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Thursday’s decision not to file criminal charges against President Biden for mishandling classified documents should have been a clear legal immunity.
Rather, it was a political disaster.
An investigation into Biden’s handling of documents after becoming vice president concluded that he was a “well-intentioned elderly man with a poor memory” whose “abilities decline with age.” An emotional attempt at political damage control by the president within hours.
Speaking to cameras from the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room on Thursday night, Mr. Biden slammed Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s report, saying the report’s authors questioned his age and mental capacity. He accused him of giving “irrelevant commentary.”
“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” the president said flatly.
Biden appears to be taking special exception to the report’s claim that he cannot remember in what year his son Beau died during an interview with FBI agents.
“How on earth could he say something like that?” the president said, appearing to hold back tears. “Every year on Memorial Day, we hold a service in his memory attended by friends, family and those who loved him. I don’t need anyone to remember him when he died. I don’t need anyone to remind me.”
The president’s remarkable appearance in front of reporters underscored the potential political damage that reporting on Mr. Xu could do, despite the lack of criminal charges. Discussions about the president’s memory and age are repeated throughout the 345-page document in the report, which is used by Republicans including former President Donald J. Trump, Biden’s likely challenger in the 2024 election. It caught my attention right away.
In his report, Xu said the 80-year-old president’s memory was very vague during the five-hour interview over two days and that he knew Biden was mishandling his documents. He said it would be difficult to convince staff. mistaken. In his report, Heo predicted that if the president is indicted, his lawyers “will emphasize these limitations in recalling the president.”
In part because of Biden’s recollection, Ho said what the report said was the deliberate retention of national security secrets, including some documents shared by the president involving “classified intelligence sources and methods.” rejected recommendations to indict the president.
“It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict the former president, who was already in his 80s at the time, on serious felonies that required intentional insanity,” Hoare wrote. .
Biden appeared to hint at the reason for the distraction in his own written statement shortly after the report was released.
“I had a strong determination to give the special counsel what they needed, so even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th, “I facilitated five hours of in-person interviews over two days. I was in the middle of dealing with an international crisis,” he wrote. “I believed that was what I owed to the American people.”
The president’s lawyers, Bob Bauer and Richard Sauber, took exception in a Feb. 5 letter describing Herr’s recollections of the president.
“It is hardly fair for a president to allow himself to be questioned about events that happened years ago, forced to give his ‘best’ recollection, and then accused of having a poor memory,” the lawyers wrote. wrote. “It is neither surprising nor unusual that a president cannot remember dates or details of events from years ago.”
Concerns about Biden’s age have been a recurring theme over the past three years of his presidency. Many voters have expressed concern about the physical and mental health of the president, who plans to remain in the White House until he is 86 years old, in part due to videos of him appearing weak or staggering in public. .
Biden has tried to laugh off the issue, arguing that wisdom comes with age.
During Wednesday’s fundraiser, Biden twice recalled a 2021 conversation he had with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017. Biden’s press secretary later said that Biden, like many public officials, had made the gaffe. In his remarks Thursday night, Mr. Biden upset the presidents of Mexico and Egypt and made exactly the mistake his staffers would have liked him to avoid at a time when his mental strength is being questioned.
On Thursday, he angrily disputed indications that he was unfit to serve. Asked about polls showing Americans are concerned about their age, he pointed at the reporter and said, “That’s your decision. That’s your decision.”
He then added, “That’s not the judgment of the press,” which seemed to mean that it wasn’t the judgment of the people. Asked why he shouldn’t stand back and choose someone else in the party as the Democratic nominee, he said, “I want to be president of the United States in this country and find the person best qualified to finish the job I started.” Because he’s a person.”
Biden aides have repeatedly said that despite how the president sometimes appears in public, he is always astute and tireless in private, in consultations with aides and in meetings with foreign leaders. I’ve been insisting.
But a report released Thursday disputes those accounts, based on hours of interactions with the president in a controlled environment, rather than short snippets of Biden posted on social media. There is. And his descriptions of memory were more vivid than those typically found in legal documents like the one released Thursday.
In the report, Ho said that in a recorded conversation between Biden and the book’s ghostwriter in 2017, Biden struggled to “remember events” and “read the writing in his notebook.” “I sometimes had a hard time conveying my feelings,” he wrote. Ho said the interview with investigators in 2023 was even worse.
“He doesn’t remember when he was vice president, he forgets the first day of the interview at the end of his term (“When did you leave the vice president, if it was 2013?”), I forgot about it on the second day.when His term has begun (‘In 2009, am I still vice president?’),” the report states. “He didn’t remember when his son Beau died, even years later.”
Ho was nominated by Trump to be the U.S. attorney for Maryland and later selected by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
For more than a year, Mr. Biden’s lawyers have argued that the discovery of classified documents in Mr. Biden’s offices and home in Delaware was a mere accidental oversight and not a criminal act, like the 37 felonies against Mr. Trump. I have been claiming that. Handling of confidential materials after retirement.
On Thursday, the special counsel reached a similar conclusion after reviewing a total of 7 million documents. This is a fact welcomed within the White House and within the president’s re-election task force, where aides are preparing to wage a fierce battle to thwart Trump. Trump’s return to the White House.
But the report contradicted the president’s lawyers’ long-standing argument that Biden never jeopardized national security. Investigators found documents at Biden’s home “near boxes in the garage, an overturned dog crate, a dog bed, and a Zappos box.”, An empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped in duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood. ”
Although Ho concluded that “the evidence does not prove Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said that in 2017, after Mr. Biden resigned as vice president, the He said he carried a notebook with him and shared some of it. Create a document with his ghostwriter.
Mr. Xu’s harsh words could set the stage for Mr. Trump and his allies to launch a new political attack on Mr. Biden, accusing him of doing exactly the same kinds of things that Mr. Trump is accused of doing. And it will likely complicate months of efforts by Mr. Biden and his advisers to draw clear distinctions between the actions of the two presidents.
But the most serious political damage is likely to be about Biden’s age, which many veteran Democrats already believe is the president’s biggest weakness. Some privately said they were worried that something would be done to remind voters about age issues, including the possibility of falls and mental stumbles.
Republicans almost immediately began using the report to attack Biden, sometimes going far beyond the prosecutors’ actual conclusions.
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio falsely claimed on social media, “The special counsel has decided not to indict Mr. Biden because he believes he is suffering from age-related dementia.” made a statement.
Thursday’s coverage was in some ways the worst. Biden’s public explanation behind the scenes suggests that with age comes stumbling blocks.
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