Ceeboo wrote:Did some looking around late last night (got trapped into a few rabbit holes) and at the end of my search - I am still unable to find an official source (non political - Non news article) that spells out the process on how a US President's phone call is recorded/transcribed in modern times.
So, as I suggested up thread, I am motivated to proceed with caution concerning what I had thought/presumed (That I was reading an actual transcript of the call). I guess I (we all?) will learn more as this unfolds.
What was issued by the White House was labelled as a 'memorandum' (not a transcript) of the call. As you can see if you follow the link, the heading read:
MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
SUBJECT:
PARTICIPANTS:
DATE, TIME AND PLACE:
(C) Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine
President Zelenskyy of Ukraine
Notetakers: The White House Situation·Room July 25, 2019, 9:03 - 9:33 a.m. EDT
Residence
A note at the foot of the first page said:
CAUTION: A Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation.· (TELCON) is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion. The text in this document records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty "Officers and-NSC policy staff assigned to listen.and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place. A numper of factors can affect 'the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent and/or interpretation.
The word "inaudible" is used to indifate portions of a conversation that the notetaker was unable to hear.
Did you not see all that when you read the document in question? If so, why your puzzlement?
But since this memorandum was issued by Trump's own White House staff, I don't think you need worry that it is in any way slanted to portray the President in an unfavourable light. And even then, you get this interesting exchange:
The President: ... There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.
President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won· the absolute majority in our Parliament; the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look. into the situation, specifically to the company that you
mentioned in :this issue.
Add that to the whistleblower's carefully constructed seven pages (posted by me upthread), and I think that even the most sceptical person will agree that this is a matter that merits serious investigation. And pretty well by definition, you don't escape being investigated simply because you have not yet been proved guilty. You get investigated when it appears that there may be a case to answer.
Don't you now think that there is a case to answer on the basis of the documents in the public domain?