Biden’s legal team went to Justice Dept. over what they viewed as ‘cherry picked’ digs at his memory
WILMINGTON, Del.– President Joe Biden’s personal attorney said Sunday that he had gone to both the special counsel and the attorney general to express his concerns about what he viewed as pejorative and unnecessary digs at the president’s memory.
“This is a report that has gone off the rails,” Bob Bauer said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday. “It’s a poor work product.”
The special counsel investigated whether the president mishandled classified documents during his previous roles as vice president and senator and concluded this week that no criminal charges were warranted.
But in building his argument for why no charges were necessary, special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, explained in part that Biden’s defense of any potential charges could potentially include: “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a likable, well-meaning, older man with a bad memory.”
And then he cited examples in which researchers said the president’s memory faded, including after his eldest son Beau died. The comments about Beau Biden in particular infuriated the president, who has been very open about his grief over his son’s death and spoke about him often.
“How on earth does he dare to bring that up,” Biden asked angrily after the report’s publication. “Honestly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, was that their damn business?”
Biden’s age is already a concern for voters. Democrats are now answering widespread questions about the 81-year-old president’s age and readiness by affirming Biden’s fitness to be commander in chief and seeking to discredit people who portray him as weak. First lady Jill Biden wrote a letter to donors on Saturday questioning whether these comments were politically motivated; it generated the most money in donations of any email since Biden launched his campaign.
Bauer, who is married to Biden’s top White House aide Anita Dunn, said he expressed concern about the inclusion of these details with both Hur and Garland, which he viewed as a violation of Justice Department standards governing contribute to ensuring that the public is not prejudiced. against people who have not been accused of a crime. But the appeal failed.
“It’s clear that he was committed to making the report public the way the special counsel wrote it,” Bauer said.
The president spoke with investigators for hours just as the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas took place. He said he answered the questions truthfully and to the best of his knowledge.
Bauer argued that what didn’t make the report were moments when the president deconstructed investigators’ questions and when the special counsel noted that he would take Biden through “events that happened many years ago,” noting that he was simply giving his best memory .
He said the special counsel had made the decision to “pick and choose in a very misleading way” which references were included and which were not.
Bauer also suggested that there was political pressure on the Justice Department, which is prosecuting former President Donald Trump for refusing to turn over a trove of classified documents as well as his role in the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol, and that he has been satirized. has been labeled biased by Trump and others and that his prosecution represents a “two-tiered justice system.”
Hur is a Republican and former US attorney under Trump.
“So you have to wonder, with the outside pressure being placed on the investigation, knowing the attacks that Republicans have made on the law enforcement process, he has decided that we should ask that we reach the only possible legal conclusion and then the rest of it to appease a particular political constituency?’ Bauer asked.
The Ministry of Justice has not responded to the criticism.