President Obama’s spokesman responded to the report that administration officials suppressed information about a White House connection to the Secret Service prostitution scandal by assuring reporters that this story isn’t worth discussing anymore.
“As most of you will remember, a lot of this was reported over two years ago,” White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters. “In April of 2012, when the allegations first surfaced, the White House proactively initiated an internal review of the White House advance team that traveled to Colombia. . . . We considered this evidence, and found no other corroborating materials to suggest this volunteer engaged in inappropriate behavior.”
Schultz returned to that theme throughout the questioning, steadily exaggerating the amount of time that has elapsed since the events took place.
“Again, two years, three years ago now, when the White House initiated this review, it looked at any possible member of the White House team who may have been engaged in inappropriate conduct on the ground on that trip,” Schultz said.
April 2012 to now is about two and a half years ago, so maybe Schultz should be permitted to round upward.
“I think that the review that was conducted several years ago now, again, looked at these allegations and found there was nothing to them,” he reiterated.
The “dude, this was two years ago” defense appears to be a staple of White House crisis management.