Larry Pfeiffer, the former director of the White House Situation Room when Barack Obama was president, said he did not think the ellipses were very important in the call transcript between President Trump and the Ukrainian president.
“I personally would not read too much into the ellipses. I’m guessing those are just reflections of a pause in the conversation,” Pfeiffer said Wednesday on CNN. “Perhaps in the initial notations made in a Situation Room transcript there may have been some inaudible words and they indicated with some notation there were inaudible words and somebody on the NSC staff then translated that to ellipses. I’d be very surprised if they dropped large sections of texts from the phone call given how many people are witnesses to these calls.”
The White House released a transcript Wednesday of a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked for Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. The transcript contained ellipses which some critics have said could mean the transcript was incomplete.
The release of the transcript follows the opening of an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats over whether Trump tried to force the Ukrainian president into a quid pro quo to investigate Biden.
The Trump administration argues that Biden, when he was vice president, had forced the Ukrainians to fire their top prosecutor because he was investigating his son, Hunter Biden.
