DEVELOPING STORY: The Associated Press has learned that White House press officials altered an official transcript of a call in which President Biden slandered Trump supporters as “garbage.”
Federal workers strongly objected to the alteration, according to an internal email obtained by the Associated Press.
Biden, according to a transcript prepared by the official White House stenographers, told the Latino group on a Tuesday evening video call, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
But the transcript released by the White House press office rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters.”
Biden’s aides claimed that his comments were not directed at Trump supporters, but rather the profane comic who cracked an off-color joke about Puerto Rico.
The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by The AP. The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The supervisor, in the email, called the press office’s handling of the matter “a breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”
“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote, adding, “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) on accused White House staff of “releasing a false transcript” of Biden’s remarks.
In a letter to White House counsel Ed Siskel on Wednesday, they called on the administration to retain documents and internal communications related to Biden’s remarks and the release of the transcript.
“White House staff cannot rewrite the words of the President of the United States to be more politically on message,” the lawmakers wrote to Siskel.
Stefanik and Comer said the action could be in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
