Excerpts from the Transcript

Excerpts from the transcript are even worse than the NYT article. One has to wonder how much the Times had to clean up this Bidenesque gobbledygook

Julie Kelly

On orally communicating his decisions to aides

Well, first of all, there’s categories. So, you know, they aren’t reading names off for the commutations for those who had been home confinements for, during the pandemic. So the only things that really we read off names for were, for example, you know, was I, what was I going to do about, for example, Mark Milley? Mark’s a good guy. We know how vindictive Trump is and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason. The general, you know. So they may read off his name — what’d I want? I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add. And you know, you know, members of the Jan. 6 committee — it’s just, there were no — I was deeply involved. I laid out a strategy how I want to go about these, dealing with pardons and commutations. I was — and I pulled the team in to say this is how I want to get it done generically and then specifically. And so, you know, that’s just — this is how it worked.

On Trump and other Republicans saying Biden was incapacitated and his aides abused the autopen

They’re liars. They know it. They know, for certain. I mean, this is — look, what they, they’ve had a pretty good thing going here. They’ve done so badly. They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing. The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else. And this is a — I think that’s what this is about. It’s — you know — it’s consistent with Trump’s game plan all along. I mean, if I — I don’t expect you to answer any questions — but if I told you three years ago, we’d have a president doing this, I think you’d look at me in the eye and say, “What, are you, crazy?”

On granting pre-emptive pardons to family

In terms of my fam — he — go after me through my family. I know how vindictive he is. I mean, everybody knows how vindictive he is. So we knew that they’d do what they’re doing now. [laughs] And my family didn’t do anything wrong. My sister, my brother-in-law, my — my brother, etc. And — and all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills. I just, I just know how he operates. And so I made — but I consciously made all those decisions, among others.

More excerpts here.