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The Problem With Huma Abedin’s ‘Buried’ Memory of an Unwanted Kiss

In a forthcoming memoir, Hillary Clinton’s longtime top aide said she “buried” an unwanted advance by a U.S. senator for years.

SO WHAT

Why is she telling us this?

WHAT HAPPENED

Huma Abedin wrote in “Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds” that the unidentified senator aggressively kissed her after a dinner in Washington, D.C., sometime in the early 2000s, per The Guardian.

Abedin recalled being “utterly shocked” and pushing away the senator: “Then I said something only the twentysomething version of me would have come up with – ‘I am so sorry’ – and walked out, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible.”

  • According to Abedin, the senator profusely apologized after she confronted him about the violation, and they stayed friends.
  • Abedin said she “erased” the experience until 2018, when she heard Christine Blasey Ford criticized for “conveniently remembering” her alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
  • The Guardian described Abedin’s account as a “sexual assault,” though Abedin apparently never used the term in the book.

THE REACTION

Hot Air senior editor Ed Morrissey had no problem believing Abedin’s story, even though he called the Kavanaugh connection “pretty politically convenient.”

Other conservatives, like Red State blogger “Sister Toldjah,” questioned whether the kiss as described qualified as a sexual assault.

  • “Simply put, if a guy spending time with a woman, then kissing her and then backing off immediately when he’s told to back off – and no effort is made to restrain her from leaving is considered ‘sexual assault,’ then 99% of American men are monsters and 99% of women in this country have been ‘sexually assaulted’ at some point in their lives,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, clinical psychologist David Ley said on Twitter, “Just a reminder that “recovered memories” are both fictitious AND contagious.”

PREVIEW

In a teaser for Abedin’s Sunday interview with CBS News, she said the senator kissed her after she went back to his apartment, and declined to say she felt he assaulted her.

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