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State Department Says Kerry Won't Investigate Edited Briefing Video

John Kerry
John Kerry / AP
June 6, 2016

State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said Monday that Secretary of State John Kerry will not ask the Office of the Inspector General to investigate who ordered a video of a press briefing to be edited.

Kerry has said that he "would like to find out exactly what happened and why," however, the inspector general is the person that is designated to handle such an investigation.

A reporter questioned Trudeau over Kerry's desire to know who ordered the editing.

"Secretary Kerry said that he wanted to get to the bottom of who was responsible and why they did that. Has he asked the Inspector General to do an audit?" the reporter asked.

"So I've seen that, you know, Secretary Kerry, obviously was very seized with this issue, spoke out very strongly about it," Trudeau said. "You know, in terms of the path forward, I don't have any other information to share with you on that."

"There's no plan in place?" the reporter said.

"Well, the plan in place, obviously, as Kirby has said is to make sure it never happens again," Trudeau said. "In terms of what they would do if more information becomes available, more information comes to light, as Kirby has said, we'll continue to take a look."

"No, no, no. But that's, there's a difference between if more information just happens to fall in your lap and what the secretary says, which was, ‘I want more information about who was involved,’" the reporter said.

"So I just don't have details on that," Trudeau said. "The secretary did make himself very clear on that though."