Republicans have pounced on Joe Biden for mishandling government documents as a private citizen following the release of special counsel Robert Hur's report.
The report found that Biden “willfully retained” classified materials after his time as vice president. However, it added, the transgressions didn't warrant prosecution, which would be difficult given his appearance as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Details of Biden's forgetfulness during recorded interviews with his ghostwriter in 2017 and the special counsel's office last year could be fatal to his reelection hopes.
Per the report:
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.
The White House announced an impromptu press conference with an irate Biden in response to the political crisis. According to The Daily Wire's Ryan Saavedra, Biden made several notable gaffes:
While discussing Israel's war with Hamas, Biden mixed up world leaders, saying that “the president of Mexico, El-Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in.”
Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is not the president of Mexico, he is the president of Egypt.
Biden then forgot the name of the church where his late son, Beau Biden, got the rosary that the president now wears every day.
Biden claimed that the special counsel did not accuse him of sharing classified information with the ghostwriter of his book in 2017, even though the special counsel said that Biden did exactly that.
This morning, The Daily Wire provided the latest information on the reaction from House Republican leadership:
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) released a joint statement with House Majority Leader Tom Emmer (R-MN), House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
“The Special Counsel's finding that President Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials' and engaged in practices that ‘present serious risks to national security' is deeply disturbing,” the statement said. “Not only does it demonstrate the President's recklessness, but exposes a two-tiered system of justice that is indicting one President with politically motivated charges while carrying water for another amid similar allegations.”
“Among the most disturbing parts of this report is the Special Counsel's justification for not recommending charges: namely that the President's memory had such ‘significant limitations' that he could not convince a jury that the President held a ‘mental state of willfulness' that a serious felony requires,” the statement continued. “A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office.”
Other Republicans shared their thoughts after the heated press conference.
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