The White House has been accused of omitting a key question from the 16 July joint press conference of Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During the exchange with journalists following the pair’s private, two-hour meeting in Helsinki, Finland, earlier this month, Reuters asked: “Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”
Mr Putin said he did want Mr Trump to win because "he talked about bringing the US-Russia relationship back to normal”.
“The US government is essentially following the Kremlin’s playbook,” Ms Maddow said on one of her nightly broadcasts.
She showed what she said was the unedited footage of the press conference, which viewers saw live that day.
She then contrasted it with the video the White House posted, which did not include footage of that back-and-forth between Reuters' reporter Jeff Mason and Mr Putin.
Ms Maddow said the White House erased the portion of the video “from the official US government record of that meeting”.
The Atlantic reported the exchange is missing from the live-stream video posted by the White House as well as the typed transcript.
In the White House video the only part which can be heard and seen is Mr Mason asking if Mr Putin had directed Russian officials to help the US president to look into election interference.
Ms Maddow noted the Kremlin’s transcript of the press conference completely omitted the entirety of Mr Mason’s question.
The Atlantic report noted some “technical difficulties” with the original recording as well.