US President Joe Biden (81) has strongly criticized a report by the special prosecutor who investigated secret documents that Biden allegedly took home during and after his vice presidency under President Obama. Prosecutor Robert Hur decided not to prosecute Biden for this, but did question Biden’s memory and his ability to remember dates and events in his report.
For example, Hur wrote that Biden could no longer remember the year when his presidency ended or when his son Beau died. The latter in particular was very distasteful to Biden. “Where the hell does he get that from?” Biden said on Thursday evening (local time) in an emotional, scheduled speech at the White House.
“My memory is fine,” Biden said further in response to the report. Hur writes that one of the reasons not to prosecute Biden for keeping the documents at home is that it would be difficult to convict the president because “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury during the trial, as he acted during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, older man with a bad memory.”
In response, Biden said: “I was very busy at the time. I was in the middle of dealing with an international crisis,” referring to the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel that took place a day before he sat down with Hur and his team.
The investigation concerns various documents about national security. According to Hur, there are also other reasons not to prosecute Biden. For example, the current American president may have taken some documents home with him while he was still in office as vice president. Then he was allowed to.
The documents include a 2009 handwritten memo to then-President Barack Obama about Afghanistan and notes from intelligence briefings. Documents have been found in various places: in his private home in Delaware, in a rental home in Virginia and at his think tank in Washington. According to the White House, this involved a limited number of pieces that were immediately returned after the discovery, years later.
Donald Trump has also been investigated for taking secret documents, although a criminal investigation has been initiated. Trump refused to hand over documents, after which the FBI found more than a hundred documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort after a raid. He is accused of obstructing the investigation.
Hur held senior positions at the Justice Department under the Trump administration. He was appointed as special prosecutor in January last year at the request of the current ministry under Biden to prevent the investigation from being seen as biased.
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