A significant portion of the American people harbor concerns about President Joe Biden's mental health and cognitive capabilities, and those worries were just confirmed as legitimate by Special Counsel Robert Hur's report on Biden's willful and unauthorized retention of classified documents.
Though Biden will dodge criminal charges for his unlawful actions, the report was not good news for the president, his White House, or his re-election campaign, as it portrayed him as an "elderly man with a poor memory" unlikely to be convicted by a sympathetic jury, Fox News reported.
In fact, according to Hur's report, Biden was unable to recall in an interview with investigators the specific dates of his service as vice president, the exact year when his son Beau died, or who his former allies and opponents were in critical prior debates over U.S. policies during the Afghanistan War, among other important things forgotten by the 81-year-old incumbent seeking another term in office.
In Special Counsel Hur's 388-page report, the federal prosecutor wrote, "We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would
reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president."
"Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen," he continued. "These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods."
"However, for the reasons summarized below, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," Hur added. "Prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice's Principles of Federal Prosecution. For these reasons, we decline prosecution of Mr. Biden."
Throughout Special Counsel Hur's report, he repeatedly referenced President Biden's age and forgetfulness as being likely to elicit empathy from and create reasonable doubts for prospective jurors in a hypothetical trial over Biden's apparent "willful" and unlawful retention of classified documents from his time as vice president and his service in the Senate.
The prosecutor asserted that Biden's "significantly limited" memory of events, paired with his purported "cooperation" with investigators once his retention of classified documents became public knowledge, "will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully -- that is, with intent to break the law -- as the statute requires."
"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," Hur wrote. "Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt."
The special counsel added, "It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him -- by then a former president well into his eighties -- of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness."
CNBC reported that Special Counsel Hur provided in his report a few examples of President Biden's failure to recall with specificity various significant events over the past decade or so, which, again, was repeatedly cited as a reason to not bring any criminal charges against him.
"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?’)," the report revealed.
"He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died," Hur further noted. "And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him."
Indeed, the special counsel observed that "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" that opposed a troop surge in Afghanistan.
