David Corn of Mother Jones magazine has claimed that the audio and video recording of Mitt Romney taken surreptitiously at a fundraiser was complete...until it was revealed that it had a critical gap of up to two minutes. At first Corn refused to admit to any gap until undeniable proof was presented to him by William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection:
There is a gap in the recording immediately after Romney’s now famous discussion of the 47% of voters who don’t pay taxes. The cut in the audio and video comes while Romney is in mid-sentence, so we actually do not have the full audio of what Romney said on the subject.
The next audio/video (Part 2) picks up with Romney talking about China.
I noticed this this afternoon and sent two tweets to Corn seeking an explanation.
As you can see from his Tweets, Corn initially remained in the denial mode:
Finally, after e-mailing David Corn with the facts about the gap, Jacobson got this reply:
According to the source, the recording device inadvertently turned off. The source noticed this quickly and turned it back one. The source estimates that one to two minutes, maybe less, of recording was missed.
In addition there is now this update at Mother Jones:
According to the source, the recording device was inadvertently turned off between these two segments. The source noticed quickly and began to re-record, resulting in an estimated a one-to-two minute loss of tape.
The big question is why didn't the major news organizations with much greater resources than Legal Insurrection discover this gap? And will they now also update their reports with the information about the critical gap? In particular, one wonders if Brian Williams who led NBC NIghtly News with the Romney tape last night will inform his viewers about this?
Could there possibly have been some additional comments made by Romney that might place his 47 percent remark in a slightly different context? We'll never know, and the so-called mainstream media isn't interested in finding out or even pointing out the gap.
And who was the one who "accidentally" erased part of the recording? Was it the ghost of Rosemary Woods of the 18 1/2 minute Nixon White House tape gap fame? Strange that David Corn only admitted to the convenient gap in the recording only after he was called on it by Jacobson.
