(UnitedVoice.com) – President Joe Biden’s age is dogging him in the 2024 presidential election. The 81-year-old has taken a number of falls, and his lifelong stuttering problem continues to be an issue. The American people have repeatedly responded negatively to his age in polls, worrying that he doesn’t have what it takes to lead the country for another four years.
Those concerns collided with Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into the president’s handling of classified information.
Damning Report
On February 8, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued Hur’s report into Biden’s handling of classified information. The investigation was related to the documents found at his home and former office at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center. Garland appointed Hur, a Republican US attorney who took office under former President Donald Trump, to investigate the matter last year.
After an intense year-long investigation, Hur decided the president willfully retained documents but determined his actions didn’t warrant criminal charges. He cited a shortage of evidence as the reason he couldn’t bring charges when the president is out of office.
Hur wrote that his team considered that Biden would present himself as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” to a jury if the case went that far. The conservative prosecutor went on to say that he thinks many jurors would “want to identify reasonable doubt.” He stated he believes it would have been hard for a jury to convict a former president, who would be in his late 80s, “of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
The report also pointed out that the president couldn’t recall things that he spoke to his ghostwriter about years ago. Hur accused Biden of not knowing when his son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer.
Responses to Report
Biden slammed the report in a fiery press conference where he stated that his memory is fine, pointed out that he sat for the interview in the days after the terrorist attack on Israel, and reacted angrily to Hur’s suggestion he didn’t know when his son died. He said he didn’t answer the question because he didn’t think it was “any of their damn business.”
Former US Attorney Preet Bharara told ABC News that he thought Hur’s comments on Biden’s memory were “gratuitous [and] superfluous” and “had no place” in the report.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, described Hur’s statements as “gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate.” Mark Lytle, who served in the DOJ under Trump, said he wasn’t a fan of the president but called Hur’s remarks “outrageous.” He accused the special counsel of “acting like prosecutor, judge and jury.”
Republicans quickly seized on the report. Alex Pfeiffer, the communications director of a pro-Trump super PAC, said that if Biden is “too senile to stand trial, then [he’s] too senile to be president.” Other Conservatives issued similar statements. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the report “unnerving.” Presidential candidate Nikki Haley used it as an opportunity to discuss the aging of lawmakers in general, saying everyone needs to “face reality” and admit people of Biden’s age “get diminished.”
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