House Speaker Paul Ryan wants the Obama administration to investigate who secretly pushed to edit a State Department video to remove a politically damaging comment made during a 2013 press conference.
“If they truly care about transparency, the administration should investigate who requested this selective editing and why,” Ryan, R-Wis., said Thursday in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.
The State Department admitted Wednesday that a 2013 press briefing video was purposefully altered to remove a portion of a discussion about the Iran nuclear talks, after an unknown State Department official asked that it be edited out.
Spokesman John Kirby’s announcement contradicted the position held by the department for the last three weeks, during which officials said the video was missing because of a “glitch.”
But Kirby said officials didn’t know who asked for the video to be edited, and said the department is unlikely to investigate further into who wanted the video to be edited.
Most in the GOP oppose the Iran nuclear deal and have accused the administration of using deceptive tactics to sell the deal to the public.
“This admission proves once again that the White House intentionally misled the American people about the Iran deal,” Ryan said.
Fox News discovered the missing video clip more than three weeks ago. The clip shows then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki, responding to a question from Fox correspondent James Rosen about whether officials ever lie to the public to protect national security interests. Psaki seemed to indicate that this does happen.
“James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that,” Psaki replied.
