United States: US President Joe Biden has defended his memory after the special council released a report into his handling of classified documents, which renewed scrutiny of his fitness for office ahead of the upcoming presidential election in November 2024.
Biden responded to special counsel Robert Hur’s report for describing his memory as severely limited. The President has reacted to a recent report that he couldn’t remember the year he began serving as vice president under President Barack Obama or the year his son Beau Biden died.
The President said that, “There’s even reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.” Biden also stated remembering his son Beau, who died due to brain cancer in 2015. The oldest president in history and who would turn 86 at the end of his second term if re-elected, said his memory is “fine” and “has not gotten worse.”
Joe Biden, who is expected to compete against Donald Trump, said he had conducted several hours of interviews with prosecutors in the immediate aftermath of the “international crisis” sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
President Biden also disputed some of Hur’s claims regarding his culpability in mishandling sensitive documents, denying that he shared classified information with his ghostwriter.
Robert Hur’s reports said that Biden would not face criminal charges for removing classified documents at the end of Obama’s presidency as he had cooperated with the investigators and would appear sympathetic to a jury. Hur remarked that, “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, a former federal prosecutor during the Trump administration, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials after sensitive documents were found in his office in Washington, DC.
A search of Biden’s home in Delaware and the University of Delaware turned up more sensitive documents that had been improperly disposed off. Mr. Biden’s age has arisen as a deep concern for US voters and Democratic Party officials, who have for the most part shared their scruples in private conversations with colleagues and journalists.
US House Speaker of Representatives, Mike Johnson, a Republican, commented on Biden’s press conference following the Special Council report, that he was “not fit” to be president. Biden has made a series of gaffes in recent days, focusing on his age and mental toughness.
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