President Donald Trump deployed another attack against the ongoing impeachment inquiry in response to a slew of transcripts released from closed door testimonies to the committees overseeing the process.
Predictably, Trump decried the transcripts as fake news, claiming without evidence that they were "doctored" before urging Republicans on the committees to release their own transcripts.
However, Trump may be fighting an uphill battle with these baseless claims.
Robert Luskin, the lawyer for Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, whose revised testimony last week confirmed a quid pro quo with Ukraine, said that Sondland's testimony was not altered at all.
In an email to The Daily Beast, Luskin wrote:
“No reason to believe that the transcript was altered, and the clarification was released in the form that it was submitted."
Luskin isn't the only one disputing the claims.
Lee Wolosky, lawyer for ex-Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs Fiona Hill, said Hill's testimony wasn't doctored either:
"We have seen nothing to suggest that Dr. Hill's transcript was altered (beyond routine correction of errata)."
Journalists are also pointing out that no Republicans or witnesses have come forward to say any of the testimony was doctored.
While the false claim may have convinced some of Trump's supporters of Democratic sabotage, it only succeeded in disturbing others with how willing the President is to lie in order to discredit his critics.
People weren't afraid to call out Trump's latest lie.
Ironically enough, the White House's summary of the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky WAS doctored for concision before its release, misrepresenting it as a transcript. The word-for-word transcript was moved to a classified server and has yet to be released, despite one of the witnesses testifying that the White House left out key parts of the conversation.
