Joe Biden will not face charges but report cites ‘limited’ memory
On Thursday, the US Department of Justice released a report characterizing Joe Biden as an elderly man who means well but has a bad memory. This portrayal of the president is damaging, even though he was not charged with any criminal offenses after a lengthy investigation.
Special Counsel Robert Hur oversaw a Department of Justice investigation into how President Biden managed classified materials found at his private residences and offices. As per the report, Biden, who is 81 years old, deliberately held onto and shared sensitive documents; however, he won't be subject to prosecution.
According to a report, Biden does not have to worry about a possible scandalous criminal lawsuit. However, the report did mention that Biden's recollection during interviews with Hur's office in 2023 and a speechwriter for his memoir in 2017 was severely impaired. There are concerns about Biden's old age as he aims to persuade voters to re-elect him for another four-year term as president.
According to the report, during interviews with the special counsel's team, the president was unable to recall his time as vice-president and could not recollect when his son, Beau Biden, passed away, even when prompted with a range of possible years.
According to the report, if Biden collaborates, it may sway the jurors in a prospective trial that he unknowingly committed the offense and did not have any intention to breach the law.
The report stated that they have also taken into account the possibility that during the trial, Mr. Biden may come across as a sympathetic and kind-hearted elderly individual with a weak memory, much like he did during the interview conducted with him.
Attempting to persuade a group of individuals to find a retired president, well into his elderly years, guilty of a major crime that necessitates intent, would prove challenging.
The report from the special counsel has been released following a series of unfortunate incidents for the president that were quite awkward in front of the public. During a gathering in Nevada over the weekend, Biden mistakenly referred to Emmanuel Macron, the current president of France, as François Mitterrand who was the former president and passed away in 1996.
On Wednesday, Biden attended two fundraising events in New York where he shared a conversation he had with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. During his story, Biden also spoke about the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Biden's critics have raised concerns about his fitness to serve another term as President, given that he would be 82 when he takes oath and 86 at the end of his term if he wins re-election. The upcoming report is likely to add more fuel to their arguments. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who is 77 and has been nominated as the Republican candidate for the upcoming Presidential elections, has been repeatedly highlighting this issue during his campaign speeches.
Republican leaders in the US House of Representatives have expressed that a person who cannot be held responsible for mishandling classified information is not suitable to become the president.
Biden addressed the concerns and stated that he was content that no charges had been brought against him. Additionally, he mentioned that he had fully assisted with the investigation. As a show of his willingness to work together, the president participated in interviews for a total of five hours in the two days following the attack by Hamas on Israel. This was accomplished all while handling a major global crisis.
Richard Sauber, who is a special counsel to Biden, has stated in a written statement that they do not agree with various comments that are incorrect and not suitable in the report. The truth of the matter is that President Biden values classified information and aims to safeguard it properly.
At the conclusion of the report, Biden's attorney, Bob Bauer, and Sauber wrote a letter stating that the report's handling of the president's recollection was unsuitable and imprecise.
According to the president's legal team, the report contains biased language that portrays a situation that is often encountered by witnesses: difficulty in recalling events that occurred years ago. They believe that this kind of language is inappropriate for a report from the Department of Justice.
In November 2022, lawyers representing President Biden obtained a group of confidential documents from his personal workspace at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank in Washington where he worked intermittently before becoming President. Additional documents classified as confidential were identified in various locations, including his residences and at the University of Delaware, which holds an archive of his political work, including his tenure as a US senator.
In January 2023, Hur was hired by the US attorney-general, Merrick Garland, to look into any possible mishandling of official documents by the government. Recently, Hur submitted his extensive 345-page report to Congress. According to the report, after Joe Biden finished his term as vice-president under Barack Obama, he retained some confidential information, including details about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan.
The report discovered that there were notebooks that had his jottings about national security matters as well as confidential intelligence sources and techniques.
According to the report, it is possible that materials were mistakenly transferred to places like the University of Delaware. However, the report did not find sufficient evidence to prove Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, which is necessary for a criminal conviction.
When the papers were initially disclosed in January 2023, GOP representatives became infuriated. This was due to the negative comments made by the president and his fellow Democrats about Trump's careless handling of confidential information.
Donald Trump has been charged by Jack Smith, a special counsel within the Department of Justice, for unlawfully maintaining confidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. Prosecutors have stated that the previous president refused to relinquish the documents for an extended period and is purported to have misled investigators, which Joe Biden did not do.
Trump has claimed innocence.
In a written statement, Trump declared that the Hur report provided evidence of a justice system that operated on two different levels.
Trump stated that the Biden Documents Case is significantly more severe than his own case, with a difference of 100 times. He maintained that he did not commit any wrongdoing and was more cooperative than the situation in question.
