The State Department replied on Thursday to request for information about an edited press briefing video that has outraged Republicans, one day after the deadline set by the GOP.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, made the request a week ago, and asked that State send him every document and bit of information it had by June 8. But State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the reply was finally sent around mid-day June 9.
“It was sent in the last hour or so,” he said at his daily press briefing after 1 p.m. Thursday. “No, it did not go yesterday.”
But while the report was late, Toner said it wasn’t late because the department was adding new information. Toner replied, “no” when asked if new details were provided, said “no” when asked if any relevant email traffic had been found, and said “no” in general if the probe has uncovered anything else new.
“We were just finalizing it,” he said. “Dotting ‘I’s, crossing ‘T’s.”
Toner also called it a “partial” response to Chaffetz’s request for any information it has.
“It addresses what we know about the incident and what we’ve been able to determine by interviewing this person, the technician, and also looking at emails, and basically giving a lay down of the events as we know them, a timeline if you will,” he said.
Chaffetz demanded the report after the department admitted someone intentionally edited the press briefing video to remove a portion in which a former spokeswoman implied that officials sometimes lie to the public.
State initially called it a “glitch,” but then said it was intentional three weeks later. Republicans say it’s another sign of how desperate the administration was to sell the Iran deal, and Chaffetz demanded more information after State said it hit a “dead end.”
On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry asked officials to take another look at what happened, after he called the entire episode “clumsy” and “stupid.”
