- Biden defends memory publicly
- Challenges special counsel’s conclusions
- Faces criticism and gaffes
In the wake of a special counsel report into his handling of classified documents that re-evaluated his suitability for office prior to the November presidential election, United States President Joe Biden has defended his memory.
Biden criticised Special Counsel Robert Hur in impassioned and, at times, irate statements for concluding that Biden’s memory was “severely limited” during interviews with prosecutors, to the extent that he could not recall the year he assumed the vice-presidential position under Barack Obama or the year his son Beau passed away.
“There is even a reference to the date of my son’s death that I cannot recall,” Biden stated on Thursday at a press conference at the White House. “He has the audacity to raise that?”
“I do not require anyone to remind me when he died,” Biden said of his son, who died in 2015 of brain cancer.
Despite being the oldest president in US history, Biden said his memory is “fine” and “has not gotten worse.
Biden Faces Classified Documents Inquiry
Biden, who will meet with former President Donald Trump in November, said prosecutors questioned him for hours after the “international crisis” caused by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7.
Additionally, he challenged certain claims made by Hur regarding his responsibility for the improper management of sensitive documents, disavowing any disclosure of classified information to his ghostwriter.
Hur’s report, published on Thursday, states that Biden would not face criminal liability for removing classified documents at the end of the Obama administration because he cooperated with investigators and could inspire jury sympathy.
Hur wrote in his report, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-intentioned elderly man with a poor memory.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur, a former federal prosecutor during the Trump administration, to investigate Biden’s handling of classified material following the discovery of confidential documents in his private office in Washington, DC.
Subsequent investigations of his Delaware residence and the University of Delaware uncovered additional compromised sensitive documents.
Biden’s Age and Memory Scrutinized
The age of Joe Biden has become a significant issue for Democratic Party officials and US voters, who have expressed their concerns primarily in private conversations with colleagues and journalists.
77% of respondents, including 69% of Democrats, in a survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research the previous year, stated that Biden is too elderly to serve as president until 2028.
Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson stated that Biden’s press conference subsequent to the special counsel report demonstrated he is “unfit” to serve as president.
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In recent days, he has exhibited a sequence of gaffes that have redirected interest away from his youth and cognitive abilities.
Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl and Joe Biden appeared perplexed on Wednesday when Biden stated at a campaign event that he met Kohl at a G7 summit in 2021, four years after Kohl’s demise.
The misunderstanding occurred days after Biden recalled conversing at the same G7 event with the late French President Francois Mitterrand rather than the current leader, Emmanuel Macron.
Vice President Joe Biden referred to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the “president of Mexico” during his remarks on Thursday in defence of his memory.
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