The House Oversight Committee is applying pressure on the White House to release accurate transcripts, after they allegedly altered President Biden’s remarks after he called Trump supporters ‘garbage.’
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Oversight Chair James Comer, R-KY, sent a letter to the White House counsel’s office Friday demanding they preserve all documents related to the transcript.
‘To date, the White House has not issued a corrected transcript, and the false transcript remains on the White House webpage,’ they wrote.
The top members condemned the White House’s alteration of the official transcript, writing that the stenography office cannot ‘simply rewrite President Biden’s rhetoric.’
‘In this case, it appears the White House is doing so to safeguard Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign,’ they wrote.
Stefanik and Comer referred to an AP report, which cited an internal email from the head of the stenographer’s office, that noted that the press office ‘conferred with the president’ to change the transcript.
The shocking comment came during Biden’s remarks to Latino activists regarding comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments at a Trump rally. Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a ‘floating island of garbage.’
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.’
The transcript released by the White House press office, however, rendered the quote with an apostrophe, reading ‘supporter’s’ rather than ‘supporters.’
The White House insisted that Biden was criticizing Hinchcliffe’s comments – and not the huge swath of Americans supporting a Trump presidency.
The letter from the GOP leaders shared their ‘concern with the latest reporting of the White House’s apparent political decision to protect the Biden-Harris Administration, instead of following longstanding and proper protocols.’
The transcript standard states that: ‘If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently. 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.’
Now, Stefanik and Comer are demanding that the White House:
Produce all documents and internal communications regarding President Biden’s statement and the release of the inaccurate transcript.
Release the accurate version of the transcript the White House Stenographers submitted to NARA.
Immediately make available the White House Stenography Office’s top supervisor for a briefing to the Oversight Committee.