Fox News White House chief correspondent John Roberts told Fox News that the notes released by the White House today of the call between Trump and the Ukrainian President were not actually a transcript, and these notes will be problematic for the White House.
Roberts also said that the mention of Joe Biden on the phone calls would further convince the Democrats to push for an impeachment inquiry.
John Roberts was on a panel with other Fox News personnel to weigh in on the impact of the document as soon the White House released the document.
Roberts said, "I don't think this is going to put to rest the Democratic calls for impeachment."
"One of the reasons is, too, as he was just pointing out the idea that there are dashes there. the memorandum of the telephone conversation is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion. the text in this document records the notes and recollections of Situation room duty officers NSC policy staff assigned to listen to and memorialize the conversation written form as it takes place," he said.
Roberts continued, "These are contemporaneous notes. The Democrats will argue while this is not an exact transcript of a recording - so what is it in this that we're not seeing."
Sandra Smith tried to defend the flimsy readout of what the White House sent. "Hogan Gidley said there would be dozens of people who had been on that call and heard the conversations who could identify if there was something missing, left out or changed," she said.
Yes, and we trust him, right?
Roberts replied, "It's an electronic transcription service. we use those here at Fox News. Not everything is accurate. You go back and compare notes and try to get it as accurate as possible."
He continued, "I think the fact that it's not a verbatim transcription of an actual recording will be seen to be problematic by the Democrats and I think there's probably enough in here in terms of conversations about Joe Biden and asking Ukraine to look into certain things that they will continue going down the road they're going down."
