All eyes are on Special Counsel Robert Hur as he prepares to testify Tuesday before the GOP-led House Committee on the Judiciary.
Hur’s bombshell 388-page report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents found that Biden was careless with classified documents, but shouldn’t be prosecuted.
The special counsel report highlighted Biden’s trouble remembering things, including the year his son died.
“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,” according to the report. “He 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?’)”
Biden served as vice president under then-President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.
“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report continued. “And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.”
Another part of the report said jurors would be sympathetic given Biden’s memory.
“Given Mr. Biden’s limited precision and recall during his interviews with his ghostwriter and with our office, jurors may hesitate to place too much evidentiary weight on a single eight-word utterance to his ghostwriter about finding classified documents in Virginia, in the absence of other, more direct evidence,” according to the report.
That was repeated elsewhere in the lengthy report.
“We have also considered that, 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,” according to the report. “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.”
