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White House officials said Friday that the special counsel’s report into President Biden’s handling of classified materials is politically motivated, saying the reliability of the document characterizes the president as elderly and forgetful. escalated the attempt to harm the person.
Vice President Kamala Harris suggested the report was more of a political attack than an impartial legal document. White House Counsel Ian Sams called this “inappropriate” and “alarming.”
Those statements were made by Special Counsel Robert K. Garland, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to investigate how classified materials from Biden’s time as vice president ended up in Biden’s garage. This is part of an effort to reject Mr. Hur’s report. We have offices in Delaware and Washington.
A report released Thursday concluded that “there is no warrant for criminal charges,” but that conclusion was quickly overshadowed by the president’s characterization of his memory. The report said Biden, 81, is a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” and that “his abilities are declining with age.”
For a president whose primary political vulnerability is the perception that he is a man in decline, these descriptions amounted to some of the most damaging descriptions of his age during his tenure in the White House.
The report forced immediate damage control from the White House, with the president holding a press conference Thursday in which he deferred any conclusions about his mental acuity. “My memory is fine,” said Biden, who has long battled questions about his age.
On Friday, Harris said the report was “politically motivated.”
“The characterization of the president’s behavior in the report could not be more wrong based on the facts and is clearly politically motivated,” Harris said in response to questions from reporters at the White House. ” he said.
Some Democrats also came to the president’s defense, accusing Mr. Hur, a former federal prosecutor in Maryland who was appointed by President Trump, of bias and potentially violating Justice Department policy.
Representative Daniel S. Goldman, a New York Democrat and former federal prosecutor, denounced the “special counsel’s unnecessary and unwarranted attack on the president” in what appeared to be a “highly partisan act.” .
Biden’s response is straight out of the traditional White House strategy of hitting back, calling prosecutors partisan when they make unflattering or damaging allegations. be. George H.W. Bush did something similar to Lawrence Walsh, Bill Clinton did something similar to Ken Starr, Donald J. Trump did something similar to Robert S. Mueller III, Jack Smith, Many other investigators are doing the same thing.
Whatever the merits of their claims, and many will still debate the perceived and actual bias in the Bush, Clinton, and Trump cases, this strategy changes the subject and It helps give advocates something to focus on other than the questions raised about the president. If the source of an unwelcome claim is discredited as politically biased, the claim itself can be discredited, at least in the eyes of sympathetic or biased voters.
No one has perfected this technique more than Trump. Not only does he claim that multiple prosecutors from New York to Georgia are partisan, he also makes similar claims about various judges and civil litigants. That’s not to say that Mr. Biden and his team aren’t genuinely outraged by Mr. Xu’s reporting, but in politics, as in sports, the best defense is a good offense.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre asked if the White House plans to evolve its strategy to convince Americans that Biden is not too young to serve as president. In response to a question, Biden said he would continue to travel in the United States. The United States speaks directly to voters.
Mr. Sams, of the White House General Counsel’s Office, said Mr. He suggested that it may have been.
“There’s pressure to be critical and to say things you probably wouldn’t say otherwise,” Sams said. “You wonder why there’s such criticism out there.”
He added that the special prosecutor’s job is to determine whether there was any criminal activity. “It turns out that’s not the case,” Sams told reporters Friday. “That was the discovery. The case was solved.”
But politically, the case is far from over.
The Republican National Committee quickly created a graphic grafting the report’s eight most brutal words, “well-intentioned old man with a bad memory,” onto the Biden campaign logo. Trump’s chief strategist, Chris Lacivita, called the special counsel’s explanation of Biden “condemnatory and defining.”
The Democratic Party certainly went on the offensive.
“People are really angry,” said Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who appeared with Biden on a recent trip to the state. “People think this is a cheap shot by politicians.”
“It’s designed to do exactly what people are trying to cause problems for,” she added. “We have a very perceptive and wise person who has wisdom and experience even at 81 years old.”
Alluding to Trump, he pointed out that other people close to Biden’s age have been charged with 91 felonies.
peter baker Contributed to reporting from Washington.
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