WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden forcefully defended himself against charges that he suffers from memory loss, delivering remarks Thursday night in response to special counsel Robert Hur’s report on his handling of classified information.
Hur’s report included characterizations of the president’s mental state, saying that Biden’s memory was “significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023.”
The report also said that Biden did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.
“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden said, adding that when he was asked during the probe about Beau’s death, he thought to himself that it “wasn’t any of their damn business.”
Biden’s son Beau died in 2015 from brain cancer.
“I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away,” Biden said Thursday night, reiterating that he wears his late son’s rosary beads and honors Beau with a service every Memorial Day. The president often talks about Beau in speeches, especially when discussing loss and grief.
Biden also said, “My memory’s fine,” in response to a reporter’s question.
Later in his remarks, Biden mistakenly referred to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as the president of Mexico. The flub took place when Biden was answering a question about the Israel-Hamas war, and it was the third time this week he’s mixed up heads of state.
Biden reiterated the distinction the special counsel’s report made between his handling of classified documents compared with former President Donald Trump’s. Earlier Thursday, he briefly addressed the report during a pre-announced speech, saying that he was “especially pleased” that it “made clear the stark differences between this case and Donald Trump.”
In response to a reporter’s question Thursday night about what he would have done differently, Biden talked about the importance of overseeing the transfer of materials.
“I should have done that,” he said.
But Biden pushed back on the report’s language that he “willfully retained” classified documents, calling such assertions “not only misleading, they’re just plain wrong.”
The president’s appearance came hours after Hur released his report into Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur declined to prosecute the president, but found that he “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
The report also threw doubt on whether a jury would convict the president, if Hur had decided to bring charges.
“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,” the report said. “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.”
