Special Report: President Biden speaks after special council report
Image: ABC News
Washington, DC (WOLO) — President Joe Biden spoke to the nation from the White House to address the findings released by Special Counsel Robert Hur Thursday in connection to classified documents that were in Biden’s Delaware home from his time as Vice President under the Obama Administration. Biden spoke for just shy of 10 minutes clearly agitated when bombarded by questions referring to Hur’s report, which mentioned his assessment of the President’s “mental acuity”.
Biden attorney’s calling the remarks concerning his memory “misleading and dead wrong”. Biden biting back saying, “I know what the hell I am doing, my memory is fine”. President Biden going on to say “A Special Counsel should have been appointed because I didn’t want them looking at Trump and then looking at me.” While, the report shows stark differences in how Special Counsel Hur believes the probe into President Trump and President Biden differ.
Including the fact, that Biden handed over the documents once informed that they were in his possession, some cases in an old office and others in his Delaware garage. As opposed to the evidence discovered during the Trump classified documents case, where attorney’s say Trump is accused of intentionally obstructing justice by not wanting to turn over documents he had in his Mar-A-Lago home, and even attempting to destroy some them according to the investigation.
When asked if he would have done anything different, President Biden took responsibility for not seeing what his staff was transferring but says they were moved by his staff and not him personally. “I wish would have overseen what was being transferred from my office. I didn’t even know how half the boxes got in my garage and all of the stuff that was in my home, I wish i paid more attention to how things were being moved. I did not break the law period.”
The account of President Joe Biden’s memory is a striking and disputed part of a 345-page report issued Thursday by the federal prosecutor who spent a year investigating his handling of classified information while out of office.
But special counsel Robert Hur’s assessment of Biden’s mental acuity and power of recall — described as sparse, apparently “hazy” and, in one interaction, so bad that the president could not recall “even within several years” when his oldest son had died — informed the decision not to recommend charges.
Hur’s language also drew a fierce rebuke from Biden’s attorneys, who called it wrong and “inflammatory.”
Within hours of Hur’s report being made public, Biden’s reported memory problems were also attracting notice in the political arena and the media — including from Biden’s critics.
Broadly speaking, Hur concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted” after his investigation, which nonetheless “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified information after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
That’s because, Hur wrote, the “evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The White House had emphasized from the beginning that it would cooperate with investigators. Biden himself repeatedly denied any personal wrongdoing and said he was “surprised” to learn of the existence of the documents, which Biden returned after they were found.
In his report, Hur wrote that he had considered the perception problem a prosecution might face with jurors — because of what Hur called Biden’s memory issues.
“At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” Hur continued.
Among what Biden’s attorneys noted were “at least nine” examples, Hur called Biden’s memory significantly limited in his interviews with a ghostwriter for a memoir as well as Hur’s own private sit-down with the president last year.
Hur wrote in his report that Biden’s “recorded conversations with [his ghostwriter] from 2017” — which were later reviewed by investigators — were “often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”
When Biden was interviewed by Hur’s team, in October, his “memory was worse,” Hur wrote.
“He [Biden] did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” Hur wrote.
The special counsel continued: “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” which was in 2015. “And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”
