The Friday-night news dump is a venerable Washington art form, admired by jaded journos for its sheer cynical efficiency. The White House saves the announcement of some embarrassing, compromised, or dubious deed (a wife-beating nominee, an indicted Cabinet secretary, an eight-digit budget boo-boo) for Friday at dusk, just as reporters and editors are folding up their Macs at home or skedaddling out the door of the newsroom. At the TV networks, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the wire services, and other corporate news organizations in the nation’s capital, the first team flees, and weekend staffers take over running the news desks and updating the home pages. The thrumming capital news cycle downshifts a gear or two for the next 36 hours or so.
Spin doctors in the White House press office know that the best reporters, no matter how nakedly ambitious, don’t want to spend Friday night jumping on a story—even if it reeks of abuse, incompetence, or corruption. So, the White House can distribute a bag of foul dog excrement late Friday with justified hopes of getting minimal attention until Monday morning when, with newer and shinier developments piling up on the harried news editor’s desk, the now-dated odiferous news dump gets less attention than it otherwise would. Or no attention at all.
Thus, at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 30—not just a Friday night but, conveniently, a Friday night before the long July 4 weekend—White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced President Biden’s “final order” on records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The timing was ideal for burying the story: The DC news business wouldn’t really resume full blast until the following Wednesday, four days of American patriotic rituals later. This veritable news purgatory would surely forgive all but the worst of sins.