, an attack in force against the First Consul was one of his options but he consistently rejected the idea of an assassination."

An accused criminal pleading innocence is not very reliable. When Tsar Paul I was assassinated the assassins claimed they were just trying to persuade him to abdicate and then accidently stab him with a sword, strangled him and trampled the body. Oops! Sort of like Henry Fonda's line in "Once Upon a Time in the West" when Morton says he was just supposed to scare the McBain's, "People scare better when they're dying."

Nor is the lack of evidence in secret service cases evidence as it would be natural not to put these things in writing.