THE HILL
Special counsel Robert Hur on Thursday released a 388-page report on President Biden’s retention of classified material, finding the president frequently showed limitations with his memory and recall.
While the report concluded no charges should be brought against the president, its language describing Biden, 81, is likely to be campaign fodder for Republicans who have repeatedly raised questions about the president’s ability to serve.
Some of the language came off looking like a gift to Trump’s presidential campaign.
In opting not to bring charges, Hur, who was appointed by former President Trump to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland in 2017, cited the shortage of evidence, but also how Biden would present himself to a jury.
“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,” 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.”
The report on more than one occasion refers to Biden struggling to remember things when he spoke to a ghostwriter for his memoir, as well as when he was speaking to investigators.
Hur cited Biden’s 2017 conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, which Hur described as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”
