If you thought the saga of Columbia University and its former interim president, Katrina Armstrong, was over, then you don’t know how lawsuits work.

Armstrong was deposed last Tuesday by the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services regarding her tenure at Columbia. As our readers will know, Armstrong is now the former interim president after coming to an agreement with the Trump administration to address anti-Semitism on campus, and then telling her staff and faculty over a Zoom meeting that nothing would be changing. Once the transcript of that meeting was leaked, Armstrong attempted to clean up her mess. But it was obvious that Armstrong had lied to someone, either the Trump administration or her own faculty. She announced on March 28th that she would be stepping down as interim president, and heading back to her previous job as CEO of the university’s Irving Medical Center.

The deposition at HHS happened on April 1st. The transcript of that deposition has now been made public, and Armstrong comes off as a walking, talking disaster. If you thought Kamala Harris was the master of word salads, Katrina Armstrong could be her Sith apprentice. This transcript makes it clear that Armstrong is deep into CYA mode, and while under oath, she could not give Sean Keveney, HHS’s acting general counsel, a straight answer.

I read all 193 pages of the transcript’s PDF that was published by the Washington Free Beacon, which is really only half that long because every other page is blank due to formatting. The overview by the Free Beacon highlights how dodgy and evasive Armstrong was during the deposition, and reading her own words makes it even worse. The woman clearly is a graduate of the Hillary Clinton School of Leadership – she remembers nothing, and it was a “very challenging time,” and she really wasn’t the person in charge of, well, ANYTHING.

Armstrong conceded that she could not recall much from a report published last August by the Columbia University Task Force on Antisemitism, which interviewed hundreds of Jewish and Israeli students about their experiences on campus in the wake of Oct. 7. “Many of the incidents that students reported involved being verbally attacked and spit on walking on Broadway because they were wearing kippahs,” the report states.

Armstrong said she did not “have specific recollections sitting here of what is in this report or what I recall from this report.”

Her struggle to recall the events of the past year—even those of the past month—appeared to befuddle her interlocutor, Keveny. “I don’t understand how you could read that in this report and not remember hearing an allegation that a student had spit on a Jewish student?” he told her.

At another point, Keveny asked Armstrong whether she recalled any of the “specific horrible things you heard from Jewish students.” She could not, though she said “the most hurtful things I heard were about friends no longer being friends.”

“I’m just trying to understand,” Keveny responded, “how you have such a terrible memory of specific incidents of antisemitism when you’re clearly an intelligent doctor?” He continued, “Can you explain that to me; how do you not remember all these horrible specific things that happened on campus?”

If anything, the Free Beacon is being too kind to Armstrong for the sake of brevity in their article. Let’s start at the beginning. Keveney did the questioning, while Armstrong did have personal legal counsel present. In the transcript, her lawyer Andrew Levander speaks up multiple times. Legal representation for Columbia University was also present, but did not speak up. Keveney begins with the task force’s recommendations. Armstrong literally questions if this is the correct report, because she just does not remember things after such a stressful year. (“Q” refers to Keveney’s questions, “A” refers to Armstrong’s answers. Armstrong is also referenced as “THE WITNESS.”)

A: This last year has been the most challenging of my life. And it’s really impossible for me to remember dates at this point.
Q: But you do recall seeing this report before?
A: Can I look at it?
Q: Of course. Yeah, please.

THE WITNESS: So I recall having seeing a report from the Task Force. I can’t tell you that this is the same report that I have in front of me.
BY MR. KEVENEY: Q: Okay. Well, we’re not trying to pull a fast one on you, Dr. Armstrong. I’m pretty sure this is the report that Columbia prepared.

Keveney, who proves over the course of the transcript to have the patience of a saint, asks if any of the task force’s recommendations were ever implemented by Columbia during Armstrong’s tenure. After first claiming that she needs to look over the recommendations, Armstrong says:

A: I very much appreciate and would be very grateful to be able to look at the recommendations. We received a lot of recommendations from different groups about addressing antisemitism. And would very much appreciate reviewing the recommendations.

Keveney tries to move on to when Columbia was notified that they were losing federal funding. Armstrong literally cannot acknowledge that she was ever informed about it.

A: So the last weeks — you know, this has been the most challenging year of my life, so I don’t have specific recollections of dates.
Q: So I — I — I’m not asking you for a date. Do you remember that the federal government told Columbia at some point in the last month that it was reviewing its funding?
A: I think I would have to understand more specifically what you’re referring to.
Q: You don’t recall Columbia University getting a letter from the General Services Administration saying, We’re reviewing your funding?
A: Perhaps you could show me the specifics. We’ve received a lot of letters from the administration.

Never let anyone tell you that academics or doctors are smarter than the average Joe off the street. Armstrong is tap-dancing around, and making herself look incredibly stupid in the process. This “do you remember the the letter about the funding” exchange lasts from page 23 to page 36, at which point both Keveney and Armstrong’s lawyer Andrew Levander mutually agree to a recess. Once the recess was over, Levander rephrases the question to Armstrong, who now has an answer.

MR. LEVANDER: Without recalling a specific letter, which you now have in front of you, perhaps, do you generally recall that there was among the correspondence that you described as many, many letters with the government over the last period of time, there was at least one letter that concerned the issue of funding?
THE WITNESS: Yes. I appreciate the letter and understanding it in the multiple different correspondence. And yes, I recognize that amongst the many letters that we had, that this letter was one of them.

Moving forward in the transcript, we get to the infamous Zoom meeting, which took place after Columbia agreed to the Trump administration’s conditions for restoring the funding, including implementing a mask ban on campus. Hilariously, Armstrong can no longer remember anything about it! Good thing there’s a transcript, as Keveney so helpfully reminded her.

Q: Do you remember having a meeting with faculty after you put out that statement?
A: I have had many meetings with faculty.
Q: You put out that statement on a Friday. Do you remember having a meeting with faculty the following weekend that was on Zoom?
A: I’m sorry to be so precise. I’m really not trying to make this take longer. I just want to make sure that I’m being very precise given — you — when you say the following weekend, you mean that Saturday and Sunday, right after the Friday?
MR. KEVENEY: Yes.
THE WITNESS: Yes.
Q: What did you say during that meeting?
A: And this has been the most challenging time. I do not have precise recollections of what I said in that meeting or other meetings related in the following days.
Q: You’re aware there’s a transcript of that meeting?
A: I have understood that.
Q: In fact, you knew it was being transcribed at the time by a feature on Zoom, right?
A: It — so I was not involved in that part of it. My understanding is it’s a closed caption thing that is destroyed at the end of the Zoom meeting.
Q: Do you recall anything you said during that meeting?
A: Certainly not with any level of precision.

This legalese word salad is being used for one reason – to limit Katrina Armstrong’s potential personal liability in failing to protect students. You know, those students who were targeted and harassed that she simply can’t remember hearing anything about. When Armstrong denies that she ever heard of specific examples of Jewish students being harassed or assaulted – including one incident where a student was spat on – Keveney is so frustrated by her denials that HE asks for a recess.

What had to have gotten the Board of Trustees’ attention is when Armstrong denies that she had much authority as interim president, and points the finger back at the Board.

Q: So, Under the charter of the University, the president shall be the chief officer of the University and subject to the trustee shall have general charge of the affairs at the University. Do you see that first sentence there? That’s my only copy. Sorry.
A: Yes. I see that first sentence.
Q: So the — the buck stops with you, right? Under the Charter, like you — you’re in charge?
A: So my understanding of the Charter is that the trustees have full responsibility for the University. My understanding, and I haven’t reviewed this here, is that — that there is also other components of the University, including the faculties of the different groups. And there are other pieces in the statutes.
Q: Did you have any actual authority as the interim president?
A: My understanding is that I had some authority as the interim president.

This is a very clever way of trying to get Armstrong out of any legal liability. If she didn’t have control of the university as “interim president,” then she can’t be held responsible for what happened. She is directly saying that in her mind, the Board of Trustees were in charge.

I would have paid good money to hear the audio transcript of this deposition, because you can very much tell when Keveney is trying to hold it together during Armstrong’s increasingly asinine word salads. Her continuing lack of memory led to Keveney asking “What kind of doctor are you?” on page 129, and eventually this exchange beginning on page 132, which sent her lawyer into fits.

Q: What kind of doctor are you, Dr. Armstrong? I mean, do you have a specialty?
A: I’m an internist.
Q: And you went to medical school, obviously, right?
A: Yes.
Q: Where?
A: I went to Johns Hopkins.
Q: You had to memorize a lot of things to get through medical school, right?
A: I’m trying to think about if there’s a way to actually answer this, that it’s — so actually what we teach in medical school is clinical decision making. It’s actually how to process information. I taught a course at Penn called Clinical Decision Making. It’s not about facts. Facts change very quickly in medicine. So I — I don’t know how to —
Q: You didn’t have to memorize a lot of anatomy when you were in med school?
A: So med school is both about the facts that exist at that time. And yes, we memorized things, but those change very quickly. And so we don’t teach people to memorize facts. What was true 20 years ago in medicine is not true today.
Q: It’s fair to say though, that when you were in medical school, you had to have the mental faculty to memorize and remember a lot of things, right, I mean, that doesn’t seem like a controversial statement?
THE WITNESS: So I’m — what —
MR. LEVANDER: I — I object to the form as being vague and hard to answer, but you do the best you can.

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I wouldn’t trust Katrina Armstrong to be my doctor in any capacity, period. The last straw for Keveney was when he professed himself “shocked” that Armstrong claims to have zero idea of the allegations surrounding Students for Justice in Palestine. The interview ends with Keveney asking Armstrong why she accepted the interim job to begin with. Armstrong, who takes responsibility for nothing in her life, says her kids made her do it.

Q: So why did you take the job as interim president?
MR. LEVANDER: I — I —
THE WITNESS: Can I actually honestly answer that?
BY MR. KEVENEY: Q: I mean, if you can honestly answer as opposed to not honestly answer it?
A: Well, so let me tell you, like I — my children asked me to do it. I have three kids who are college age. And they believe that Columbia mattered too much not to have somebody stand up for the students at Columbia University. That’s the truth. I initially said, no. And then my kids got up, actually because it happened all at like 9:00 in the morning. And then my kids got up and said, Mom, you have to do it.

Then Keveney asks “And why did you step down as interim president?” and there, the transcript abruptly ends. Did the deposition end there? Did Levander insist that the entire thing was over? Did the Free Beacon get a complete transcript? We don’t know, but that is the last line in the written transcript as published.

Obviously, Armstrong looks like a walking disaster in this deposition. Which is likely why the Board of Trustees made another announcement on Sunday, after this transcript was released.

After discussions with Acting President Shipman, Dr. Armstrong has decided to take a sabbatical and spend time with her family. Dr. James M. McKiernan will continue in his role as Interim Dean of Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and CEO of ColumbiaDoctors.

Oh really? After throwing the Board under the bus, claiming that she had limited authority as interim president, everyone has just mutually decided that Armstrong needs a sabbatical to spend time with her family? Those same kids who insisted that she take the job to begin with?

The real reason that Armstrong is being told to take the sabbatical is the same reason that she had to resign as interim president: she’s lying to somebody. But now, as Sean Keveney has so aptly pointed out, her dissembling and spinning about the stress of her “challenging year” and her claims that she just can’t remember details have created a credibility problem for Columbia University. They now look like complete fools for picking her for the job, and how on earth can they send her, a doctor with an apparent memory problem, back to her old job as CEO of Irving Medical Center? The odds are about even that this “sabbatical” becomes permanent. And who knows what other depositions Armstrong will have to give eventually? Dr. Katrina Armstrong has made herself radioactive – and probably in need of a new job.

Featured image: former Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong, created by Grok 3 AI