Mother Jones Rewrites McConnell Tape Transcript

In the wake of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) accusation that his offices had been illegally recorded in a tape handed out by Mother Jones, the liberal publication has now released a doctored transcript of the tape itself in an effort to suggest that McConnell’s staff was engaged in violation of Senate rules. In its article “Did McConnell Use Senate Employees For Oppo Research on Ashley Judd?,” the publication prints the following transcript of the taped staff conversation:

Presenter: So I’ll just preface my comments that this reflects the work of a lot of folks: Josh, Jesse, Phil Maxson, a lot of LAs, thank them three times, so this is a compilation of work, all the way through. The first person we’ll focus on, Ashley Judd–basically I refer to her as sort of the oppo research situation where there’s a haystack of needles, just because truly, there’s such a wealth of material. [Laughter.]

Mother Jones extrapolates: “‘Las’ is congressional parlance for legislative assistants; one of the legislative assistants, Phil Maxson, gets his own shout-out. The question is whether Maxson and the other McConnell LAs were digging up material on Judd while on government time. If they were engaged in this research while on annual leave or vacation–or working outside Senate hours–they wouldn’t be violating Senate rules. But if this was done on Senate time, McConnell could have a problem.”

But what does the tape actually say?

Presenter: So I just preface my comments that this reflects the work of a lot of folks: Josh, Jesse, Phil Maxson, a lot of LAs, in their free time, so this is a compilation of work, all the way through. The first person we’ll focus on, Ashley Judd–basically I would refer to sort of the oppo research situation where there’s a haystack of needles, just because truly, there’s such a wealth of material. [Laughter.]

The phrase “in their free time” disappears in the Mother Jones transcript, replaced by the nonsensical “thank them three times.”

But the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quickly began tweeting out Mother Jones‘ rewriting of the transcript.  So too did Guy Cecil, DSCC Executive Director. And the Deputy Executive Director. And the National Press Secretary.

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).