The president of the United States, Joe Biden, affirmed this Thursday that his memory "is fine" after the special prosecutor, Robert Hur, concluded hours earlier that the president intentionally withheld classified documents from his time as vice president, but decided not to press charges. against him. In the document issued by the prosecutor after the investigation, he assured that Biden showed a "significantly limited memory" during the interrogations carried out in 2023.
Biden responded in an improvised press conference from the White House that his memory is in good condition, aware that the factor of his age (81 years) and his lapses in public could hinder his re-election in the November presidential elections. "I have good intentions, and I'm an old man, and I know what the hell I'm doing," Biden added when asked by a Fox News journalist about it.
However, part of his argument fell on deaf ears when, at one point in this intervention, specifically from the diplomatic reception room of the White House, he confused the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with that of Egypt, Abdelfatah al Yes Yes. Hours earlier, when remembering a conversation that he had had in 2021 within the G7 with Angela Merkel, he became confused and stated that it had been with Helmut Kohl, her predecessor in the chancellery. It was practically a repeat of another mistake made this week, in which he confused Emmanuel Macron with François Mitterand.
The special prosecutor investigating the case of the classified documents that were found last year on Joe Biden, Robert Hur, has decided not to file criminal charges. In his investigation, he has discovered that the president "voluntarily" took the documents after ending his term as vice president in 2017 and that he shared their contents with third parties. However, he does not consider it enough to charge him.
Among the material, found at his residence in Delaware and in his former office in Washington, was information on Afghanistan and notebooks with sensitive information, in the form of handwritten notes "that implicated intelligence sources and methods" taken during meetings in the House. White. The prosecutor claims in his 388-page report that the president showed some of the documents to a writer who helped him write his memoir (Promise Me, Dad) published in 2017.
In his report, he explains that, during the two-day statement he made to him in October, the president demonstrated "serious limitations" of memory, since "he did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended, and forgetting on the second day when it started." The report added that "his memory of him seemed hazy when describing the debate over Afghanistan, which was once so important to him." These statements represent a new political blow against the president, unpopular due to his advanced age, by portraying him as a worn-out octogenarian.
Attorney General Merrick Garland of the Biden administration's Justice Department appointed Hur to conduct the investigation early last year, with the goal of making it independent of the president's government. Hur was a Justice Department official during the administration of Donald Trump, who was charged with up to 41 criminal offenses for taking and retaining classified documents.
"We conclude that the evidence does not prove Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," Hur states in his brief, in which he explains that his decision not to file criminal charges would have been the same if Justice Department policy did not prevent impeach a sitting president. The president thus avoids becoming the first president charged while in office.
Initially, after learning of the report with the prosecutor's conclusions, Biden sent a statement to the press in which he was pleased with their decision not to charge him and assured that "the matter is closed." "I cooperated fully, did not put up obstacles or seek delays. In fact, I was so determined to give the Special Prosecutor what he needed that I went ahead with five hours of in-person interviews over two days, on October 8 and 9 of last year, at Even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7 and I was in the middle of an international crisis," he says, "I just believed that was what I owed the American people."
However, the subsequent impromptu appearance already had a more sour tone. Biden insisted on his innocence: "I didn't break the law. Period." Although he acknowledged: "I take responsibility for not checking exactly what my staff was doing. They were coming and going. Some things showed up in my garage, some things came out..."
Hur had argued that prosecuting Biden due to this case was "unjustified based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors" and detailed that the evidence "does not establish the guilt" of the president "beyond a reasonable doubt."
What irritated Biden about Hur's statement and explains his subsequent reaction was that the prosecutor placed special emphasis on the president's "memory" and even revealed that he did not remember the dates on which he held the vice presidency and that he had difficulty remembering the date of his son Beau's death in 2015. "How the hell dare you bring that up?" Biden vehemently settled.
Former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), Republican candidate for next November's elections, was also investigated for retaining official documents in his Florida mansion and was charged with 40 charges since he refused to hand them over for months.
