Joe Biden has reacted strongly to severe doubts regarding his memory that were brought up in a report by special counsel Robert Hur.
Republican Hur, who held high-level positions in Donald Trump administration's justice department, was chosen in January 2023 to lead the inquiry into Biden's document management.
Hur was placed in charge of the inquiry by Biden's nominee for attorney general, Merrick Garland, in order to give it some autonomy from the justice department's hierarchy.
Republicans are ready to seize upon any criticism of the president, thus the report's release is probably going to have an impact on the US's contested 2024 race.
Additionally, Trump's inappropriate storage of secret materials at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, is also under investigation.
What did the special counsel report find and how did Biden react to it?
What did the special counsel report say?
Special counsel Hur's year-long investigation focused on Biden keeping highly secret papers from his time as Barack Obama's vice president and senator.
Hur concluded that Biden "willfully" withheld and revealed the information, which included records pertaining to foreign and military strategy in Afghanistan.
Images of papers found in a broken cardboard box in his Delaware home's garage are included in the report. The notion that Biden purposefully keeps records is "misleading and just plain wrong," the senator said in his speech.
Hur cited a number of reasons, including his worry that jurors would not conclude that Biden had kept the records on purpose.
A contentious issue in this year's election, the special counsel specifically brought up the 81-year-old's "significantly limited" memory, citing his incapacity to recall the year his son Beau passed away.
Hur wrote: “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.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his 80s – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Hur claimed that during a previous year's interview, Biden had trouble remembering significant incidents from both his personal and professional lives.
“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.”
What has Joe Biden said?
In response to Beau's mention in his speech on Thursday night, who passed away from brain cancer in 2015, Biden showed signs of intense passion and rage.
He exclaimed, "How in the hell dare he raise that? I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away."
At the end of his second term, if re-elected, Biden, the oldest US president in history, would turn 86. He claimed his memory is "fine" and "has not gotten worse”.
Expected to take on former president Donald Trump in November, Biden claimed to have spent hours interviewing with prosecutors following the “international crisis” that resulted from Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7.
Along with disputing Hur's claims that he handled secret documents improperly, he refuted the idea that he gave his ghost writer access to classified material.
Has this issue come up before?
US voters and Democratic Party officials are becoming increasingly concerned about Biden's age; they have primarily voiced their concerns in private conversations with journalists and colleagues.
Sarah Overman, 37 and a Democrat told AP News that, “I, honestly, think that he would be too old. We could use someone younger in the office.”
Voter and lawyer Ross Truckey, 35, from Michigan also shared similar views: “His age and possibly his mental acuity is not where I would want the leader of the country to be.
“He, at times, appears to be an old man who is past his prime. Sometimes, I feel a little bit of pity for the guy being pushed out in front of crowds.”
According to a survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research last year, Biden is too elderly to lead until 2028, according to 77 per cent of respondents, including 69 per cent of Democrats.
But not everyone thinks Biden’s age is impacting his role.
Linda Lockwood, a Democrat and retiree from Kansas City, said: “He seems to be in pretty good condition, in my opinion, and that’s coming from a 76-year-old woman. You might be a little more careful going down the steps as you get older but, if your brain is still working, that’s the important part.”
