Fresh on the heels of the Obama State Department getting caught doctoring the video of a 2013 press briefing exchange about the Iran deal, the Obama White House is under similar fire over the curious transcription omission of spokesman Josh Earnest's May 9 answer to a pointed question about the same controversial accord. The Free Beacon reports:
White House press secretary Josh Earnest could not explain Tuesday the omission of a potentially damaging line about the Iran nuclear deal from the official transcript of a White House press briefing last month, refusing to revisit the matter and rejecting the notion that there was any wrongdoing. Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke asked Earnest on May 9 if he could “state categorically that no senior official in this administration has ever lied publicly about any aspect of the Iran nuclear deal.” Earnest responded, “No, Kevin,” followed by a brief, awkward silence before discussing the merits of the nuclear agreement. The words “No, Kevin” never made it into the official White House transcript, however. The transcript immediately goes from Corke’s question into Earnest’s talking points about the Iran deal. ABC News first reported this story and noted the White House’s official response is that the line was omitted because it was inaudible.
Here's the ABC News report, which could begin to answer the question I posed over the weekend: How many times has this administration attempted to erase unhelpful realities from the official record? Now watch Fox's James Rosen hold Earnest's feet to the fire, pressing him about how "ABC News, Bloomberg News, [Rep.] Jason Chaffetz, many others, this reporter included, state categorically that the video shows, unmistakably, that you answered, ‘No, Kevin.’" And yet that answer -- the veracity of which is in serious dispute, based on revelations regarding Ben Rhodes' dishonest 'echo chamber' nuclear sales pitch -- never made it into the official record. Hmm:
An exasperated Earnest indignantly insists that there was nothing fishy about this transcription...abnormality, but the State Department also initially pretended that their deliberate wrongdoing was an innocent technical error. The Obama administration has proven over and over again that they lack credibility on virtually every assertion they make about the Iran deal, yet Earnest tries to deflect their conduct by blaming Republicans -- an argument we dealt with several weeks ago. I'll leave you with this:
Iran: No US official or citizen allowed into Iran to inspect nuke sites for compliance; bans visit from Congressmen https://t.co/lYbEpFOJMj
— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) June 7, 2016
