Memory

Thursday

February 8, 2024

A car-crash clean-up press conference Biden will hope to forget

President Joe Biden surprised the American people Thursday night by delivering previously unscheduled remarks on his classified documents scandal — and promptly created an unmitigated PR disaster. Earlier in the day, the special counsel investigating Biden’s improper retention and storage of classified documents issued his report. Robert Hur found the president did mishandle documents, broke national security law and undermined national security by releasing classified information to his ghostwriter. However, perhaps even more damning, Hur declined to recommend charges against the president, asserting that he presents as a “well-meaning” elderly man with a poor memory.

Grace Curley

Robert Hur’s brutal report should mark the beginning of the end of the Biden era

Special Counsel Robert Hur predictably concluded that President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents when he was a senator and vice president do not warrant criminal charges. But unfortunately for the White House, Hur’s recommendations to the Justice Department quickly became background noise. Instead, his unsparing descriptions of the commander-in-chief took center stage. None of Hur’s characterizations should surprise anyone who has watched Joe Biden for more than forty-five seconds over the last three and a half years. It’s not like the American people have had only one opportunity to catch Biden seeing dead people. There was a second and third showing.

Thursday

December 16, 2021

Rachel K. Paulose

Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense and the war on memory

The Ghislaine Maxwell trial resumed today with the defense’s presentation of its case, beginning with a procedural loss for the Maxwell team. The judge rejected the defense’s unusual request to allow some of their witnesses to testify anonymously. Maxwell’s attorneys claimed three witnesses feared they “might get a lot of unwanted attention.” Judge Alison J. Nathan ruled that because the defense did not claim the witnesses were victims or sexual assault survivors, no special exemptions applied to the general rule that witnesses in federal court must be publicly identified.