The Department of Justice has admitted that audio recordings of President Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur were altered, but claim they contain 'minor differences.'
"The interview transcripts are accurate transcriptions of the words of the interview contained in the audio recording, except for minor instances such as the use of filler words (such as ‘um’ or ‘uh’) when speaking that are not always reflected on the transcripts, or when words may have been repeated when spoken (such as ‘I, I’ or ‘and, and’) but sometimes was only listed a single time in the transcripts," DOJ official Bradley Weinsheimer said in a Friday filing.
"Besides these exceedingly minor differences, based on my simultaneous review of the transcripts while listening to the audio recording, the transcripts accurately capture the words spoken during the interview on the audio recording with no material differences between the audio recording and transcripts," Weinsheimer claims.
The Justice Department deliberately altered the transcripts they’re insisting are so comprehensive that you don’t need the audio.
— Sunny (@sunnyright) June 3, 2024
They lied to the public about Joe Biden’s deposition and then have worked to cover it up by having DOJ suppress evidence. https://t.co/wR6vmmBOU0
Of course, we may never know if that's true - after the Biden administration claimed executive privilege over the tapes.
The Friday filing was made in support of the DOJ's request to toss a court case brought by Judicial Watch and other groups to obtain the recordings.
🚨🚨 Your overthrown government’s Department of Justice altered evidence again,
— 🇺🇸RealRobert🇺🇸 (@Real_RobN) June 3, 2024
Freedom of Information Act released by @JudicialWatch :
Biden administration forced to admit to inaccurate transcript in court filing in Federal lawsuit.
— cleaned up transcript of Joe Biden's… pic.twitter.com/wzcSdqQg9E
According to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, the Biden admin has been forced "to admit what everyone suspected—that the transcript is not accurate and was changed in a way to help Biden,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “There is nothing ordinary about this, and the transcript inaccuracy issues seem to help Biden’s political campaign needs."
Instead of releasing the tapes, officials pointed to the fact that they released transcripts of the interview - which we now know were altered.
Government officials also claimed that if they released the audio, they could be altered into deepfakes!
"If the recording of President Biden’s interview were released, there is a substantial risk that malicious actors could alter the recording to (for example) insert words that President Biden did not say or delete words that he did say," said Weinsheimer, adding that the issue "has been substantially exacerbated in recent years given that there is now widely available technology that can be used to create entirely different audio ‘deepfakes’ based on a recording."
Hilarious.