LEESBURG, Va. — President Biden gloated to fellow Democrats Thursday about being cleared by the Justice Department’s special counsel over mishandling classified documents, drawing a distinction between his cooperation and that of former President Donald Trump in a similar probe.
“I did not throw up any roadblocks. I was so determined to give [the] special counsel what they needed…I was especially pleased that the special counsel made clear the stark difference between this case and Donald Trump’s [document case],” Mr. Biden said.
He noted that he sat down with Special Counsel Robert Hur for five hours in October, when he was facing the crisis in Israel after Hamas attacked the Jewish state.
President Biden’s remarks to Democrats at their annual retreat included referring to blue states as “green” states and having difficulty recalling the 1973 Supreme Court decision “Roe v. Wade,” which made abortion a federal constitutional right until the Supreme Court reversed itself in 2022.
Mr. Hur said the president had retained documents from his time as vice president in the Obama White House, and that the documents detailed U.S. foreign policy and military efforts in Afghanistan. Mr. Biden also held on to other records related to national security and foreign policy that the special counsel said implicated “sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
But the special counsel’s report stated the reason for the lack of an indictment was “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.”
Mr. Trump, the GOP presidential frontrunner, slammed the Hur report as a “two-tiered system of justice.” Mr. Trump is facing about 40 criminal charges for his handling of classified documents that were transferred from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence during the final days of his presidency in 2021.
Although Mr. Biden’s mental fitness for office remains in question, House Democrats say they are not concerned about his acuity going forward in this year’s election.
“I was with the president on Sunday. The president is very well suited to be our commander-in-chief and we’re going to continue to focus on the issues that the American people are focused on,” said Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada when asked about Mr. Biden’s most recent brain-fog incidents.
This includes referencing conversations he had with two world leaders in 2021 who were deceased at the time.
Speaking at a campaign event on Sunday in Las Vegas, Mr. Biden talked about a conversation he claimed to have had in 2021 with former French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996. He had confused Mitterand for French President Emmanuel Macron while retelling an encounter with the French leader during his first year in office.
At two separate fundraisers Wednesday in New York, Mr. Biden said he talked about the 2021 Capitol riot with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017.
The special counsel’s report stated that Mr. Biden “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 reportedly said.
Additionally, the report said did not remember, “even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
• Jeff Mordock reported from Washington, D.C.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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