MEDIAITE
President Joe Biden will not be charged over his retention of government documents, Special Counsel Robert Hur announced on Thursday. In doing so, Hur stated that if Biden were charged, the president could present to a jury “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur as Special Counsel last year after lawyers for Biden informed the government that the president was in possession of classified documents from his days as a senator and vice president. Hur concluded that Biden “willfully retained” the classified material.
Hur’s report describes Biden’s memory in damning terms, at one point stating that it “appeared to have significant limitations.” The report recounts a recorded 2017 conversation with Mark Zwonitzer – who helped Biden write two memoirs – in unflattering terms:
Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. 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?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. 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. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
Hur’s report stated that due to the aforementioned limitations, a jury would likely see Biden as a sympathetic figure if he were criminally charged:
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. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify
