White House Press Secretary Jay Carney preempted his daily press briefing Friday to hold an off-the-record briefing with reporters after ABC News reported that morning that the White House’s Benghazi talking points were scrubbed of terror references ahead of U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s appearances on TV just after the attack.
According to POLITICO, which broke the news of Carney’s secret briefing, the impromptu meeting began around 12:45pm eastern. It is unknown what time the meeting ended or which reporters and what publications were invited. However, it went long enough that Carney was forced to push the regular press briefing back to 3:30pm in order not to butt up against President Barack Obama’s previously scheduled healthcare remarks, which were set for at 2:40pm.
White House Spokesman Josh Earnest told POLITICO that while the meeting was conducted on “deep background,” the existence of the meeting was “off the record.” Carney claimed in his press briefing that POLITICO’s original report was “erroneous,” stating that the “off-the-record” briefing was not actually off-the-record and was never meant to be a replacement for the regular briefing.
Naturally, conservatives (and Piers Morgan) quickly took to Twitter to comment about the closed-lid meeting:
This story has been updated to reflect the nature of the meeting.
