By the 5th hole of the 4th round, including practice rounds and practice putting, let's assume that Johnson had gone thru that EXACT preshot routine several hundred times, and let's assume that the 5th hole yesterday was the ONLY time the ball moved.
If Johnson's preshot routine hadn't caused the ball to move at any time before the 5th hole, then his statement that he didn't cause the ball to move not only makes sense, but it the best evidence for what actually happens. We SAW the ball NOT move while he went thru that routine beside the ball, and we SAW the putter NOT touch the ground or the ball when it DID move.
Add to that Johnson was on triple-cut and rolled greens running 14+, why doesn't Occam's Razor explain what we saw? (And that doesn't even address the idiotic lags from the 5th hole to the 12th hole, and from the 12th hole to the end of the round. Azinger knew in real time that Jeff Hall was actually saying that there was going to be a penalty, and lo, it came to pass...)
This doesn't seem complicated to me, and it is next to impossible for me not to condemn the USGA for yet another situation in which they show incompetence. Be it grooves, anchoring, playing alone, or the local rule for sprinkler heads at Pinehurst and Chambers Bay, these guys just come across as asshats whose grandfathers made a lot of money. I'm sure that's unfair, but perception becomes reality at some point.