Biden Is Seriously Struggling With His Memory, Says Damning Report
The Department of Justice investigation on President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal concluded Thursday with no charges for the commander in chief, but the subsequent report may pose bigger problems for his reelection campaign.The 388-page report, which followed a year-long investigation by special counsel Robert Hur, effectively condemned the 81-year-old president as having a memory with “significant limitations,” noting that if Biden were to face trial he “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.” Over the course of the report, Hur painted a picture of a man who could not remember with precision when his vice presidency under President Barack Obama began or when it ended. His memory “appeared hazy” when recalling his stance over the war in Afghanistan, and he mistook one of his former key allies, General Karl Eikenberry, for someone he had a “real difference” of opinion with. But political minutiae were not the only topics Biden had trouble recalling, apparently also failing to remember, “even within several years,” when his son Beau died. “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,” the report noted.A letter from Biden’s legal team, included in the report, simultaneously applauds the decision not to charge Biden while condemning the report as an inaccurate assessment of Biden’s mental clarity, citing the questionable timing of Hur’s interviews.“We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events,” the attorneys wrote. “In fact there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course of hours. This is especially true under the circumstances, which you do not mention in your report … that his interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel,” they added.In his own statement, the president reaffirmed that narrative, claiming his eagerness to satisfy the needs of the investigation came at the expense of multihour interviews in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel.“I was so determined to give the Special Counsel what they needed that I went forward with five hours of in-person interviews over two days on October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis,” Biden said.Hur, a Trump appointee, was chosen by Attorney General Merrick Garland to conduct the investigation in an effort to avoid any naysaying over presumed political bias. And while it may be tempting to brush off the unsettling descriptions as a contrived effort to make the Democratic incumbent look bad, Biden has only continued to make critical, memory-related gaffes. At a campaign event on Wednesday, Biden twice confused German Chancellor Angela Merkel with her dead predecessor, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. And just days before, Biden made a similar flub, also confusing French President Emmanuel Macron with his dead predecessor, former French President François Mitterrand.
The Department of Justice investigation on President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal concluded Thursday with no charges for the commander in chief, but the subsequent report may pose bigger problems for his reelection campaign.
The 388-page report, which followed a year-long investigation by special counsel Robert Hur, effectively condemned the 81-year-old president as having a memory with “significant limitations,” noting that if Biden were to face trial he “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.”
Over the course of the report, Hur painted a picture of a man who could not remember with precision when his vice presidency under President Barack Obama began or when it ended. His memory “appeared hazy” when recalling his stance over the war in Afghanistan, and he mistook one of his former key allies, General Karl Eikenberry, for someone he had a “real difference” of opinion with. But political minutiae were not the only topics Biden had trouble recalling, apparently also failing to remember, “even within several years,” when his son Beau died.
“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,” the report noted.
A letter from Biden’s legal team, included in the report, simultaneously applauds the decision not to charge Biden while condemning the report as an inaccurate assessment of Biden’s mental clarity, citing the questionable timing of Hur’s interviews.
“We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events,” the attorneys wrote.
“In fact there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course of hours. This is especially true under the circumstances, which you do not mention in your report … that his interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel,” they added.
In his own statement, the president reaffirmed that narrative, claiming his eagerness to satisfy the needs of the investigation came at the expense of multihour interviews in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel.
“I was so determined to give the Special Counsel what they needed that I went forward with five hours of in-person interviews over two days on October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis,” Biden said.
Hur, a Trump appointee, was chosen by Attorney General Merrick Garland to conduct the investigation in an effort to avoid any naysaying over presumed political bias.
And while it may be tempting to brush off the unsettling descriptions as a contrived effort to make the Democratic incumbent look bad, Biden has only continued to make critical, memory-related gaffes. At a campaign event on Wednesday, Biden twice confused German Chancellor Angela Merkel with her dead predecessor, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. And just days before, Biden made a similar flub, also confusing French President Emmanuel Macron with his dead predecessor, former French President François Mitterrand.
